Solve this and go to heaven (ATI + Nvidia, same machine)

[Guest]

Here's my problem:

I recently bought an HDTV, a Toshiba Regza 42inch. I'm loving it, it's a great TV. I wanted to hook that up to my computer and make in an true 1080p signal in a true 1920x1080 resolution.

My computer has two monitors running through DVI straight to the video card which is an Nvidia 7600gs. Good card, does exactly what I need it to. So, in order to test the HDTV on the video card, I unplugged one of the monitors and plugged the HDTV into it, using a DVI-HDMI cord. The video card immediately recognized it and I was able to send a 1080p signal from the computer to the monitor and bam! beautiful new 42in monitor, pretty nice!

Only thing is, now my other monitor from which I unplugged the cord to get the HDTV to work, now doesn't work, obviously. So I research my motherboard to find out if I can add another video card. I have the Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R motherboard. The only other slot I have open is a pci-e x4 slot. I did some searching and found out that they don't make x4 video cards but they do make x1 video cards that you can place in the pci-e x4 slot. So I bought a low-profile ATI x1550 pci-e x1 video card from newegg and it arrived yesterday.

I installed the card no problem, installed the drivers off the cd and then that's when all my problems happened. I get error messages when everything boots up. Everything from "the currently selected graphics driver cannot be used" to "Windows cannot find igfxcfg".

The Catalyst Control Center cannot pick up the newly installed ATI card, but for some reason, it can pick up the nVidia card, which is mind-boggling to me. So I uninstall the nvidia drivers to see what would happen and restart. Boots back up and the CCC now reads the ATI card fine but now my nVidia card isn't showing up because I deleted the drivers for it. So I reinstall the nvidia drivers and the same error messages come back. But now I don't have any nvidia software installed like I used to. The display properties of nvidia that allow you to change properties and mess with settings in nTune.

What I don't understand is that in device manager (I'm running Windows XP home edition) the computer is seeing both cards and says they're working fine, no problems. But when I go to display properties, it shows me that monitor 2, which is the ATI card is running fine at 1680x1050, the max of my monitors. Monitor 1, which is what is plugged into the nvidia card, is stuck at 640x480 resolutions with a color bit-depth of 4.

So somehow the computer is not able to read both cards correctly at the same time. I'm not trying to run anything fancy at all, no crossfire or SLI modes, just 2 monitors plus an HDTV acting as a 3rd monitor.

I should mention that I had both computer monitors plugged into the nvidia 7600gs and the HDTV into the ATI x1550 and both monitors worked flawlessly, while there was no signal to the HDTV, which is why I tried switching one monitor to the ATI card. Same problems.

Shouldn't this work? I mean a few years ago I had both Nvidia and ATI cards doing two monitors, one monitor in each card, but that was AGP vs PCI stuff.

Any suggestions, if nothing makes sense, I definitely can elaborate more. Thanks in advance.

 

[gamerk316]

Microsoft OS's can't handle two diffrent display drivers at once, which is one of the reasons why windows needs to be re-designed from scratch...but I digress.

Your options are to either get a NVIDIA card that can run on the same driver as teh 7600 (if you have a nforce motherboard), or buy a second ATI card (if you have most anything else).

Alternativly, you can DVD or HDMI switch, plug that into whichever graphics card you want to use, and connect that to both TV's, swapping the output as needed.

 

[rockbyter]

Classic problem. Its all in the software. Removing any one of the cards, and the other should work perfectly. I would uninstall the software package for one or both of the cards. Then install the drivers for the cards going the old fashioned way by using the INF files. This might get it to work.

If they were both ati, or both nvidia, we wouldnt be having this problem.

 

[Guest]

How do I get ATI .inf files?

And if I was to buy a not-so-new ATI dual DVI card, it would work perfectly with the ATI card I just bought?

 

[sorce7200]

Try using a dual-boot configuration...ie...one for ati...one for Nvidia
unless you are set on using two cards at once...then ...oh well...
good luck

 

[rockbyter]

picking up similar generation cards would work, for instance if you just bought an x1300 card, another x1XXX card should work fine.

