Video cards for laptop? 2D only, 2 monitors

[sammgo]

Hi Everyone! This is a great site, I wish I knew about it years ago!

I am putting together hardware/software requests for a new system that will be used at my company. We don't do any 3D and really, we don't do any design, just 2D modifications So, nothing too crazy is required. I'm just not sure what will be appropriate for a video card. We will be using Auto CAD LT 2007 or 2008 with dual screens (21" minimum) perhaps 1 or 2 widescreen monitors and they will be going into laptops. I'm not even sure of the correct terminology to use (??)

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Samm

[powermarc]

Are you sure you mean laptops? You can't replace or install additional video cards onto a laptop. What systems do you have right now? Are you looking for something similar or do you want to completely change the way you work?

Some laptops allow you to attach a monitor and either mirror what's on the laptop screen, or use the attached monitor as additional work space. Since you're just doing 2D CAD, you could use a laptop, but there's no way (that I know of) that you can attach two 21" widescreen monitors to it.

[sammgo]

Actually, we've decided not to go with laptops (as the cost would be astronomical). Thanks for responding.

There are only a few video cards that can be used in laptops for these types of applications (from what I have found), I think it would be a specification at build and not necessarily an upgrade.

Thanks again,
Samm

[tc3dcad60731]

From experience the ATI X series is a good card that can handle dual monitors. Seperate cable is required for running the two monitors from one card but the software lets you split across screens or run different programs on each screen. They start at about $75 and for LT that will be more than sufficient. You can get the higher end ones like the X1950 Pro which supposedly handles more than two monitors. (not a verified fact by me)

Further for the laptops you can get dedicated graphics cards. I looked into this after AU and the "workstation" flavor was high but I got the "High end business" option for under $200 with an ATI X600 mobility with 128mb ram. It runs circles around my two towers with ATI cards when it comes to rendering. (Laptop = 15 minutes while desktop = 24 minutes) By the way the laptop is an HP and that is what I reccomend!