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Mike10263 1999-12-09 00:35
Assuming the following:
- You want to run 3 monitors
- You are running Win98 or 2000
- The number of PCI slots are not a factor
What are the advantages/disadvantages of going with an Appian/Matrox MMS solution vs an AGP + 2 PCI video card setup?
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Christian Studer 1999-12-09 23:42
Advantages of multiple cards:
- less expensive
- easily upgradeable
- you can use reference drivers from the chipset manufacturer
Advantages of multimon cards:
- no compatibility issues
Personally, I would prefer multiple cards. Reference drivers are important to me, here's why: for my multi-card setup (2x Permedia2, 1x TNT), stable Win2000 reference drivers are available. My other config is 1x Jeronimo 2000, 1x TNT: the Appian Jeronimo 2000 driver still has some problems, and you can't use Permedia3 reference drivers due to the significantly different design of the board.
I'm not sure if the Matrox G400 has dualhead-capable Win2000 drivers yet.
Christian Studer
Realtime Soft
http://www.realtimesoft.com
Home of VideoSaver, the video screen saver with multi-monitor support
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Mike10263 1999-12-10 02:45
Thanks for the info and thanks for a great site. It is clean, well organized and informative.
When you say compatabiltiy is an advantage for a single multimon card, what exactly do you mean? (sorry if that is a dumb question)
Also, are there any important issues around performance and functionality?
PS - your link to www.massmultiples.com is 'must see multiple TV'.
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Christian Studer 1999-12-10 04:10
You're welcome.
With compatibility issues, I mean stuff like
- resource conflicts between the different video cards
- cards that simply don't work as secondary cards
- drivers that aren't fully multimon-compatible
I don't think there's a difference performance-wise, at least I didn't notice anything between my different configs (didn't do any benchmarking though).
Multimon cards like the J2000 and the G400 usually do have added functionality. See my review of the J2000: http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/j2000/. The G400 offers mirroring (same display on both monitors) and a zoomed display on the second monitor, go to http://www5.tomshardware.com/releases/99q2/990628/g400-07.html for details.
Christian Studer
Realtime Soft
http://www.realtimesoft.com
Home of VideoSaver, the video screen saver with multi-monitor support
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Mike10263 1999-12-11 00:20
OK, let me try to summarize my understanding so far. The only compelling reason to go with a propietary single-card multmonitor solution (such as Appian or Matrox) would be for the following reasons:
- You are currently running the Windows 95 or NT 4.0 operating system which doesn't support multiple monitors (I would assume that essentially the card 'tricks' the OS into thinking you're running one big monitor)
- You are running Windows 98 or beta NT 2000 (which does support multiple monitors at the operating system level) but you're out of slots (bummer).
- There is some proprietary functionality that the Appian or Matrox cards provide that you just can't live without.
Otherwise you are better off going with multiple 'mainstream' video cards for the following reasons:
Cost: Given the rapid pace of video card development (new generations almost every 6 months), you should be able to get a very good card for $100. Three of these would be $300 vs considerably more for the Appian/Matrox. You could even splurge on a top-of-the-line card for your primary so you would have the 3D horsepower to play any game.
Performance: As mentioned above, the blistering pace of video card advancement should guarantee good performance. I would have to imagine that a top-of-the-line primary and two '6 month old' cards would give equal to and probably better performance than an Appian or Matrox multimon card. In any case, I can't imagine that performance should be a problem.
Upgradibility: Related to the above topics, individual cards win hands down here. The number of choices is huge and new cards are introduced at a rapid pace.
Driver support: As you mentioned above, this is an important consideration and some companies do a much better job than others. Frequent updates to enhance stability and support new operating systems (such as NT 2000) can be found with several of the individual card makers.
Compatibility: Here the multimon cards have an advantage but a careful choice of individual cards should not present any compatibility problems.
Functionality: Multimon cards do provide some proprietary functionality, but it seems that most for this is more of a 'nice to have' vs 'must have'. Windows 98/2000 support for multiple monitors provides a firm foundation of functionality for multiple monitors. From my research, there does not appear to be any major issues although there seems be be some 'annoying' ones (such as the ICQ chat app). It is my understanding that the majority of these problems are because the application is not written to support multiple monitors. I do not know if a multimon card would fare better here than seperates.
Well, there you have it. How did I do? You may not be surprised if I told you that some people find me thourgh to the point of annoying. You probably also would not be surpised if I told you I'm not the best speller. Where's the spell checker on this thing?
OK - this horse has been beaten. I'm finally past first base in the design. Go with seperate cards - duh.
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Christian Studer 1999-12-11 06:31
Couldn't have said it better.
Regarding added functionality: there's also the issue with DirectX/OpenGL acceleration. If Appian could get this right (as they did on NT 4), they would have a winner.
ICQ has the same problems on the J2000, some apps will break, there's nothing one can do about it (except wait for an update).
Christian Studer
Realtime Soft
http://www.realtimesoft.com
Home of VideoSaver, the video screen saver with multi-monitor support
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