 

[huron]

Not true that all Microsoft OSs do not work with 2 drivers. Vista will definitely not work, but have read how people have set up 2 cards in SLI, and put in an ATI card and got it to work in XP. In Vista, you have to use the same nVidia driver and manipulate the SLI. If you research "dual monitors and SLI" you ought to get some results (I did).

Here's the link for XP:

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t6269.html

Here's the link for Vista:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108088

Good luck with it.

 

[blashyrkh]

jesus christ man!!! Why did you go do that? Why not buying an NVidia card? You just had to go and mix brands. THat's always trouble. You'll never get it to run the way you want. I'd suggest returning the ATI and getting an Nvidia card or if you got the cash, get a new gen card that can support dual monitor at high rez.

 

[wcgryphon]

This is the exact same dilemma I keep running into when I plan for my next PC build. Driver settings are going to be a big problem in how I end up configuring my purchases for video cards.

I also want a 3-monitor set-up (2 DVI connections and 1 HDMI converter to HDTV). One card for gaming and the other for media, both from one machine. While I wouldn't consider using both NVidia and ATI, I not sure how well it's going to work out even if using different model cards from the same company.

ie: an ATI HD4870 for the 2 monitors and the new 4670 for the HDTV to serve as a media center.

If drivers are going to be such an issue I might scrap the 4670 altogether and get 2 HD4870s in non-CrossFire to support the 3 monitors. The only thing is, it seems like such a waste of $$ to use a 4870 for video playback.....(although this would definitely solve the "Maybe I can play on my 50" HDTV instead?!?!" )

 

[gamerk316]

Its an example of Windows not being able to scale at all. With Vista and WDM though, theres almost no way to get around it through software...

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

For XP, clean out all drivers (or fresh OS install) and then load nV drivers first, then ATi, but you cannot load Catalalyst Control centre at the same time, especially if the ATi card is not primary (which it won't be being in slot 2), just load the ATi display drivers if that, and only after the nV drivers.

For Vista, like mentioned, you're hooped for now, just one driver at a time, the ATi can run as a generic Windows output device without acceleration.

If all you're doing is running the X1550 as multi-monitor support don't even bother loading the drivers off the disk, let Windows load their default drivers for the card, which are even more basic than those on the CD, and these should let you use the other 2 montiors for normal 2D use, and then the GF7600 for your HDTV out. The only other issue is the MCE software which is buggy at best even with a single card and multi-monitor.

Anyways, if it's problematic, return it and get a plain nV PCI card instead of PCIe, it won't matter much for basic multi-monitor use, and for any serious stuff you would've been pretty limited by the bus anyways.

BTW, what specific model Regza do you have?

 

[edwardo1010]

i had the same problem as well when i was running Vista, but now that im back in XP, i have been able to install/mess around with all 3 managers/drivers ATI/NVidia/(right-click--Properties) without removing drivers, and reinstalling OS. and reinstallng drivers lol Superstition.... lol Superstition and computers dont mix lol..
the ATI Manager can see both Nvidia card & On-board Chipset(ATI), Both Moniters VeiwSonic 19"-DVI-to the 9800GT and Samsung 42"-HDMI-to the Xpresss 3200,there also 1 Video-Out open on each Xpress 3200 & 9800GT, it looks like there wont be any issues adding 1-2 more moniters, i run clone on the Nvidia, through the ATI Menu, Which Recognizes the Nvidia Card.after attain 1-2 more moniters i will update this post,i will have 2 moniters in clone mode and 1-2 in extended display mode, maybe that may be able to help people to get Competive GPUs co-operating with Unique settings. good Luck . Looking for Extra Cooling capabilities to push the Xpress to 1500mhz, i Read the Reviews on the Xpress 3200 series. supossedly built to OC

Due to the On-board Diference i hope this helps you out.

Asus AM3A78 Pro
AMD Phenom X-4 9650 Quad Core 2.3
4 gb PC-800mhz DDR2 (XP Max 3.0gb Vista Max 4.0gb)
BFG 9800GT 512mb
Xpress 3200 Onboard/Video 64-512mb OverClockAble 100-1500mhz
Sata 3.0 gb/s Tx rate
Seagate 300gb Sata 3.0 gbps
AZTEK (B ser. Case)
600W Cooler Master PSU

Might do Triple Boot Ubuntu64-XP32-Vista64,