Monthly Archives: April 2010

Dual DVI Video Card Reviews

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A Dual DVI Video Card is a must-have for graphic designers, and an extremely useful device for any gamer, programmer, or anyone who wants more screen space for work or play. Dual DVI allows you to connect two monitors to the same video card, essentially making your computer workspace twice as big. You can play around with this in all sorts of ways, depending on the size and quality of the monitors you have. If you’re a web designer, one monitor could showcase website while the other is dedicated to coding. If your hobby is gaming, you can keep tabs on multiple points of view in your game, or have one window dedicated to chat. The possibilities are endless.

Some Sample Dual DVI Cards

Before beginning, let me state that dual DVI is quite common in most new video cards. It’s an easy hardware addition, and the two main video card manufacturers, ATI and nVidia, see no reason not to include it in their cards. That said, here are some reviews of various video cards.

Budget
Geforce 9600GT – Solidly below $80 and available at some stores for as low as $60, the Geforce 9600GT is considered by most reviewers to be the best video card for anyone building a computer on a budget. With a 256-bit memory bus an 512 Mb of DDR3 memory, this card still manages to hang with the best budget cards nowadays. Despite its nearly two years of age, it even beats out the recent GeForce GT 240, just released six months ago.

Mid-range
Radeon HD5750 – A step up, the HD5750′s main draw, aside from its exceptional performance for under $150, would have to be its DirectX11 capabilities. Arguably the cheapest card with DX11, this ensures that if you’re using your dual-monitor system for gaming, you’ll be able to keep this card through the next wave of high-end games including Aliens vs. Predator, Dirt 2, Civilization V, and Lord of the Rings Online. It’s not going to be able to let you choose the highest quality on these newer games, but it’ll perform well enough to get by.

High-end
Geforce GTX 275 – For just under $250, the Geforce GTX 275 is a competitive, impressive graphics card. It performs nearly the same as the higher-tier GTX 285, but at nearly $100 cheaper it is clearly the better value for designers and gamers who want the smoothest, crispest graphics at an attractive price. The only downside? It’s got two digital inputs and zero analog, meaning that if you don’t have digital monitors, you’ll have to go with a different card.

PCI-Express Video Cards

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In the world of video gaming and ultra complicated 3D rendering for business use, PCI-Express video cards have quickly became the gold standard for PC compatible computers. While standard PCI slots are commonly available for low bandwidth accessories such as sound cards, TV tuners and USB add on cards, PCI-Express slots are primarily used for high bandwidth devices such as video cards. PCI-Express has replaced older technologies such as AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) and for good reason; AGP-8x has a limited transfer rate of 2,100 Megabytes per second in contrast to PCI-Express-16x has a far superior transfer rate maximum of 16,000 Megabytes per second.

What makes PCI-Express even more desirable than older PCI or AGP interfaces is the ability to connect several compatible video cards together. Scalable Link Interface (SLI) offered by Nvidia based video cards as well as Crossfire (offered by ATI based video cards), are the two available flavors available today when it comes to extreme gaming or highly advanced business computing that relies heavily on 3D rendering. Of course, the amount of compatible video cards that can be linked together is limited by the chipset of the motherboard as well as the physical availability PCI-Express slots.

As of this writing, ATI seems to have the leading performance edge in the gaming industry. As the battle continues for the top spot between manufacturers, Nvidia seems to be catering more to the budget conscience gamers at the moment.

The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is currently the top dog when it comes to computer gaming. The Duel GPU video card has become so popular the manufacturer has had an extremely tough time keeping up with consumer demand despite the 5970’s $799 retail price tag. With dual DVI, HDMI and Display Port connectivity options, ATI’s new flagship model has a great deal of versatility built in. Other features include: 2 Gigabytes worth of onboard GDDR5 memory, DX 10/11 support and 3200 stream processors.

While Nvidia is lagging the top spot as far as raw performance, the company offers many budget minded video cards worthy of a look. Their current and best entry level card is the GeForce 9800 GT. This baseline card boasts 16x Anti-aliasing Technology, 128-bit floating point High Dynamic-Range (HDR) Lighting, Microsoft Direct X 10 technology and a small form factor for those who have less room available in their computer case. Although starting to show its age, the 9800 GT is still one of the fastest video cards in its class and can be picked up from most retailers for around a $100

Dual Monitor Video Cards

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Dual monitor video cards allow one computer to use two monitors simultaneously without having to add a second video card in order to run the second monitor. There are many benefits to using a dual monitor setup, mostly related to workplace use and productivity, but can also extend toward certain aspects of gaming. Luckily, the modern market has plenty to choose from.

In the past, dual monitor video cards were priced significantly higher than those that only allowed for a single connection, frequently costing more than $100. In recent years, these cards have become the standard and can be found at a very reasonable price. Some retailers even offer video cards that support two monitors for as little as $20.

The advantages of dual monitor graphics cards primarily lie at the productivity end of the computer use spectrum. Having an additional monitor provides you with extra screen space, allowing you to be able to view much more at once than you would be able to with a single display. For example, let’s say that you are the office manager or accountant for a company and frequently need to switch between a work order and your accounting software. Having a second monitor allows you to view both simultaneously and switch between them at a glance instead of having to move from one program to the other.

That is not to say that the benefits of a dual display are limited only to working, however. There have been many creative uses of multi-display setups for video games, such as a flight simulator that allows you to have the forward, port, and starbird views displayed simultaneously, one on each monitor.

Still, despite the benefits that dual monitor video cards have to offer, they do still have their drawbacks as well. When one video card is running more than one display, the resources that that card has to offer are going to have to be enough to operate both displays simultaneously. Now, if all that you are doing is office work, web browsing, or other activities that do not require a lot of video power, you are going to be just fine. If, however, you are going to be gaming, you will need a more powerful graphics card in order to compensate.

There may also be problems that occur when the software being used does not understand how to use multi-monitor setups or if, such as in a game, the software uses full-screen mode and the user scrolls the mouse off the edge of the display or clicks on the secondary display. Still, these problems will not be significant for many applications.

As you can see, there are many different benefits to using dual monitor video cards. From productivity to gaming, the applications are wide and varied, and those options can become available for a very reasonable price. The next time you install a new video card in your computer, consider using a dual monitor video card. You may be glad you did.