Upgrade planned - idea evaluation needed...

[Tibbs]

I'm planning to upgrade my PC this summer, and I just had a thought.

Now I know that on-board graphics cards are utter toss and I buy my mobos without them for exactly this reason.

However now I'm addicted to WoW, I've bought a widescreen monitor and now have a 15" TFT spare that I though I'd use as web surfing/film watching 2nd screen.

If I bought a mobo with integrated graphics, could I use that to power the off-screen and a main gfx card to power WoW - would that work? Or are modern gfx cards good enough to run WoW at max everything and a second screen at the same time?

Thanks,

Tibbs

[Kalos]

I ran several experiments on this issue a year ago. I found getting a powerful modern graphics card, and a much older, cheaper PCI graphics card (a geforce 2/4 era) works best for getting multiscreen options working. Try as I might, by using onboard, it only wigged out the motherboard chipset thinking the onboard should be the primary display not the secondary. I gave up on it due to it's stubborness. Get a motherboard with no onboard, and find/buy a cheap $20 PCI graphics card, it doesn't have to be powerful if it's only generating 2D images like IE and Desktop screens.