Dual pci-e video cards - NO SLI

Multiple nVidia video cards in the same system don't need to be the same model. It should be fine.

Hey,
We've been trying to get this answered over HERE.


Let us know if it works out for you. I'd really appreciate!

Well, i don't have a good answer for you yet.

The 2nd card (6600LE) was purchased from a small local computer guy. It was an opened package and he assured me it worked. I payed a whole lot more then i should have but i figured i was saving either the 2hr drive to the city or shipping charges. (I was also trying to help the "little guy")

Any way, the card appeared to install OK, windows XP picked it up OK With 1 VGA monitor plugged in it appeared in the Display Properties>Settings tab as the 2nd monitor, with DVI port 2 of my 6800 as 3rd.

When i enabled the monitor on the 2nd card it looked like it worked, i could drag my mouse on to the screen, but if i tried moving an application or opening the properites widow it went goofy; funny lines and hash were the windows should be, sometimes even a complet crash and reboot.

I removed my 6800 and plugged the 6600 in its place to check the card and it would not work at all with the Nvidia drivers. With the stock VGA drivers it had a bad orange peel look.

So it appears that the 6600 card is bad; should have known better. . .

I went back to my 6800 only and tried updating to Nvidia's latest 91.47 driver and it won't boot. I went back to the 82.65 driver which was stable.

I am planning on TRYING to return the 6600 and will pick up another card next week and give it a try; i will let you know.

Aww man, that sounds awful. Sorry to hear about those problems, I totally know how frustrating that can be.


I was looking up prices for cheap pcie vid-cards, and 6200's can be had for $40, so I might try and pick one up.

Completely offtopic, yesterday I went to Bestbuy, where a 6200 (I forget which brand) was a steal at $176, and can use UP TO 256MB OF RAM!!!!! WOW!

yes, I have the 2 PCI-E cards but did NOT activate SLI. I only used 3 of the ports to drive the 3 monitors in portrait (pictured)

components and links to items used are here
http://www.instructables.com/id/EXLOGYUZR9EUMVDT56/

  A very interesting way of doing things. I think losing the borders created by the bezels would look better but thats purely my prefrence but it's still an interesting setup and v.cool IMHO.

thanks for the comments... .yeah at some point I will try my hand at cracking open the enclosures to extract the LCD glass panels itself. the only remaining problem is how to properly and safely mount them together with their edges flush to each other. :-)

would love to do that and even enclose it in a 42 inch enclosure! :-)

thx

ACF

i've got 2 videos of videos playing on the setup in case you are interested in taking a look ...

this is the link to page 5 directly (YouTube videos included)
http://www.instructables.com/id/E8F7IM6NAXEUN32TLN/

the second clip isn't machima, its top gear!, range rover vs challenger2

Cool clips, very nice idea.

that one was soooo funny .... go top gear!

ACF

O.k so you do a bit of 'Top Gear' every now and then, fair enough I can accept that   , in the Bond trailer the right hand screen seemed a little dark it could just have been the angle of camera shot and if not I have no idea how to resolve that on the matter of the borders however what about removing just the bezels that you need to which is just the three uprights and then using edging like you would find on a windscreen or quarterlight of a car?

yes the right hand side appears dimmer because I had to stand back so far to get the camera to capture the entire width of the setup ... if you are sitting in front of the screens like typical computer monitors the viewing angles are perfect and the brightness is even all across..

I do recommend angling the side panels inward just a bit so they are all equidistant from the viewer, rather than have the leftmost and rightmost edges much further away from the viewer...

and if I try to crack open the enclosures, I'll post again ... but for now, I'll ignore/live-with the vertical bezels in between... :-)

ttyl
ACF

the borders would drive me crazy.
Surely a front projector would be cheaper than 3 20" monitors and you could do at least double the size image with no borders.

but think of the resolution.

If the eye can only focus and see detail in one place at once, could you not use adaptive optics and infrared sesnors to detect where a person is looking and apply maximum resolution at that point only.