Twin DVI Outputs

[Bill Tillman]

I had to build another machine this weekend. It's sweet, i7 with 16 GB RAM. But of all places, the big Tiger Direct store here in Miami did not have one, not even one of the AutoCAD certified cards on their shelves.

I canabalized an older machine for the moment and too out it's Quadro FX 380 card which has given good performance for 2-1/2 years now. The question I have is that as I look at the newer cards available in the under $200 price range, I see that very few of them offer the dual DVI ports that I currently have on this existing FX 380 card. Are the manufacturers now opting for one DVI port and what they call a 1.2 connection. I assume with these cards I would have to purchase a DVI splitter cable in order to use my dual monitor setup.

Is this new setup better, faster, etc... or should I purchase another FX 380 with dual div outputs and skip having to buy the splitter?

[ReMark]

You're skimping on the purchase of a graphics card yet you have an i7 cpu with 16GB RAM?

[Bill Tillman]

Skimping is such a dirty word. The budget is rather small now that the hardware purchase has been made. The other thing is that graphics cards are like hookers. Once you go over the $200 range you get into the cadillac models and the price goes way up exponentially. I saw cards yesterday which ranged from $29 to $900 in that store. The jump came at around the $200 mark. Once I started looking at that end of the shelf the prices when way up out of my range.

And I built this DIY for only $959 including tax. That's with an Asus MoBo, Corsair Memory, a nice black case with plenty of fans and a 600 watt power supply. Plus I blew another $200 on Windows 7 Ultimate OEM DVD. They had other machines on the floor but all of them had Home editions of the OS and all of those with comparable horsepower were around and over the $1K mark. I'm running with the old FX 380 and it's doing fine. So I see no need to blow another $300 or $500 on a graphics card when a $200 will do the job. And I'll have a happy ending...

[SLW210]

There are 4 CompUSAs in the Miami area, did you try them all?

If what you have works, I wouldn't worry about it.

[Bill Tillman]

I checked stock on their website and the only store in the USA which seems to have anything that is AutoCAD certified is in Georgia. So I guess it's going to be mail order.

But now back to my original question. Are people getting away from dual DVI outlets on the video card in favor of one and using a splitter. This machine at my office I'm using now has one output port and a cable which splits the VGA connections. It runs both monitors just dandy. Although one of them is 23" and one of them is 19"...keeps me kind of lopsided but it works. My setup at home has dual 20" monitors. Someday when I win the lottery I'm going to setup quad 72" monitors so I can read my e-mail without reading glasses.

[SLW210]

I believe most will have only one DVI port and one or two Display Ports (DP) I have seen some high end Quadro cards with one DVI-I and one DVI-D. DP is much better than DVI, you might want to check into it, cause look like that is where Graphics Cards are headed. DISPLAY PORT