Anyone here ever ran a desktop or workstation on 2 monitors?

[C.A.R25]

I am thinking of building a computer for running MCAD software and I wanted to know if anyone here ever ran a computer off of 2 monitors? This would make things more productive and less clutered.

What kind of video card were you using, from the looks of it thus far, most of them are pretty expensive but I was looking for something below the $400 range if possable (also heard you can place 2 seperate video cards in a machine for doing this)... plan on running 2 used CRT 19" monitors (or larger).

 

[Electroman]

The only thing I can say about this, and hope its constructive is that the entire CAD department at work recently switched to dual 19" Samsung 900 series LCDs so the CAD guys can have schematic capture and layout on separate monitors. Its friekin amazing if you ask me, and appears incredibly effective.

But I'd say after trying it out, dual monitors is good for work only, but not for play. For gaming and general purpose use, a single, large monitor is better.

 

[smuf]

I've ran dual monitors with my Radeon 9600 pro. Most recent cards support dual vga/dvi out though, they don't have to be too expensive.

 

[Jedite]

I've ran dual viewing on my laptop and my TV set through a video cord.

 

[Berty]

I run dual monitors with ProTools and Neundo,...

Seriously, you get stuff done so much faster, the only trouble is that with software like 3dsmax, only one window is "3d accelerated" so to speak.

Forgot the most important part, i was used to run a 32m Quadro, but now i use a Radeon 9800 Pro

 

[kernow]

I run a dual monitor setup with two iiyama vision master pro 410's

I only set it up last week and my crappy motherboard is too old to boot with a 5200FX pci twinview card in so I had to use my normal AGP GF2 64MB and a 4MB matrox millenium II (which I actually think does a better picture than the nvidia) anyway, because of that I had to lower both heads to 1024x768 temporarily until I get a better card, pity, because if I used the twinview it could do GL and overlay mode (for movies/videos) on the 2nd screen too, as the nvidia driver would just handle it.

anyway, this was under slackware 10.2 current but the process is similar in windows XP, plug the card in , plug a monitor into it, spend 5 minutes configuring and you're done.

its cool taking a desktop screenshot and it being 2048x768 though hehe

 

[C.A.R25]

The only thing I can say about this, and hope its constructive is that the entire CAD department at work recently switched to dual 19" Samsung 900 series LCDs so the CAD guys can have schematic capture and layout on separate monitors. Its friekin amazing if you ask me, and appears incredibly effective.

But I'd say after trying it out, dual monitors is good for work only, but not for play. For gaming and general purpose use, a single, large monitor is better.

This machine will be built purely for MCAD, no games. I am also thinking about setting up a Dual Core/ Dual CPU set up... Solid Edge v17 will be my main program for design (also got Auto CAD 2004 and Inventor10l... and this old E-Machine is to slow or crashing from the weight (Athlon 1.6mhz, 256mb, 32mb S3, Win XP home edition)... all the stats are 1/4 that of the recommended system requirments from UGS's site.

Will be doing research into lower price ranged video cards, $350 is the max I want to spend and I need a min of 128MB.

This should make for a summer project, so I can get my hobby design projects going

 

[Tacitus]

I can't live without dual monitors on my desktops. You may have a problem with the second screen, though as some programs when running maximized will natively push back to monitor one. (Shitty programming)