Can someone recommend a 2nd video card for G5 2.0. VGA for 3rd monitor?

[amberashby]

Is this even possible? I'd currently have a 19 inch DVI and a 19 inch VGA hooked up to the video card that came with the machine. I'd like to add a third 19 inch VGA and span with 3 monitors. Does the OS even support that? Can I just buy any inexpensive VGA card?

I don't want the card I add to adversely affect my graphics performance.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Rincewind42]

Re: Can someone recommend a 2nd video card for G5 2.0. VGA for 3rd monitor?

Originally posted by amberashby
Is this even possible? I'd currently have a 19 inch DVI and a 19 inch VGA hooked up to the video card that came with the machine. I'd like to add a third 19 inch VGA and span with 3 monitors. Does the OS even support that? Can I just buy any inexpensive VGA card?

I don't want the card I add to adversely affect my graphics performance.

You can span as many video cards as you can fit in the machine. You should be able to find an ATi Mac Edition card that will fit and be ready to go, or you can try flashing a PC ATi/nVidia card if you are feeling adventurous, but beware that doing so might void warranties and isn't guaranteed to work. As for performance, the 3rd monitor will almost certainly run less efficiently than the other 2 (mostly by not being able to take advantage of Quartz Extreme and other AGP features) but shouldn't otherwise affect the other two.

 

[amberashby]

So no quartz extreme on the 3rd monitor, but it won't effect the graphics performance on the other two?

Just want to make sure because I don't really need the 3rd monitor hooked up, but since I have it laying around I figure I might as well try it out.

Thanks.

 

[tiktokfx]

The OS can actually be hacked to enable Quartz Extreme on PCI bus cards. Not sure how possible it is on G5s, but I certainly did it on my Beige G3 with a 500MHz G4 in it with a Radeon 7000 dualhead. Performs a bit better in all the situations I use it in.

Assuming you don't have much PCI bus traffic, the increased bandwidth of PCI on G5s should make it workable.


On a side note, I can still remember well over a decade ago using Mac IIxs with EIGHT MEGS of RAM, and four huge monitors. Weee for grayscale.

 

[tiktokfx]

Also:

A third monitor will not cause any change in graphics performance on the other two if driven by a seperate controller.

And while even without Quartz Extreme enabled, a PCI controller will be slower than the AGP controller, for non-gaming/3D accelerated tasks it should be more than capable so that you would notice no real difference.