What PCI video card should I get for my third display?

Question

I got a new display, but my PC vid card only has two heads. Looking for recommendation that satisfies this:

• PCI (not express, my motherboard only has one express slot)
• Fanless
• Powerful enough to support Vista Aero at 1280x1024.

Two more items that would be great if I could find them:

• Nvidia-based (I like the unified drivers... already have an Nvidia card, and sticking to the same line might reduce driver conflicts)
• DVI

Thanks.

Answer 1

One of these should do it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187042 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187057 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187041

Here's the search:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1305520548+1069609642+1295318921+1069109630&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

Answer 2

I'm still at work, so I can't hit the shopping sites; that said, I'm personally a big fan of BFG cards, and I know they still sell a "low-power" (for lack of a better phrase) card.

One thing that might be difficult is getting anything of a fairly recent generation in the PCI form ... Everyone's going PCIe ...

Answer 3

You can get quad-port cards, which might be a lot easier to set up than a 3-monitor display spanning two cards.

Answer 4

A newer solution is a USB2 external card. It has some latency, as it has to compress the video data over the limited bandwidth, but for laptops this is the only way to go and works reasonably well on your "secondary" screens.

Answer 5

If you are running Vista both cards have to use the same driver or it won't work.

I believe that this changes with W7; you will be able to have multiple video cards with multiple drivers.