I just dont understand quadro cards :(

huxley

Pleeze Maik Mee STFU!!
Joined
Oct 23, 2001
Messages
9,342
Ok, at work I had them order me a laptop with a Quadro card, I wanted to be able to have my laptop screen and two displays I told them. They said this would do it.

So now I have the card, 340m nvs I think. I have done a bunch of google searching but it seems like a lot of people say you have to use two video cards? I thought I only needed this one card to hook up two additional monitors in addition to my laptop display :(.

Do I just need a vga splitter? hep hep

EDIT: I THINK I am explaining it wrong, I want to use my laptop screen and TWO additional monitors making it three total. That is why I wanted the quadro card since supposedly it could do more than just a single additional monitor
 
i know some laptops with onboard video only display the LCD OR external monitor. ie cant do both. never had a laptop with dedi card tho
 
Get an expresscard or USB video card if you need a 3rd screen.
 
Get an expresscard or USB video card if you need a 3rd screen.

hmm so what is the point of a quadro card anyway? Nothing? So basically they just spent that extra cash on nothin hrmmm
 
hmm so what is the point of a quadro card anyway? Nothing? So basically they just spent that extra cash on nothin hrmmm
It didn't give you a pony either. The disappointments keep coming! :p
 
hmm so what is the point of a quadro card anyway? Nothing? So basically they just spent that extra cash on nothin hrmmm

I'm amazed you need to ask this most basic question after saying
I have done a bunch of google searching...
Lots of googling... but not for what you bought.
Your bank balance might qualify for a Darwyn :D

ps you can ask for advice here BEFORE buying as well.
 
Quattro for something to do with driver.. everything not needed for everyday computing and gaming unless you're into whatever CAD and whatnot.
 
I'm amazed you need to ask this most basic question after saying

Lots of googling... but not for what you bought.
Your bank balance might qualify for a Darwyn :D

ps you can ask for advice here BEFORE buying as well.
Actually I do IT work for a living, I happened to leave this to the purchasing department to get me something that can handle 3 displays. I did a lot of googling and there was a lot of information but it was really all over the place.
 
You know what is really funny, after reading the wiki article and they mentioned SGI many times, I used to work for friggin SGI/Cray for years and I still didnt know :(
 
hmm so what is the point of a quadro card anyway? Nothing? So basically they just spent that extra cash on nothin hrmmm

Quadro cards are for professional 3D applications (CAD, etc...). The card itself is often identical or damn near identical to the regular, consumer cards, with the exception of more VRAM. They don't support any extra outputs - still just 2. You'll need another video card of some sort (USB, express card, etc..) if you want a 3rd monitor.
 
Quadro cards are for professional 3D applications (CAD, etc...). The card itself is often identical or damn near identical to the regular, consumer cards, with the exception of more VRAM. They don't support any extra outputs - still just 2. You'll need another video card of some sort (USB, express card, etc..) if you want a 3rd monitor.

Thank you, detailed informative response...however not all is lost, it appears I have one badass gaming laptop I was unaware of then :)
 
Thank you, detailed informative response...however not all is lost, it appears I have one badass gaming laptop I was unaware of then :)

Probably not. It may be capable of playing games, but I wouldn't call it a badass gaming laptop either. I'm guessing you have the 320m NVS (there is no 340m NVS ;) ), which is roughly comparable to the 8700M GT - so on the upper end of the midrange segment, but the drivers are optimized for precision (necessary in pro 3d apps), not necessarily gaming speed (the two rarely go hand in hand :) )

That said, it should handle pretty much any modern game at medium/low quality settings and/or lower resolutions just fine
 
go postal on your purchasing department, they deserve it.

not quite what you are looking for but could you not use one of them matrox splitters on one of the outputs to allow you to use 2 spare monitors as one large desktop?
 
*sniffly* I tried to make lemonade out of the lemons but kllnorjh took my lemons and sqaushed them in my face
 
*sniffly* I tried to make lemonade out of the lemons but kllnorjh took my lemons and sqaushed them in my face

Well then he saved you the step of making the lemonade, now you can just lap it up!
 
It will still be ok for gaming though, and if you need to render a single image it'll do it quickly!:cool:
 
lol, its alright, my old laptop an nc6220 couldnt even install call of duty 4 due to improper shading support so this is leaps and bounds above regardless, now to price out external vid cards I have a feeling I may be paying this one myself. It sounds like the mass consensus is that it is a lot better to get the same card from the same vendor or at least the same drivers. I have put together computers for years done IT work for 8 years now and still I dont have a good grasp of video cards, just too much work for me. I typically in the past just found out best bang for buck and ordered it.
 
