Dual Monitor

[Foxer]

I have work at a small office company where we have two main systems that we use. One is regular Win 7(One system is Vista) for Email, Another is a remote login to our windows server for data entry needs. I have suggest a dual monitor setup to extend either the email or the remote desktop to a different screen to increase the productivity since we already go back and forth between the two.

Here is my question: Which is the better setup, purchasing video cards for all the computers with two output ports or will a video splitter Link do the job properly ?
I'm afraid if I purchase the splitter I will not be able to edit/change for the "Second" monitor to be extended and it will only be a duplicate.

 

[SethWilliams]

Buy a separate card. Usually with those splitters you can only duplicate the screen. There are some you can use to do the trick, but I would recommend getting a card. They aren't expensive and offer much more customization.

 

[BK_123]

What are the specs of your machines?

 

[foothead]

Buy a separate card. Usually with those splitters you can only duplicate the screen. There are some you can use to do the trick, but I would recommend getting a card. They aren't expensive and offer much more customization.

This. The only real options to get two monitors from one output are expensive, very kludged solutions (ie matrox dualhead2go), or displayport daisychaining (I highly doubt you have anything that supports this.) A gpu with dual monitor support is absolutely the best option. You can also leave the IGP enabled while still having an external GPU on some motherboards (so you could use a video card with one port) but this is usually way more trouble than it's worth, since you have to deal with BIOS compatibility and the ensuing driver nightmare.

What kind of computers are we talking here? I find that only the cheapest of motherboards don't come with two video outputs if there's an IGP present.

 

[Foxer]

Most of the machines are "older" model dell look similar to the OptiPlex 3010 Desktop. The first one came in three years ago and it might not of been new then. On the other hand we have a Small form factor HP system with Vista on it. I do not have all the information since I am home I thank everyone for their input.

 

[Venus1]

Buy a separate card. Usually with those splitters you can only duplicate the screen. There are some you can use to do the trick, but I would recommend getting a card. They aren't expensive and offer much more customization.

^ This, splitters do exactly that; split the outgoing signal.

There are some really cool tools to manage multiple monitors, sadly it's so long since I last used dual monitors I can't remember the best two tools I used!

 

[Jake-]

Buy some cheap GPU's should do the job, i recommend these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-11...1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381091661&sr=8-1&keywords=5450

I prefer XFX personally, but there hard to get hold of in bulk. But if you could get a good deal, these go in full size ports and even the slim PC's, they give you dual screen support, and even run the Sims 2 nicely.

Hope this helps.

 

[KJLai]

Btw, when doing that make sure, it has the right VGA input/output plug, I need to buy an adapter to have dual monitors for my GPU. Just to let you know about that and make sure you look into it before buying the GPu so you wont have to go searching for an adapter after getting the GPU.