video card advice? again...

[ride2bhi]

Sure you guys are sick of newbies asking for advice, but...

I recently bought a nice new Planar LCD from Dell (thanks gotApex) and what I would like to do is have it so I can have both my old monitor(a Dell 19 inch) and the LCD work at the same time. I was going to install a second video card, but it seems that I can just buy one with dual outputs. I would also like to be able to have a video out as well. I am not a hardcore gamer, mostly Flash, Director, and HTML. I would eventually like to be able to do video editing once I win the lottery and have the $$$. Any suggestions for a resonable ( < $150) card?

My system is a PII 450, with 384mb of RAM.

Thanks

[ride2bhi]

Thanks. I was thinking the GeForce 2 as well. I found the MX 400 at a local store/warehouse for $89.95. "Hot Deal" supposedly. After looking around the site a little, I found the actual name to be: ELSA GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB Bulk. What is bulk? Not sure if we are allowed to put direct links to the store site to show what I am talking about, but any thoughts on this price? Not sure about hardware hacks, a little out of my league. Would I have to do this if I pay the extra $ to upgrade to the GTS/ultra?

[nhbilly]

Well I feel the ATI Radeon VE DDR is a good buy.
I had a TNT2 M64 with a Abit MB /w VIA chipset and the card didn't perform as well as I wish. I just recently upgrade to the Radeon VE 32DDR and I love the dual display and the feature it has and Counter Striker looks hell of better than the TNT2. I got my retail card for $80.00 :).
Comes with everything you need also have a TV output too(well a converter cable).
So you can run a CRT+LCD+T.V.

[ken]

The mx doesn't do well in windows 2000.

I got one, the asus v7100 with DVI out, and can say, if you don't plan on playing any 3d games, DON'T GET IT.

Twinview doesn't work that well. And for the same price, a dualhead DVI out should be available.

[eSDee]

Ride2Bhi, what kind of video card are you using right now? The cheapest solution would be just to get a cheap second video card like this one here (http://www.accessmicro.com/productinfo.php3?ProductId=V16JAAG3DB16). Unless you are trying to save PCI slots for whatever capture card you plan on getting when you start editing video. I would only get a video card with dual outputs if the one you have right now is a piece of sh!t. Otherwise a cheap video card would do the trick, especially if you are only going to be using it to hold your toolbars, etc. when doing Flash, Photoshop and Director stuff.

That's my 27 pesos worth. Black group!

[joe52985]

if your doing not much gameing, geforces are known to not have the best 2d image quality, matrox and ati have great 2d quality across their lineup of cards, although http://www.firingsquad.com has some benchmarks showing the radeon proforming better in 2d at high res (1600*1200) than the matrox g450, a radeon VE ddr 32 mb is a great choice, a good mix of speed and image quality (some of the best quality in my opinion in 2d and 3d) ands pretty damn cheap

[nhbilly]

D@mn I feel honor to be recgonize by ChoosenFool. :)

Well the Matrox 450 and ATI VE has it its good and bad.
But if it comes doen to the nit grit then check the price.
My friend bought the Matrox 450 32 DDR and I got the ATI VE 32 DDR. We like both card can't really complain just all love......damn the graphic just looks TEN times better than what I had before playing CS.

[ride2bhi]

Change of plan. I have decided to take EsDeeLoco's advice and buy an additional one-output video card. My old one works fine with my old monitor. I basically want to maximize performance on the Planar 17.4 LCD. I would still like to have video out. I am also willing to go up to $200 in order to maximize performance and life span of the new card. Thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to give advice.