Silly n00b Question... PLEASE HELP

[JickBahTech]

Hey all,
Sorry for the beginner question.
I've got an XFX 6600 (256MB - dual DVI+SVideo) running on an XP machine, that is currently driving two monitors at 1280x1024.
I would like to snake a cable from the card out to my TV (old SD CRT), and have it drive all three. I've tried google-ing around for the info, but haven't been able to find anything definitive.
I'm on a hand built machine with the following:
-x2 4200+
-2GB RAM
-abit kn8 SLI mother board

Is this do-able? Should I be looking at a video card upgrade? Should I get a second video card for my other PCIe slot, but NOT run them in SLI? If not in SLI do the cards have to match? Am I just rambling at this point? Stop typing?

...

You bet. Thanks for any advice. I appreciate it.

 

[Gar]

I've got an XFX 6600 (256MB - dual DVI+SVideo) running on an XP machine, that is currently driving two monitors at 1280x1024. I would like to snake a cable from the card out to my TV (old SD CRT), and have it drive all three.

So you want to have your desktop show up on all three devices correct? I have done this with one monitor and on TV, and to tell you the truth when it is on a old CRT tube TV it looks like crap.... I would just avoid this in all reality, but you need to do this then I would invest in a better card....which will render better. That might not make a difference with it being a old school TV.

Is this do-able? Should I be looking at a video card upgrade? Should I get a second video card for my other PCIe slot, but NOT run them in SLI? If not in SLI do the cards have to match? Am I just rambling at this point? Stop typing?

When doing SLI the cards have to be the same model (ie you would need to buy another 6600) but they do not need to be the same brand.... I do not know if this would really help with driving a tube TV. Again man, I would just avoid this unless you really want to.

as far as I know you can only drive 2 devices per video card... but im not an expert 8)

edit: I did a little looking and you should check this out... it might help
http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/faq.asp


Also I just found this as well..... I guess you can only do 2 displys per device... this link might point you in the right direction though, let me know what you decide to do!!
http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/reviews/3mon_gf4/
...

 

[JickBahTech]

OK
This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for.
I bow to your superior googling!

Toggling the displays will suck hard if the settings aren't remembered. Hopefully the nvidia software has improved since the Ti/MX days.

I figured the quality coming out of the S-Vid wouldn't be that great, but the experiment is to see if its good enough to not have to burn out DVD's for all of the TV shows I'm recording. The wife wont watch anything unless she can watch it from the TV.

As for the PCIe graphics cards slots, am I right in assuming that I could have two different types of nvidia cards as long as I'm NOT trying to run them in SLI. For example, Say I wanted to get a 7900 for my main monitor, then put the 6600 in the other slot to power a second monitor and TV, or am I just asking for pain with that? Now that I've typed that out it does seem a little silly...hmmm....

Well a $30 cable isn't too bad for an experiment. I'll let you know how it goes!
Thanks again!

 

[Gar]

OK
This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for.
I bow to your superior googling!

LOL thanks! As far as the other question about the 2 cards... I am not sure man. I will look into that or if you find something first, let me know! Good Luck

 

[JickBahTech]

Update
So, I tried throwing an s-video cable out the back of my 6600 into my TV. Swapping monitors wasnt too bad. The NVdia software made it pretty easy. It totally screwed up my widgets though :roll:.

Quality wasn't bad either. I'm using a crap s-vid into a composite adapter, but image was ok. DVD playback was almost as clean as my standalone player, just colors were a little muted. Image was a little foggy. TV recorded off my Hauppauge looked better through the S-Vid, then it did burning it to a dvd and playing in the standalone player.

So thats good for the experiment.
I still haven't found any info on running a mismatched PCIe card yet, but for the time being I've got decent image out to a TV. Now I just need to see how I can get all three displays running together .

 

[Gar]

Well thats good you have gotten that far.... keep us updated and if I find any other info I will pass it your way!!

 

[JickBahTech]

Yeah I'm pretty stoked.
When I built up this workstation 6 months ago, I never thought I'd be able to keep adding to it like this.

There's currently a thread for mismatched cards on an SLI board, so I'll probably start posting over HERE.

Someone says they've got the extra kit to try it out, so I'm pretty much just waiting to see what they say.

Thanks for the help Gar! I appreciate it.

 

[Gar]

Anytime man