"Chambers" <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote in message
news:47e5ae65@news.povray.org...
> Gail Shaw wrote:
> > If I need 2 cards (or 1 add-on card and one built-in), does the
motherboard
> > need anything special?
>
> Depends on the card you get.  I believe all current AMD and NVidia
> chipsets provide multimonitor support; it is up to the card
> manufacturers themselves to enable it, however.

Good to know

> In other words, it's perfectly possible to buy an 8800 (good choice,
> btw, the 512MB version is a great card for the money) that supports two
> monitors, but just because it's an 8800 doesn't mean that it has to.

Is there any way to tell which ones support 2 monitors and which don't?
Either there's nothing that says that in the short summary, or I can't read
hardware descriptions any more.
Is Dual DVI the key? Or do I need to go and read through the maunfacturer
website and read through the details

Based on what the suppliers have, these are my options: (currently
preference is for the 2nd one)

Gigabyte NVIDIAr GeForce 8800GT, 512MB 256Bit GDDR3, PCI-E 2.0, Dual DVI,
HDTV, DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.0, SLI Ready, Vista Premium

xfx geforce 8800 gt: XFX T80F-SHE , Pci-E 16x , geforce 8800GTX Extreme
edition , SLi support , Pci-E 16x , 768mb 384bit DDR3 , support DirectX 10.0
+ shader model 4.0 +FP32 HDR + 16x AA ; , max resolution 2560x1600 , HDCP
Compliant , RoPs : 24 , 36.8 billion/sec texture fill rate , 86Gb/sec memory
transfer , 128 stream processors @ 1.35Ghz ( pixel shader engine + vertex
pipelines ) , core/memory : 600/1900mhz , 2 x dvi , HDTV tvout

XFX T88P-YSF , geforce 8800GT Zalman edition , SLi support , Pci-E 2.0 16x ,
512mb 256bit DDR3 , support DirectX 10.0 + shader model 4.0 +FP32 HDR + 16x
AA ; max resolution 2560x1600 , HDCP Compliant , RoPs : 16 , 57.6Gb/sec
memory transfer , 112 stream processors @ 1.5Ghz ( pixel shader engine +
vertex pipelines ) , core/memory : 600/1800mhz , 2 x dvi , HDTV tvout

asus 8800gt 512mb ddr3 en8800gt/g/htdp/512m: geforce 8800GT , SLi support ,
Pci-E 2.0 16x , 512mb 256bit DDR3 , support DirectX 10.0 + shader model 4.0
+FP32 HDR + 16x AA ; max resolution 2560x1600 , HDCP Compliant , 57.6Gb/sec
memory transfer , 112 stream processors @ 1.5Ghz ( pixel shader engine +
vertex pipelines ) , core/memory : 600/1800mhz , 2 x dvi , HDTV tvout


I looked briefly at crossfire/SLI, but it looks a little overkill at the
moment.

Thanks for the help.

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