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daw37
05-30-2002, 04:27 PM
I'm buying a new PC and it comes with an ATI Radeon 8500LE. Now it has a D-sub and a DVI output and according to some reviews you can use a DVI to D-sub converter to attached a second analog monitor to it. But the company I'm buying the PC from says no, as the card only has one RAMDAC.

They reccomend I upgrade to a GeForce 4 TI 4400 for another £50+vat (around $85) which they say can do dual analog monitors.

I was curious whether anyone had experience with these chipsets and whether the advice I'm getting is correct. Also is it worth the upgrade for performance - will the GeForce4 perform any better in 3DStudio Max 4.2?

OR would I be better of buying a cheap PCI card to slap in alongside the Radeon - I only want to use the second monitor for viewing pictures while modelling etc. Would that cause problems with OpenGL using the wrong card etc.????

Any help would be appreciated.
3DMadness
05-30-2002, 06:27 PM
The Radeon are known for giving some headaches when are driving professional OpenGL programs like 3dsmax. It seems to be something related with Ati's crappy drivers.
I would suggest you to do replace your card for a GeForce4 Ti4400 or 4200 (cheaper) and also plug a cheap PCI card for the second monitor. Although the GeForce4 line have two ramdacs and can drive two monitors, when you plug the second monitor you have a big performance decrease. The only problem to have an AGP and a PCI video card is that you will only have accelerated viewports in the primary card, but this doesn't seem to be an issue to you if you are not planning to have viewports in both monitors.
Hope I helped. :thumbsup:
Cheers!

3D Madness
ZrO-1
05-30-2002, 08:55 PM
As far as I know the radion 8500 LE comes with a DVI-d. This type of DVI connetcor can only do digital no analogue. If it had the DVI-i then it could do d-sub with a DVI-HD15 converter. If the 8500LE does have a DVI-i connector then your company is just trying to get an extra $85 bucks out of you.
Tellerve
05-31-2002, 05:56 AM
The Radeon 8500LE does have the dvi-i, http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=14-102-198-01.JPG/14-102-198-02.JPG

You can see the little four plugs at the end of the digital out part that shows it can do the analog pass through. And, at newegg.com they have the 8500 "LE" for $99 but people are finding them to be the typical OEM card with 3.3 ns ram and easily oc'd back to retail speeds. SWEET!

Tellerve
bibi5000
05-31-2002, 09:59 AM
The lastest driver for the Radeon 8800 (30.05) is very stable and fast. I would recommend a ATI FireGL 8800, which has a cheap price for good performance at the moment. It's a dual head card.
I'm running it with two 21" monitors at the moment.
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