Dual Monitor USB Devices

[Kev M]

Does anyone here use a USB adaptor to run two monitors instead of a dedicated graphics card? I've seen two on the internet, on made by Kingston who I've heard of which costs around £80 and the other by some company I've never heard of for around £40 (which has some mixed reviews). I'd like to run two monitors at work if possible but I don't want to buy the cheap one to keep my boss happy only to find it's useless.

 

[BalSanghera]

Didnt know you can get a usb device to do this, I have two outputs on my gfx card one vga other dvi but if you only got vga you can get a vga splitter but this will only clone the monitor on both screens

 

[Chappers]

Just had a look at the device on the Kingston site.

Looks interesting, however you could get a second video card for the price ( provided you have a spare slot in the computer,) or even upgrade to a duel monitor card.

The only drawback I can see is that it uses the USB bus which may make refresh rate on the second monitor a bit slow.Also it's not clear if you can have one image on one screen and a second on the additional screen

Additionally it's limited in resolution to 1280 x 1020

 

[neil_g]

as above generally theyre limited to quite low (compared to most new screens) resolutions.

you may as well replace your existing card (if possible) for a dual DVI card.

 

[sketch145]

Refresh rates are the biggest issue with these, you would probably be ok photo editing on it but you would struggle when playing video or gaming.

Dual DVI dedicated graphics cards can be had for £40 now so as neil says above it might be worth going for one of these.