ASUS M2N-SLI - 2 video cards.

Hi,

I've a ATI Radeon X1600 Pro today and I've been trying different options to get to use my HDTV
( Panasonic HDTV Plasma ) as an extended or 2nd monitor.

I tried to get a passive splitter to split the DVI signal and that didn't work. Powered splitter
is an option I am researching.

But I've ASUS M2N-SLI mother board which has two PCI Express x16 slots. Is it possible for
me to get another video card and with the DVI to HDMI cable connect my HDTV to use it as
extended monitor ?

Please advice.

Thanks.

I have an HD3870 and hooked up a monitor and my Sony 32" HDTV. The monitor is DVI and the HDTV uses the VGA input.

I didn't spend a lot of time, but it doesn't appear like it's even easy to use an "extended" desktop if your two screens are different ratios and/or different resolutions.

Any newer card has the hardware, I'm just not sure the software is the greatest yet.

You may wish to investigate whether NVidia or ATI currently have better solutions but either way your best bet is a single card solution as I believe SLI and Crossfire have multi-screen issues though that may have been fixed.

Again, the hardware is there but the software is still lacking slightly.

To clarify on few things I missed...

OS is XP / Ubuntu at this point.

On the desktop features, I'm not sure how big of a constraint this is, but to the least I expect to access the desktop from the PC monitor OR HDTV. If this is just cloning, that's fine. If I can't do cloning but the HDTV would act more of an 2nd-extended monitor that's fine too...

The card today has one DVI and one VGA output. I read somewhere that its not advisable to connect VGA to HDTV, that lead to this solution-search.

While I have a PCI-E motherboard and ATI Radeon X1600 Pro card, I'm not into games and so as such, if I'm able to connect my PC to HDTV while "not affecting" the connectivity to the PC monitor, that's good enough.

Thanks for all the pointers & thoughts.how

The HDTV should have a VGA in, if it doesn't then your out of luck. Also when you meant another video card do you mean SLI or just stick in another video card?

@daedalus685 I doubt you can run another video card in a 'SLI" mobo, with o xfire or anything.

I am also running M2N-SLi mobo with ATI x1600 pro graphics card.
On primary channel I run Samsung monitor, 19", and on the secondary DVI my LG Plasma, 42",.

The driver package from ATI is the CATALYST. You must install this package and run the software. You will find the options to run primary and secondary monitors. It is as simple as drag and drop.
The secondary option has an auto detect function to detect the monitor/hdtv if the hdtv does not sent its id on connection.

Good luck

PS. I used a DVI to RS232 adaptor from g/card and connected to plasma via 5 meter RS232 cable. Plasma had no provision for DVI...