Whats a good cheap video card?

[RLT65]

S3 makes some good basic cards. Try the S3 Trio or s3 virge; there decent & cheap!

RT

[Kruzin]

Why waste all those PCI slots?
Get an AGP card, and a single PCI G450 to run the other 2 monitors. Or an AGP G450 and a PCI G450 (or 2 PCI), and be able to run 4 displays...
http://shopmatrox.com/usa/products/datasheet.asp?ID=217

[RLT65]

10 PCI S3 trio's cost less than one G450! BTW, my board has 5 free PCI slots.

[Kruzin]

A PCI G450 is only $115.
Very fairly priced, concidering you are getting a NEW card that will run dual monitors. S3trio and virge are both old, outdated, low quality cards that don't have a place in a modern PC. That's why they are literally give-away items. I doubt the S3trio even supports multi-monitors configs.

And just because you have 5 open PCI slots, RLT65, doesn't mean paul does. I know I don't. Even if I did, I wouldn't want to cram them full of video cards, heating up the system, causing power problems, and sucking up system resources. Fewer cards is better from a system configuration and stability viewpoint.

[paul233]

I am making a multimonitor system with win2000 and I need 3 good, inexpensive, CHEAP pci cards. Resolution will be 1152 x 864, and it will only be required to show charts and text.....Thanks

[paul233]

Good idea about getting a g450. I already have a good AGP card for the main monitor, the others are just simple stuff........the only problem I see with that is that I think the resolution has to be the same for all the monitors on a multi card, and I have a couple different size monitors to fit things on. I need to check for compatability on the S3, that is pretty old stuff. Thanks for the help guys and/or gals.

[Kruzin]

Matrox overcame that MS limitation of not being able to use seperate resolutions on separate monitors with a multi-output card when running NT or 2K. Currently G400 and G450 DualHead cards are the only cards that can run independant resolutions.

[paul233]

Thanks Kruzin, I checked that out and ordered a 450.....if it works ok I will get another and have the option to add another monitor........