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caligo

Member

From: Stockholm

Registered: 2010-01-10

Posts: 79

What's a good graphics card for a dual-screen workstation?

I am toying with the idea of building a new desktop. Apart from the usual web browsing and word processing, I am primarily interested in using it for graphics apps such as Scribus, Inkscape and Gimp -- nothing very demanding, and I am not really interested in building a gaming rig. I'll probably be running a quite lightweight DE/WM, like Awesome or openbox.

What I am interested in is having a lot of screen real estate. I figured a  two screen setup would do the trick, something like two 22" screens, which brings me to my question: what graphics card should I pick? Would I be better of using two cheaper cards, e.g. 2 x nvidia geforce 8400, or should I go with one that has two dvi-ports, like a nvidia geforce gtx 275? Or should I consider getting an ATI card?

To the extent that it is relevant to my question, I will probably be building something with an intel i5 processor -- Core2Duo/Quad is nice and all, but It feels kind of wrong to invest a lot of money in something that is already dated. I plan on using a micro-atx board with an 1156 socket, probably one from Asus.

lifeafter2am

Member

From: 127.0.0.1

Registered: 2009-06-10

Posts: 1,332

Re: What's a good graphics card for a dual-screen workstation?

Personally I would use one card, but thats me.  Are you going to do any blender work?  The extra power on the graphics cards will end up helping you down the road when GPU rendering is fully running. 

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jelly

Administrator

From: /dev/null

Registered: 2008-06-10

Posts: 714

Re: What's a good graphics card for a dual-screen workstation?

I think i would go for nvidia, because the drivers are excellent and you don't have the trouble that ATI gives you
And get a dual dvi card, i bet that saves the trouble of two identical cards + linux.

Last edited by jelly (2010-02-27 15:30:25)

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dotfiles

caligo

Member

From: Stockholm

Registered: 2010-01-10

Posts: 79

Re: What's a good graphics card for a dual-screen workstation?

Yikes, people are indeed quick to respond in this forum.

Personally I would use one card, but thats me.  Are you going to do any blender work?  The extra power on the graphics cards will end up helping you down the road when GPU rendering is fully running. 

That is a good point. It's been a few years since I had the time and energy to mess around with 3d modelling, but I guess it is always nice to have the possibility.

I think i would go for nvidia, because the drivers are excellent and you don't have the trouble that ATI gives you
And get a dual dvi card, i bet that saves the trouble of two identical cards + linux.

I guess ATI still have along way to go when it comes to linux drivers -- which is annoying, since the hardware seems more capable. Oh well. Probably going for a geforce gtx 275 then.