New build Questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter Larry
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Larry

I have the task of building a new presentation computer for our church.
We will be using software similar to Song Show Plus for our presentations.
This has the option of using dual monitors but I don't know what that
entails. Do I need two video cards? My video card has outputs for
DVI and the analog. Will this work? If I use a board with PCI Express
how will that campare with AGP using dual monitors.

Secondly, I would like to build on an Asus Athlon 64 board but I only
have experience with 32 bit Athlon and Pentium 4. I see there are
socket 939 and 754 but have no clue which would be best for my
application. I am looking for suggestions on which board also.

Can you help?
Thanks
Larry
 
I have the task of building a new presentation computer for our church.
We will be using software similar to Song Show Plus for our presentations.
This has the option of using dual monitors but I don't know what that
entails. Do I need two video cards? My video card has outputs for
DVI and the analog. Will this work? If I use a board with PCI Express
how will that campare with AGP using dual monitors.
Click to expand...
PCI-e is no different from AGP regarding dual monitors -- you need
only one card. If you have two connectors on your card, you're
probably good to go. Just read the manual for the card to be sure.
If you haven't yet purchased the card, download the manual. If both
projector and monitor use analog inputs, it's easy enough to attach a
DVI-analog adapter. In fact, most cards actually come with one. I'm
sure you're familiar with the setup for dual monitors. It resides in
Display Properties/Settings.
Secondly, I would like to build on an Asus Athlon 64 board but I only
have experience with 32 bit Athlon and Pentium 4. I see there are
socket 939 and 754 but have no clue which would be best for my
application. I am looking for suggestions on which board also.
Click to expand...
You haven't given enough information on your intended use for anyone
to comment very authoritatively on this question. That said, the
socket 939 is definitely going to be better for forestalling
obsolescence, as I'm sure you already know.

Ron
 
I have the task of building a new presentation computer for our church.
We will be using software similar to Song Show Plus for our presentations.
This has the option of using dual monitors but I don't know what that
entails. Do I need two video cards? My video card has outputs for
DVI and the analog. Will this work? If I use a board with PCI Express
how will that campare with AGP using dual monitors.

Secondly, I would like to build on an Asus Athlon 64 board but I only
have experience with 32 bit Athlon and Pentium 4. I see there are
socket 939 and 754 but have no clue which would be best for my
application. I am looking for suggestions on which board also.

Can you help?
Thanks
Larry
Click to expand...

Many video cards have multiple monitor capability. This one for
example, has three outputs, and I believe two can be used at a
time. See PDF page 8 of this document, for how to connect two
monitors to this ATI Radeon 9000Pro AGP card. The DVI-I connector
has both digital and analog info, and the adapter makes access
to the analog signals, for use on a VGA connector. (The TV output
of most cards is rubbish, and text will be illegible. The TV
might be good enough for a movie of some sort.) Check product
descriptions carefully, to make sure the product has an included
adapter for this purpose. The one that comes with the product,
stands the best chance of fitting the connector smoothly. As
for drivers, don't install Hydravision unless you really think
you need some of the features - I think just the ordinary
drivers should be enough to run an extended desktop, or do
a single desktop cloned display.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030501141934/www.ati.com/support/manualpdf/Rade9000pro.pdf

Doing presentations should not be too taxing, unless somehow
there is a lot of computing required to make the final display.
If the content is "canned" and ready to go, basically any computer
that can read from disk and transfer to the frame buffer,
should be good enough. There might be other considerations that
guide your design. I've heard, for example, that PCI Express
based motherboards, can sometimes have problems with the real
time performance of plug-in cards (the transfer of data to the
display conflicts with other real time requirements in the
machine). You may want to investigate issues like that further,
before making your choice.

