So like the title says I recently purchased two additional LCD monitors to hook up to my laptop. I've got a 256MB NVIDIA NVidiaâ„¢ GeForceâ„¢ Go 7900 Graphics Card installed on my laptop (even though it has both VGA and DVI outputs it turns out you can only hook up one external monitor at a time). So, I bought a D/Dock for my M1710 that allows me to install a second graphics card. I've never bought a solitary graphics card before and I don't really know what I need. I don't play games, but I do watch videos / divx / streaming etc. I mainly would use this LCD for spreadsheets, browser windows, word processing, dreamweaver, possibly photoshop. What graphics card do you recommend? I'd like something cheap but I don't want to buy something of poor quality... advice? thanks
I currently use a Radeon X1600 pro 512 mb DDR2 RAM it comes with dual DVI, S-video and VGA connectors. A great card for playing games, dual monitors, watching dvds and handling various media tasks. Supports moitor resolutions from 1024*768 to 2048*1536. very cheap at $160 great card. heres a link to the card: http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.Asp?IMODULE=CTVX1600PROAGP512MB hope this helps
haha, yeah, but a little overkill for my monitor that's just doing seo stuff right? I'm not running a videography company
haha sorry for my mistake I guess I didnt read the post properly. sorry for that. yeah that card wont work on a laptop bt if anyone wants a card for a desktop then i recommend that card
actually you did read correctly because i have a d/dock for the laptop that allows me to install desktop-style hardware by the way, any idea what the difference is between the one you linked me to and this one? http://cgi.ebay.com/Asus-ATI-Radeon...ryZ40159QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem they have different part #s
oh ok then. I haven't actually heard of a d/dock before. Well if you can use desktop hardware then I would definately go for the one i recommended its cheap and its very powerful. Well that graphic card is the same but is produced by asus instead of crucial also from the description of the card the Asus card supports PCI express where as the crucial card supports AGP. So, you wil have to get the card thats compatible for your system.
sorry for the stupid questions, when it comes to hardware im pretty ignorant, but it looks like I'm supposed to connect the graphics card via my PCI slot in the d/dock... would the one I linked to from eBay fit in a PCI slot? again sorry for the stupid question in the title it says "PCI express card" so I'm assuming it would work--is there anything else I need to check?
I dont think your questions are stupid. You just have to make sure your system is PCI Express compatible. Only the latest systems come with PCI express. Many sytems come with the old standard of PCI. A PCI express card would not be compatible with an old PCI port. Your user maual should confirm which ports your system has. If you do have PCI express then I would go for that Asus card on Ebay.
If you have an old PCI port in your ddock you should get one of the GeForce FX5200 cards by XFX they are under $100 and still overkill for the uses you're listing...
Hmm, okay. I'm still a little confused, what I have is http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-Inspiron-X...1672532QQihZ018QQcategoryZ42176QQcmdZViewItem Even in the user manual it says nothing about "PCI Express." The restrictions mentioned in the D/DOCK manual are: The expansion station supports one 3.3 or 5.0 volt half size or smaller PCI expansion card. I guess one thing I'm unsure of is whether or not the D/Dock is even the issue in terms of PCI express compatibility--is it the D/Dock (where the card will actually b installed) or my laptop that needs to be compatible?\ also, on the dell site all it says is "Features half-height standard PCI slot and an internal media bay with battery charging support"
im really not sure about the d/dock I have never come across one before. From reading the description of a d/dock I dont think it comes with facillities for a graphic card. It definately doesnt have PCI Express - it has the old format. So, i wouldnt buy the ebay card. I think you should just upgrade the graphic card in your laptop. Sorry but i dont have a laptop so i wouldnt know of any good laptop compatible cards.
ok, thanks for the reply. one thing i do know for sure is that the d/dock does support a graphics card. i think i will go with the GeForce FX5200 card mentioned above since it uses the old pci
Just an FYI incase anyone reads this looking for help: you want to make sure that the model is specifically marked PCI. After this thread I got the impression that any GeForce FX5200 would be PCI, but the one I got on eBay is marked AGP and will not fit in my d/dock station.