g550 - 2nd monitor failed

[scotch egg]

A while back, having successfully used the dual monitor setup with my Matrox card for quite some time, one day I turned on my computer to be confronted with one garbled screen. Not two garbled screens - just one.

After playing about with the screen refresh rate and changing it back the garbled snowy lines made their way and left. But something on that fateful morning seems to have killed my 2nd monitor.

I have since reinstalled the drivers, reinstalled Windows XP Pro(!), tested both of my monitors, my dual head cable and all the rest of it. Although it does extend to the 2nd monitor, there is no visual display appearing, regardless of which way round I have my monitors set up.

Is it just that my card has died? Is there anything at all that I can do to fix this? What would cause such a sudden crash?

[UtwigMU]

If both monitors are OK individually, it's the card (memory or encoder). Get a new or used videocard, pretty much all of them handle dualhead now.

[scotch egg]

That was my uneducated guess too.

Would others agree that I should give in to reality and buy a new card? And if so, any recommendations? And I'm talking cheap as possible. I run a stone-age PC which was handed down to me (ironically, the only things that I have paid money for on it have broken) and even if I did have pockets full of cash to spend on it, I still wouldn't wish to do so.

Thanks for the reply, UTwig.

[UtwigMU]

If you survived untill now on G550 gaming wasn't your priority. If you use big CRTs still, quality is an issue, I recently tested Asus 9600GT at 1600x1200 and it wasn't as crisp as Parhelia. Parhelia was better than G400, G550 falls somewhere between them.

So your options are:
Buy another used G550 for 5 euros or so. For 5-15 you might even get a Parhelia
+ no need to reinstall drivers
+ great image quality
+ used to drivers, features that might not be same with other card
- no warranty
- might be hard to find

Buy new AGP card, depending on what may still be available at your place such as nV 6200, Ati 9250, Ati 3650, Ati 3850
+ warranty
+ better 3D, Vista support (Radeon 9250 won't do it, any nV 5200 and up and Ati 9600 and up will)
- you'll still pay ~50 Euros, it's pointless to drop much into such an old computer
- new card, especially lowend one won't have such good quality analog output (for LCDs it doesn't matter as much) as G550

You can also buy used AGP card, there must be plenty of them on sale now. Buy passive (no fan) card since with cards couple of years old fan might already be failing or be annoyingly loud. Google up specifications on single/dual DVI and maximum resolution. Also check if there are DVI dongles present in the deal since they might be worth more than videocard now.

[scotch egg]

Thanks UTwig. I didn't realise how cheap you could get these things for these days. I've got a new one on the way (for little over £10), which hopefully shouldn't cause me any trouble. My 2nd monitor will be a relief to have back, it's one of those things that's hard to live without once you've had it.