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(More customer reviews)I run a quad monitor setup, typically off a Dell box. Historically I was using a GX280 box, and recently upgraded to an Inspiron 546 running Windows 7 Professional.
I am always looking for the cheapest solution, so historically ran twin video cards, each with dual monitor capability. On the GX280 (which was running Windows XP), this was never a problem. I ran one ATI and one NVIDIA card (ATI in PCI-E slot, NVIDIA in PCI slot) and they operated flawlessly. However, when I tried to duplicate this setup on the Windows 7 box I ran into huge hardware conflict issues. Part of the problem, I think, is that as graphics performance has improved rapidly running a 2nd video card through a standard PCI slot has become a real bottleneck. The graphics processing demanded by Vista and 7 is simply too intense to be handled through old-school PCI, it really needs PCI-Express.
So, with a heavy heart, I had to suck it up and begin looking for a quad-monitor capable PCI-E card. There aren't a lot of them out there, and most of them that are available are absolutely massive power hogs, requiring systems with 400+ watt power supplies (i.e. see Sapphire cards, awesome capabilities for about $250 but need huge power).
For me, it came down to a choice between this ATI Firepro card and a competing NVIDIA card. The ATI was slightly cheaper, and the NVIDIA had a slight performance edge. The first thing you will find is that it is virtually impossible to find raw benchmark performance data for this Firepro 2450. ATI has not made it available. The bad news is that the card is not even close to bleeding edge. It only generated a 3.1 Windows Experience Index score on my computer for "Graphics" (i.e. Windows Aero desktop performance). This is a pretty low score; the 3-year old ATI card in my laptop, for instance, generated a 3.6 on this index. However, if you're not a gamer or running 3D apps on your PC the performance should be more than sufficient. I use my PC for work (financial services), so run a combination of trading applications, standard video, etc., and have never had any performance issues with the card. It runs plenty quick for my needs.
Other pluses. Power usage is very, very low. Reliability is rock solid. ATI typically updates its driver and software packages once a month so bugs are caught and fixed quickly. Another plus, you can run your quad outputs to either VGA or DVI. My old dual-card setup always forced me to use VGA outputs, and although VGA is a lot better than it used to be, I will say hands down that moving to DVI has been a huge plus. It can't be beat.
A couple of negatives. The Catalyst Manager software package is OK, but not great. Several of the "functions" that the ATI website says exist actually are not available (for instance, setting up a hotkey to snap applications to a given monitor). Also, I discovered a bug where the software doesn't interface well with a few Microsoft Office 2007 applications. I have spoken with tech support, they are now aware of these bugs, and are working to implement a fix on a future release. This brings up my final point. One of the benefits of buying a $400 video card is that you get very, very good tech support (much better than ATI provides on their "consumer" cards). The tech support team is responsive, and is always there to help.
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ATI FirePro 2450 Multi-View 512 MB PCI-Express Video CardFIREPRO 2450 PCIE16 512MBVHDCI TO 4PORT DVI W/VGA ADAPT 350W. Item comes with 2 VHDCI TO DUAL DVI-I Cables and 4 DVI-I TO VGA adaptors.
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