Dual Monitor Upgrade Help - AGP vs IDE

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chizuck

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Howdy all,

I'm in the process of getting my new PC all set up to try my hand at recording some bluegrass through my new Tascam US-122 interface connected via USB. After playing around with Cubase for a couple days I've decided it might be nice to have a dual monitor setup on this PC, and I happen to have a spare monitor. So all I need to get is a video card with two VGA outputs, but when I started looking at them there appear to be two kinds - ones that connect to an IDE slot and ones that connect to an AGP slot. I've read a lot of articles discussing the relative merits of the two with respect to gaming applications, but haven't found anything about how it might affect digital audio recording.

Forgive my ignorance of the inner workings of a PC, but would having all the display information carried on one or the other of these two busses (AGP vs PCI) make the transfer of digital audio to the hard drive and back quicker or more error-free? Or are the two completely un-related?

Thanks for any help anyone can give this greenhorn,
Chuck
 
Shouldn't make a big difference either way
 
I would stick with AGP. Dual head AGP video cards can be had for $50.

I would stick with GeForce chipsets too. ATI has always been a hair "flakey" in my experience.
 
Thanks for the suggestions - I looked at the one listed on NewEgg, but it doesn't look like it has the two ports I need. It has the one for a VGA monitor, but the second plug looks like something really different.
 
I highly doubt that you could even buy and IDE video card these days. Do you mean PCI?

If so, unless you're using your computer for gaming too, it probably wont matter....but AGP will give you better performance for sure....whether you notice the increased performance while tracking audio, is another question altogether...
 
chizuck said:
Thanks for the suggestions - I looked at the one listed on NewEgg, but it doesn't look like it has the two ports I need. It has the one for a VGA monitor, but the second plug looks like something really different.
Click to expand...

It's a DVI connector. You can get an adaptor that converts it to a standard VGA port from NewEgg as well.

Jason
 
cowboyj said:
It's a DVI connector. You can get an adaptor that converts it to a standard VGA port from NewEgg as well.

Jason
Click to expand...

In fact, most likely the card comes with one. But if it doesn't, it is like $5 for the adaptor.

I have dual 19" at home. It RAWKS! :D
 
With pci you have the option of setting your irq priorities (slot #)Thus you can set your audio at a higher priority than your video..Agp is for gaming...
 
I highly reccomend the older Matrox G450 Dual heads. I run one at work and they are rock solid. Should be super cheap these days and a PCI one should be easily found. There is no reason to spend any money on video for a daw. Its ALL 2D anything more than 32 megs is overkill
 
altitude909 said:
I highly reccomend the older Matrox G450 Dual heads. I run one at work and they are rock solid. Should be super cheap these days and a PCI one should be easily found. There is no reason to spend any money on video for a daw. Its ALL 2D anything more than 32 megs is overkill
Click to expand...

Mos Def man! I use a Matrox G450 Dual-Head card myself and it's flawless. New Egg carries them rather reasonably too.
 
altitude909 said:
I highly reccomend the older Matrox G450 Dual heads.
Click to expand...
+1

These cards are rock solid, as are the drivers. I have one in my DAW, and the dual-head function is great when you need it.

What isn't as well known is, this family of cards is one of the very fastest 2D video card engines around. It was optimized for non-gaming (2D) display, such as spread sheets. Since your DAW doesn't do any rendering or other 3D work, the G450 is a fast card for a DAW.

Mine supports XP/SP1 with a pair of Aardvark Q10 interfaces into an ABit NF7-S board, XP-2100 processor and a pair of 256mb Crucial DDR 333 memory sticks with a Western Digital WD1600JB drive. This is all modest gear and works very well.
 
bitsandvolts said:
I highly doubt that you could even buy and IDE video card these days. Do you mean PCI?
Click to expand...

Probably PCI or PCIe (PCI Express). The other (distant) possibility is ISA, but I doubt you can still buy those.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been an IDE video card. In theory, with correct wiring, you could bridge an IDE bus to an ISA bus and use an ISA video card hanging off an IDE bus (they're surprisingly similar as far as dumb address/data busses go), but you'd have to write some REALLY nasty custom drivers. :D
 
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