Building New Computer - Dual Monitor (SLi)

imperial · 26 Mar 2006 at 15:03

Hey guys,

I have a new project on, building one that is so i've come for some help and advice

Idealy I want to run a Dual Core 64bit AMD CPU, I want two TFT 17" Monitors on board via this new SLi thing, now can i run two monitors with SLi graphics cards ? or will it just auto be put to one monitor ?

Im heavly into web design and server stuff, which is why i want two monitors to be used at the same time !

Does windows 64bit support dual montors?
Does SLi let you use both the monitors at the same time?
Whats the best motherboard to go for now?
Whats a good Dual Core CPU?
Whats a good graphics card (SLi) to go for, ideally id want to spend no more than £150 on each card !
or whats a good PCIe card that has dual VGA output!

And wheres the best place to buy, thats a good price.. (online)

Cheerz
matt

imperial · 26 Mar 2006 at 15:09

This is the spec i was looking at !

Club 3d Geforce 6800GS 256Mb DDR3 - PCI-E DVI TVO SLI

Antec P180 EU Aluminium Super Miditower

Antec NEO HE500GB 500W Modular PSU With 80mm Low Speed/noise Fan

DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR SKT939

Seagate ST3802110A Barracuda 80GB 7200RPM ATA/100 2MB Cache

OCZ Premier Dual Channel Kit 2x512MB DDR400 PC3200 CL 2.5-3-3-7

AMD (Venice) Athlon 64 3500+ 939pin 512Kb L2 Cache 90nm

Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum 7.1 Surroundsound 24-bit Sound Card

FreeStream · 26 Mar 2006 at 15:55

You dont need SLi for dual monitors, a X1900Xt-X or 7900GTX will do fine

Edit: X1800XT is a steal

_

JCBeastie · 26 Mar 2006 at 16:08

I'm guessing you want SLi for gaming? There's no reason other than 3d rendering to go for it as graphics cards have been capable of multi-monitor support for years now...

If you don't play games and your just doing 2d graphics a Matrox card would suit your needs better:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Matrox_Graphics_Cards.html

Check out the Millenium, great card for the money and you can use three monitors at once, if you dabble with gaming a Parhelia is quite competant...

Matrox also make the Dual/TripleHead2Go, which is an external module that connects to your monitor output, and can split the signal to two or three monitors, it also allows spanning/cloning etc:

Click for more info

This is a good choice as it works independently, so your free to pick any graphics card you like, so if you feel you need to dabble with SLi then you could simply use one of these.

JCBeastie

nightwish · 26 Mar 2006 at 16:10

64bit windows (along with all other xp-type os's and maybe others) will support dual (and more) monitors. Suggest you use ultramon to control them tho.

SLI-connected cards can only output to a single screen.

One card will have two outputs, so you only need one card to run two screens.

Two cards can be stuck in an sli mobo, but not sli connected. This gives you two independant cards and up to four monitors. If you want more (!) you can also stick in a pci graphics card.