Dual monitors for cheap!!

I just purchased an additional video card from OWC, ,ixmicro hi res3d, or something, anyway its on sale for $39.99, because IX went out of buisines, got it yesterday and it works like a charm! Already had an extra monitor lying around, so i just plugged it up, set which monitor as the boot #1, and i'm off! PCI of course....this card once sold for $669.00, but now its cheeeeep! OWC gives you a 1 year warranty, its has both VGA and mac video outs, do not use the video accellarators while using PTLE. enjoy!! p.s. i do NOT work for OWC!! sdf

do you think it would work OK with my G4 533 (i'm a mac newbie)? have you had any hassles using it with PT LE? thanks, Otto

I'd be interested to see what kind of performance hit (if any) this would cause. I once ran dual monitors on a 6100AV (first PPC Mac circa 1994) but adding the second monitor caused a 30% slowdown in everything...I'm wondering if that's still an issue.

The iXMicro card you're talking about is a GOOD video card. It doesn't do any 3D stuff, that's why the card fell to the way. I used to own a couple of them and for 2D, they're a heck of alot faster redraw (for 2D graphics that is) than the stock ATI cards that come in the new Macs. For the price, its a steal, steal, steal. Otto, they will work in the your 533. It's just a standard PCI Video card. Only problem is they no longer write drivers for it since the company is out of business. If you go to you may find the latest version of the driver that came out, most likely newer than what's in the box.

Hey guys, forgot to post this the other day, PCI bus traffic according to PTLE is the same prior to installing card, about 45%. No noticeable dragtime asfaras screen redraws are concerned. No hassles while using PTLE. I think you should have no problem in your 533 otto. The only issue, if it is, is that this PCI card is one of the extra long ones. my other monitor is only a 17", time to go to Fry's! enjoy sdf

hey, thanks for the replies - even with our discraceful aussie dollar, this seems like a good buy. I ordered it yesterday & have been told that it's shipped. I'll let you know how i go with it when it arrives. otto

sdf: I'm about to order that card...my only question, is it really that easy to set up? I've never worked with dual monitors before...do the cards automatically know how to split the screen up? Hope these ?'s aren't too moronic... Later and thanks in advance, kc

Thanks for the tip on this card, got it, installed it on my B & W G3 and love it. Now I can have mix in one window and Edit in another...Heaven, Les xxx

Does adding a 2nd monitor in anyway tax the system in a way that would lower the usage of plugins? Bogging the PCI resources or CPU? I'm running PTLE on a G4-400. Thanks. --Gio

my card arrived yesterday, so i played last night & got some inconclusive results... ...initially everything was running perfectly - i kept the system usage window open while tweaking levels on a project (not the most intensive, with 5 midi tracks and 4 mono audio tracks) the PCI usage level remained constant at under 50%, so i closed the window. Then, after adjusting the volume graph on an automated midi track, the error message telling me that the PCI bus was too busy appeared - i checked out the sys usage and the PCI level was maxing out! I found that there was nothing i could do to correct this aside from restarting PT. The error message didn't appear again for a while - and didn't appear consistently after doing the same action that had caused it previously. Does anyone knoe what would be causing the PCI usage level to occasionally max out? Should PT PCI usage levels remain constant? (i am both a PT & mac newbie) otto