I am looking for a PCI graphics card to allow use of my monitor and also for my TV when watching video. The monitor is VGA or DVI and the tv is also DVI or VGA. I have never dealt with graphics cards and I am not sure how to tell if one is capable of dual display. Can anyone help out? I am looking at this one for cheap: nVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 256 MB PCI 3D Video Graphic Card. Will it do the trick and how do you tell? THANKS!

12/6/2009 5:38:47 PM

someone's gonna probably flame you, but i'll try to help out before they do.

basically, you really ought to see if the specs list dual output, or 2x DVI, 1x DVI + 1x VGA or something. If the listing has any photos, you should be looking for two cable ports, or one with an external dongle that splits the connection.

the one you suggested doesn't seem to have dual output, from a very, very quick bit of googling. you might need to be more specific about which one you're looking at, exactly.

wait, why PCI specifically?

[Edited on December 6, 2009 at 5:53 PM. Reason : ,]

12/6/2009 5:50:23 PM

"nVIDIA GeForce FX 5500" is the grapics chiset on the card. nVidia doesn't actually make graphics cards, just the GPUs. Different companies like eVGA, BFG, PNY, and others make the actual graphics cards.

That said, I used to have a geForce 5500 FX made by PNY and it had 1xVGA and 1xDVI.

You might try this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133245

[Edited on December 6, 2009 at 6:27 PM. Reason : ]

12/6/2009 6:25:35 PM

Thanks guys.
That was extremely helpful

12/6/2009 6:59:21 PM