Reactivating VGA on motherboard?

larsson

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Feb 3, 2006
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I need five monitors for a video/screen installation.
Using an Aopen barebone with two GeForce-cards, I want to reactivate the graphic card on the motherboard. Starting up makes my fifth screen stop displaying "No Signal", but it doesn't appear as an option in the control panel, nor can I detect it with my software (Jitter). I don't find it in the hardware either. I have tried to find some useful info in the BIOS, but nothing so far.

My setup is as follows:
Aopen XC Cube EX761, Socket 754
PCI card:
Gainward GeForce FX5200 128MB DDR
PCIe card:
XFX GeForce 6200 TurboCache 256MB
System:
Windows XP Pro.

Anyone know have to reactivate the onboard graphic card?

Thanks,
,j,
 

FlyGuy

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Aug 14, 2005
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If you go into your bios options you sould see something for integrated peripherals or something similar. Check to make sure that is on. You probably will also have to change the option of having the onboard graphics be your primary display?
 

cubber

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Feb 3, 2006
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Not many onboard VGA mobos will coexist happily with add-in cards. Some are automatically disabled when one is present. Long ago some major OEM PCs onboard graphics couldn't be disabled at all, so you were SOL for video upgrades. Tried to upgrade a crappy home Compaq years ago and only got a day full of swearing (that little fact WASN'T documented anywhere) :evil:

If you really want the best in multi-monitor rigs check out Matrox cards. They're pretty behind on 3D performance, but they left that market a while ago. They concentrate on high-end graphic users and financial markets like stock exchange floors where space is at a premium.

They make cards that can drive 4 monitors:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/corp/enterprise/products/highend.cfm
In a full-size PC you can stuff 4 PCI cards in there and get 16 monitors going! Or more using an additional AGP dual card, but XP won't support over 16 displays, I think.

They also generate little heat, important for a SFF box.

In your setup you could use the onboard vid (if it behaves) and one PCI 4-way card for the 5 displays, or get one PCI and one PCIe card for 8-way monitor goodness. And Matrox cards and drivers are stable as hell, they invented the multi-monitor capability on cards years ago with their G400 card.

Gets a little pricey, though. You get what you pay for. Matrox has the best 2D image quality, period.