PC and Multiple Displays.

Cool, then the 6600 is good enough.

 

You should be able to just get pretty much any current video card with dual ports for what you want to do. Hell, I have been running a dual monitor setup for a long time now with just an NVidia FX 5200. This has included some heavy 3dsmax rendering too.

If you care about picture quality, make sure the video card has identical outputs (i.e. 2 VGA or 2 DVI, not one of each) and that you use two identical monitors.

 

The two monitors that I am in posession are "cheap" TFT ones, (LG FLATRON L1715S) that only come with a d-sub connection. Would a material difference present itself by the use of two different ports at the same standard(i.e VGA and DVi +VGA adaptor)?

 

Well, I notice some color differences between my two monitors (both the same brand/model) that I cannot seem to calibrate perfectly. As far as I can tell, the difference seems to be the fact that one of them is a VGA-VGA connection and the other is a DVI-Converter-VGA connection.

 

If they're both TFT it makes sense, if they're both CRT it doesn't: when DVI-VGA converters are used, they're just using the VGA pins of the DVI connection (DVI is pin backwards compatible with VGA, so you'd be connecting one monitor through analogue VGA and another through digital DVI). If you're running both off VGA, It seems weird that a card would be outputting different quality VGA from its VGA and DVI ports. If they're both CRT, it could be a physical monitor difference.

 

if you dont have to do any 3d related work with heavy use of cpu/ gpu power your standard nvidia 3d card should do the job, i would look at those with 2xdvi if you want to hook up 2 lcds

the scariest monitor setup i have seen for a long time just degrades nasa to a toyshop
multimonitor setup

 

I want one of these...

 

Something about the perspective makes them look about 6 inches diagonal...

 

Well I'm not an experienced user but I use dual monitors. I have a notebook and two desktops and I've used dual monitors on all of them.

In my experience the quality of the card isn't that important if you're just doing regular desktop work (no gaming, complex graphics, etc). I plugged a second monitor into my notebook's VGA slot and it's worked without any problems. That's on a low end HP notebook bought in 2002 with the only upgrade being bumping the RAM up to 512 MB which isn't anything by today's standards. Never a problem with it...

I bought a card for my Dell desktop. I think I got an ATI card here in Japan for about $50. Sorry, I'm not a tech guy, I research, buy, then generally forget if I don't use the information again. Again, two monitors, no problems.

My new Dell XPS 400 has two monitor outputs standard.

Anyway, my point is that from a low end older notebook to a brand new XPS I've never had any problems and never invested more than $50 in a card. I looked at the Matrox cards because I wanted 3 monitors, but the extra expense just for the Matrox product was way too high for me since I just wanted it for a convenience. For my internet sales biz I often have to have 4-5 programs open at once and just wanted the extra viewing space.

If your situation is anything like mine then you won't need a high end card.