Dual display

**voice-** · April 20th, 2002, 03:50 PM

OK, I'm a newbie here, but my school has a Final Cut Pro computer(does video editing exclusively) sitting there and 2 screens connected. I want that at home. I don't know if my GF2MX card can handle it, I only have VGA screens...can a ADC to VGA make me have one screen picking up where the other looses the picture? I basically want to have 2 screens to get more stuff in there.

Does anybody know if this is possible with my current card or if I will need a new one. If I need a new one, could you please tell me which cards give stunning graphics, do this and is relatively cheap?

**scruffy** · April 20th, 2002, 06:18 PM

How many plugs are there on the card, and what sort? That's a good place to start, obviously...

If your card can't do it, and you have room for more PCI slots, then you can get a PCI video card, and just have two in there. That's what I have done with my G3; the second card is a cheapo ATI bottom-of-the-line card from a couple of years ago. I don't use it for 3D games or heavy graphics work or anything, so it's fine for me.

**voice-** · April 21st, 2002, 02:45 AM

Well, my current card have an ADC plug and a VGA plug

**scruffy** · April 21st, 2002, 03:12 AM

Hmm, that's interesting. I really couldn't say what that particular card can do. Have you looked at the maker's website?

Anyway, if that doesn't work, and if you have room for another single-head card, that would likely be cheaper than buying a new dual-head card.

**voice-** · April 21st, 2002, 03:49 AM

Got 4 slots open, 1 is reserved for a better sound-card somewhere down the line. What I wanted to know is if that would work and in which case who I'd tell the Mac where the other screen was placed and how bit it is...

**scruffy** · April 22nd, 2002, 01:49 AM

Oh, that's no problem - it's autodetected that there are two monitors. Open the display control panel, and one panel appears on each screen, for size, colour adjustment, etc.

One of the tabs in the control panel is called something like 'alignment'. That lets you drag around the pictures of the screens to their real-world positions, so things are displayed right. That was a bad explanation, but it takes less time to do than it took me to explain it.

**voice-** · April 22nd, 2002, 02:19 AM

This is useless to reply to(since I'll try anyway

) but is VooDoo 2 cards supported? I'm not at home right now, but I almost got out of bed at 3AM tonight just to try. I have that in my PC...there's no solution as good as the free one.
Also, I have an old monitor with max resolution 640x480...will this solution allow me to run different resolutions for different monitors?

**.dev.lqd** · April 22nd, 2002, 07:41 AM

I was pretty sure that all the video adapters on the newer powermacs supported dual displays...

If it doesn't... it's as simple as tossing any other pci video card in there...

I was looking on ebay this morning for old RAGE 128 cards and they go for about 50-75 dollars...

Mac video cards are -not- cheap. Someone could make a killing for putting out some solid 2d cards with minimal 3d for cheap...