Dual Monitor

[BrettB]

Hi all,

I have a question. I want to buy a new PC and be able to use 2 monitors at a time. I was looking at a Dell machine, and the Mainboard, 865G says clearly Dual Monitor Support.

WheI order them though, they say I can upgrade my the standard graphic card to a 128MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro DVI, which also has dual monitor support.

So my question: is it necessary to upgrade that graphic card to the Radeon, or am I able to connect 2 monitors to the mainboard?

thx!

 

[crankz1]

The 865G is the chipset on the main-board .... it is most likely just stating that it offers support for multiple video cards.
I would contact Dell to see if the standard video option they are offering truly offers dual monitor functionality. This would be considered a dual head video card. It's possible that they are offering dual head video, as it is quite common now a days. The ATI option may just be a better performance option for gamers and video editors.
Best bet ... verify with Dell that the machine you want to purchase will allow for a dual monitor setup.

 

[TripleJ]

Yeah, definitely verify with Dell.

If they say that without upgrading the videocard you can't get dual monitor - then just get buy it (withotu upgrading) and buy a cheap dual monitor video card. Theres no reason to upgrade to a videocard that powerful for dual monitor.

 

[BrettB]

thanks for the help!

I'm starting to wonder: maybe the more expensie upgrade can be handing when wanting to do some video editing.

thx for the help

Brett

 

[Toker41]

You can always just pick up a second video card (pci). The computer should see and use both cards. Just make sure it's 2 cards by 2 different manufactures. I have never been able to get 2 ATI cards to run in 1 computer. I run dual monitor on all 4 of my computers. Can't stand to get on a computer with only 1 montior anymore. I really don't understand why this hasn't caught on more.