Second videocard

Hello,

I've got a question on the use of a second videocard. I have an AMB Athlon
system with MSI motherboard. I run Windows XP and for my photo editing I
use Adobe Photoshop.

This week I was able to get a second monitor and I wanted to use this to
work with two monitors on one system. On the smaller monitor I'll drop my
Photoshop toolbars and keep the big monitor free for full screen photo
editing.

I do however only have one (AGP) videocard at the moment. I think I only
need a simple second (PCI) videocard with about 4MB of memory. Am I right
in this, or do I need more memory or is an AGP-videocard with two
monitorplugs required?

Klaas Guchelaar
www.kjguch.ht.st

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 09:53:32 +0000 (UTC), Klaas Guchelaar
wrote:

Hello,

I've got a question on the use of a second videocard. I have an AMB Athlon
system with MSI motherboard. I run Windows XP and for my photo editing I
use Adobe Photoshop.

This week I was able to get a second monitor and I wanted to use this to
work with two monitors on one system. On the smaller monitor I'll drop my
Photoshop toolbars and keep the big monitor free for full screen photo
editing.

I do however only have one (AGP) videocard at the moment. I think I only
need a simple second (PCI) videocard with about 4MB of memory. Am I right
in this, or do I need more memory or is an AGP-videocard with two
monitorplugs required?

Klaas Guchelaar
www.kjguch.ht.st

The amount of video memory needed for this 2D work, with no
requirement to use the 2nd monitor for zooming image, no need for MPEG
acceleration for videos, and no need for gaming, is solely determined
by the resolution you want for the 2nd monitor.

If all you want is the toolbars, a lower resolution might be just as
well or even better than a higher one, but also consider the age of
the cards, that old 4MB cards have slower RAMDACs and will be fuzziest
at the highest reolutions. If placing two CRT monitors right next to
each other you might also find you need fairly high refresh rates to
keep both monitors from affecting each other, this is easiest when you
have multiple resolution and refresh rate options available, but you
may be confined by what's supported by the lesser of the two monitors.

If you really only need simple toolbar support for the second monitor
I'd suggest at a minimum an ATI Rage Pro, Rage XL, (Rage ****) 8MB
card. They run very cool, use very little power from the power supply
compared to most other cards with 8MB or more memory on them.

On the other hand, if there's a chance you might someday want more
from the 2nd monitor, or reusing that PCI card for something else, if
might be worthwhile to buy a faster, more full-featured card. One of
the best modern PCI cards is an ATI Radeon 9100, though of course it
costs quite a bit more though nowhere near as much as the high-end AGP
cards, perhaps a little under $100 USD depending on the market in your
area, which could also determine availability since PCI cards aren't
nearly as popular.

You might want to search Microsoft's website for the multiple display
adapters supported by your operating system. I don't have a link but
recall that their list isn't all-inclusive, is a starting point but
for newer cards or those not submitted to Microsoft for testing you
may need to do some websearchs for reports of people trying to use the
intended PCI card.


Dave