PCI Express, the replacement for PCI and AGP, seems to be ideal for multi-monitor users, you can buy standard PCI Express (PCIe) video cards and install as many as you have free slots.

Unfortunately it's not that easy. The problem is that PCIe cards and slots come in different sizes, x1, x2, x4, x8 and x16. PCIe video cards use x16, but most systems only have a single x16 slot, so you can only install a single PCIe video card, and will still need to use PCI video cards for the additional monitors.

The only system with dual x16 slots I'm aware of is the Alienware X2 workstation. The upcoming nForce4 motherboard from Nvidia is also rumored to have dual x16 slots.

There are PCIe adapters available for inserting cards in a different-sized slot, that's what I intended to use to install a second PCIe video card in the x8 slot of my Dell Precision 470 (this system has two PCIe slots, x16 and x8). Unfortunately these adapters are very expensive, the x16 to x8 adapter (PEA1628) from Catalyst would have been 340 Euro (approx. US$ 418), which is about 4 times the cost of the video card itself. I decided against buying the adapter for this reason, and so haven't tested if it would actually work.

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