Please cheap PCI dual monitor recmmmends

[l333]

Have ecs ks5a - run Windows XP
AIW - main card AGP
my second monitor is being run with a cheap house brand Circuit City card a io magic thing I believe - sis based drivers - it works but poorly - first I have to force any drivers - then it {PCI vid card} seems to interfere with audio - yes audio - in that when it has any video movement it distorts audio - mp3s or any other audio {my audio card it the phillips acoustic edge

Can someone recommend a cheap PCI card that is actually suitable as a secondary monitor card that hopefully I don't have to find legacy drivers and then force them and then not have it work smoothly anyway

Thanks

 

[Chipster]

I been using a Voodoo 3 3000 pci card for my dual monitor set up and havn't had any problems at all. I used it with both win98 and xp. Im sure they are still selling these cards and at pretty cheap price.

 

[DongTran]

stealth 3d 2000s work very well for me. Those I seen online for under $10....

Also, Matrox G200s work good as well. I think the G200s have better 2d performance...

 

[Mac]

Just did it today using a ATI 7000 PCI w/32MB SDRAM driving an LCD panel for secondary. Card costs $30 at CompUSA about a month ago and it works like a charm. No complaints. Primary card is an ATI 8500LE AGP (big mistake, has the DVI-D connector).

 

[Peter]

PCI graphics cards will ALWAYS interfere with audio, since they eat way too much system bandwidth.

Anyway, PowerColor's or Hercules' PCI Radeon 7500 and 9000 cards make for very neat dual head solutions.

 

[spanky]

i think a matrox card would be good.

 

[aircooled]

The K7S5A has a particular problem with PCI video cards interfering with the audio. It has to do with PCI latency.

Have you updated your BIOS. I think I remember hearing that they fixed the problem in the latest BIOS.

You can get the latest BIOS here: K7S5A BIOS

 

[Peter]

The problem isn't board specific. When you have too much traffic on PCI (which is the slowest bus in the system!), other devices suffer long delays. Normally you wouldn't notice, but with realtime data like audio or video streams, you do.

 

[aircooled]

Originally posted by: Peter
The problem isn't board specific. When you have too much traffic on PCI (which is the slowest bus in the system!), other devices suffer long delays. Normally you wouldn't notice, but with realtime data like audio or video streams, you do.

l333's problem is board specific (distortion not delays).
What he is describing is a known issue with the K7S5A and well documented in the archives at ocworkbench. This motherboard does have a board specific problem that causes distortion and crackling when using a pci video card.


This post at ocworkbench addresses the issue and the BIOS that fixes it.

 

[Peter]

Distortion and crackling IS the acoustical representation of what you get when digital sound data packets are late by a very small amount of time. The data would have to be incredibly late to give the impression of a delay.

Just because so many K7S5A owners observe it doesn't mean it's board specific. It isn't.

 

[aircooled]

I'm not disputing your science, as it's absolutely correct. I'm Just trying to point out that his particular mobo will have distorted audio with any PCI video card installed without the proper BIOS. Flash the BIOS with the latest and distortion goes away even with PCI video installed. It's a known issue with the K7S5A.

 

[Peter]

OK, then there's a board specific solution to the generic problem ... they possibly gave the sound unit a higher priority than PCI on the chipset internal MuTIOL bus. While that's fine for the chipset integrated sound, it won't help with PCI sound cards I'm afraid.