My own personal preference would be to construct a cool running
solution, with middle-of-the-road performance. A high end
Pentium-M solution might give you enough compute power, yet
consumes only 32 watts. You can use an Asus CT-479 adapter
and a P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard, for example, as a hybrid
solution. That avoids the slightly slower performance of some
of the 855GME based boards. There are a couple 855GME boards
mentioned in this article, for the Pentium-M

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2342&p=9

FSB400, DDR333 single channel, 4X AGP
http://usa.aopen.com/products/mb/i855GMEm-LFS.htm

DFI 855GME-MGF Another solution.
http://www.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_pr....jsp?PRODUCT_ID=3350&CATEGORY_TYPE=MB&SITE=US

Some info on using a CT-479 adapter with one of several supported
Asus socket 478 motherboards, is here. By doing this, you get dual
channel memory, support for FSB533 Pentium-M chips (when you can
find one to buy), and AGP 8X. Be aware, since this is an overclocking
site, much of the info will be irrelevant to your purpose, but
there is some info on what motherboards work with the adapter.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=62366

If you go here http://www.pricewatch.com/ and type CT-479 in
the search box, you can find a couple sources for the adapter.
About $50 or so.

There are plenty of other boards and approaches you could use.
An A8V and an Athlon64 of some sort, would give you an AGP slot
to work with. Some of the latest Athlon64 processors run pretty
cool at idle. For example, the 90nm processor here is pretty
miserly with power.

http://www.hardtecs4u.com/reviews/2005/leistungsmessung_intel/index7.php

Selecting a low end P4 board is another possible solution. You
shouldn't need a high performance video card, as there is little
difference between the 2D performance of video cards these days.
(You aren't having a "document scrolling contest", so I doubt if
you tried an ATI 9000pro or tried their top of the line, there
would be any difference.) Video cards that don't have a separate
disk drive power connector, should limit video card power
consumption to the 30 watt range, which should make the computer
a little cooler.

Hope that gives you a few ideas.

Paul
 
Larry,

Some other suggestions:

Consider getting a projection TV. If you make say 4 hours use of the a
projector per week ~= 200 hours per annum which = low rate usage and a long
life from the projector bulb. A large standard TV will be near the price of
a projection TV except you may have to get 2 or more. The big consideration
for a projection unit would be brightness, contrast and Projector Bulb
life - usually 1000 to 2000 hours, but they are expensive. You would be able
to connect the projector to the computer as per any normal TV via TV Out.

If you do not need a high spec computer system, follow Paul's advice -
reliability and being fit for purpose is more important often than having an
upgrade path or the latest and greatest. Low heat dissipation will be
important - so an Athlon 64 (venice core) processor will give high
performance and low heat at the same time, or as Paul suggests a Pentium M
solution on either an Asus P4P800 or P4C800 motherboard with the connector
mentioned. Going for a P4C or P4P will be a low cost solution at the moment
as they also have AGP slots for graphics cards - AGP is less expensive than
the new PCIe.

You can also get signal splitters. I have never used one, but from those I
know that have, they have been happy. These enable you to feed out One
signal to multiple monitors at the same time - you see them all the time in
retail shops. Be careful what you get here as low quality units can degrade
high quality signals resulting in fuzzy pictures.

For a bottom line graphics card that sounds like it would meet requirements,
(that needs no cooling fan - it runs that cool) an NVidia FX5200 chipset
based card which is an AGP card suitable for P4P or P4C, should be fine so
long as you do not require 3D graphics (EG modern games). These are often
under $US50 each and many come stock with a Digital and VGA output along
with an adapter for 2 x VGA's off the one card. This is what I use right now
with two monitors, it is an Albatron (Asus owns Albatron) - it has TV out
too.

Regards,
- Tim
 
Hi Tim
Thanks for your detailed reply
We will have two projectors and two 12 foot screens
That will take an expensive scan converter.
The program we will be using will be capable of high
end graphics and 3D, so I got a pretty good video card,
I think.

Here is what I have so far

Asus A8V Deluxe
Athlon 64 3500+ Venice
Corsair XMS 1GB PC3200
Gigabyte Geforce 6600GT 128MB
Thermaltake Silent Purepower 480W PS
Hitachi 250GB SATA150
Rosewill R710E17" LCD Monitor X2

Thanks
Larry
 
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