Three Monitors Club
I have been feeling for a while that 2 monitors setup I have in my home office is insufficient to ever increasing complexity of my tasks. I mean browsing internet, software and web developement, graphics works and the likes. Actually i do it all except video editing (but will soon) and gaming (not plan to anytime soon)
Hm... To be completely honest it is my growing kid (Fossa) that now requires to watch cartoons on my computer, that makes 3 monitor system necessary. One monitor is for cartoons. Only then I can get some things done on my Fossa-watch. I am a perfect modern father. One monitor per toddler.
I have used Matrox G cards for al long as I care to remember. Matrox was a strong contender in the g cards once. Now it is completely blown away by ATI and NVidia. I still have G550 card and for a long time I was sure it will move to my next system as well. Matrox is not about gaming - so its GPU is weak and therefore does not require a dedicated fan to cool. I hate computer noise and I don't game - Matrox is a good solution for me.
But now that I want 3 monitors, I consider my options. The good discussion of options is here http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000740.html
Basically here are the options
- Two PCI Express cards on 8x/16x slots. People recommend GeForce 7600 pro or an ATI coutnerpart
- One dual mon card, plus an extra simple card on PCI. This option does not require a new mobo (mother board)
- Software solution - that is if you have another computer with a monitor - there are programs that would run video from one computer on the monitor of another. Maxivista and an opensource alternatives are mentioned.
- Matrox TripleHead2Go. Seems a very good solution except that it does not have "dual monitor" mode - the os (operating system, windows) sees 3 monitors as a very wide one.
My gripe, there is no ideal solution. There are good ones - but none is without a compromise.
I would buy TH2G. It is matrox, the brand i know. It is quiet. It is external. Not really imprtant for me now, but I might consider a monster laptop as a desktop replacement.
Probably I'll opt for a new system and two PCI express cards.
In the meantime I could have a slower card on the PCI bus - after all i don't need all 3 mons to be fast. It is good for text work which is most of what i do anyway. Two others i'll use when doing graphics.
Or may be while I am deliberating (which always takes time) Matrox will upgrade TH2G. Would be ideal.
