[rescue] quad head pci video cards

[Joshua Boyd]

On Jan 5, 2009, at 8:57 PM, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> On Jan 5, 2009, at 2:38 PM, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>>> I've not been able to find any specifications for these  :<
>>>> I've been looking for a couple of dual head PCI cards for a
>>>> pair of servers here (don't ask  :> ).  But, not knowing
>>>> what these are capable of (resolution, driver, etc.)...
>>> I'll second someone else's suggestion of the Matrox G450 card,  
>>> but also the ATI 9250 is another good choice for a low-priced,  
>>> well-performing PCI video card, which I believe supports dual  
>>> heads. The Matrox boards are (I believe) considered server grade  
>>> boards...
>>
>> Not really.
>>
>> Matrox caters to a lot of TV and movie production outfits.  Their  
>> video cards are more workstation-grade than server-grade.
>
> Your speaking to their portfolio of products, I wrote about 3  
> specific card families (GX 400/450 and 550).
>
> In my mind, when I say "Server Grade", I typically mean cards with  
> (typically) only a few megabytes of RAM and no built-in hardware  
> acceleration for really anything. The ATI 9250 cards I mentioned  
> before are not server grade (in my mind), they are low-end modern  
> cards that support older/slower bus technologies.

The GX400/450/550 also have a lot of really useful hardware  
acceleration.  They lack useful 3D, but they have everything else you  
could desire for 2D and Video.  I'd rather a large memory G450 to a  
lot of newer cards, such as the ATI 2400HD in my desktop at work.