*sniffly* I tried to make lemonade out of the lemons but kllnorjh took my lemons and sqaushed them in my face

Hey, don't get me wrong, it'll play games just fine, just don't expect too much out of it and it'll treat you well :) I play games all the time on my laptop with an 8600m GS in it (less powerful than the 8700m GT by a good margin, but it'll still play GRID, World in Conflict, Supreme Commander, etc...), I just have to turn down the settings and leave the eye candy up to the very capable hands of my 4850 ;)

lol, its alright, my old laptop an nc6220 couldnt even install call of duty 4 due to improper shading support so this is leaps and bounds above regardless, now to price out external vid cards I have a feeling I may be paying this one myself. It sounds like the mass consensus is that it is a lot better to get the same card from the same vendor or at least the same drivers. I have put together computers for years done IT work for 8 years now and still I dont have a good grasp of video cards, just too much work for me. I typically in the past just found out best bang for buck and ordered it.

Vista can only use one display driver at a time, so if you are on vista it *must* use the same driver. I'm not sure if the USB ones are able to get around this restriction, but something like this might work; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815106016
 
nah, we do sort of IT outsourcing at my work and just like a lot of companies we are skipping vista because it sucks and waiting for Windows 8 or whatever.
 
it hasnt done anything, I think at the heart of it everyone would agree that is the whole problem.

I thoroughly disagree. I really like Vista - it is without a doubt better than XP. The reason major companies haven't switched to it has nothing to do with the OS quality, but rather that it is still pretty new. Vista is, after all, just XP + a whole bunch of improvements. Its faster than XP, too ;)
 
Slowed down network speed, obsoleted printers, and doesn't work with some old software.

The last two complaints you have there really aren't Vista's fault. The printer would be the manufacturer not making a new driver (can't blame Vista on that one), and the last would be either that the software is extremely old (in which case why is it running on Vista?), or the developer didn't follow the specifications MS laid out at least a decade ago (during the main transition to the NT kernel).

The first one was initially true, but I believe SP1 fixed that problem. ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=336 )
 
To the OP there is not a notebook video card around that will display on more than two monitors at any time in any configuration. (Unless you are mirroring) the reason for this is GPU's and their architecture. Each GPU is only made to handle up to two RAMDACs. Each RAMDAC controlls on monitor. That is why cards like the Quadro NVS 440 have two processors on them so they can have 4 RAMDACs and run 4 monitors. To run an additional monitor in Vista on your current notebook I recommend this product http://www.usb2dvi.com/ It is a USB to DVI adapter and supports up to 1680x1050. It is the only USB DVI adapter that I know of that has 128mb of onboard memory. During my testing I found this unit to be indistinguishable from an integrated graphics solution which is saying a lot for a usb adapter. The only problem is that Colorgraphic was the only distributor for this product. I have started talking with some other video card mfg. to see if they can pick it up as this was a great seller where I work and has a high customer satisfaction rate.
 
The last two complaints you have there really aren't Vista's fault. The printer would be the manufacturer not making a new driver (can't blame Vista on that one), and the last would be either that the software is extremely old (in which case why is it running on Vista?), or the developer didn't follow the specifications MS laid out at least a decade ago (during the main transition to the NT kernel).

The first one was initially true, but I believe SP1 fixed that problem. ( http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=336 )
It doesn't matter if it's Vista's fault or not, but not having printer drivers add to the cost of upgrading to Vista. There's no reason to get defensive. My company made the same decision, but I use Vista just fine at home. I see no reason for the business to upgrade, especially since all we'd get is bitching from our users. No thanks.
 
I thoroughly disagree. I really like Vista - it is without a doubt better than XP. The reason major companies haven't switched to it has nothing to do with the OS quality, but rather that it is still pretty new. Vista is, after all, just XP + a whole bunch of improvements. Its faster than XP, too ;)

Thats not really it at all, its because it doesnt offer much functionality improvement for businesses, its just not worth it. Plus all of the 'fancy' stuff we disable anyway. We dont want a sidebar that takes up a continual 25% of your cpu cycles, businesses want an updated windows 2000. Strictly business, low processing resources and stable, thats it.
 
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