Dual Graphics Cards: One HDCP, One Not

[murraj2]

I just picked up a Blu-Ray drive on Black Friday and found out that my graphics card is not HDCP Compatible.

I have dual 1600x1200 Monitors and a 1080p TV. If I bought an additional graphics card and had all three hooked up as monitors, how would HDCP content work? Would I be able to only play it on the devices connected to the HDCP GPU? Would it still not work at all?

 

[paperfox]

To help us out a little you should post your computers specs and what kind of power supply you have.

Any monitor you connected to the HDPC GPU should output it, while the others will not. If you have Windows 7 then you should be able to have two different driver installed to your computer to make it work.

There are a number of options you could take:
1) buy a cheap second card that has HDPC, provided your motherboard has 2 PCIE slots and your PSU can handle it (may have to upgrade), to get 4 outputs for your 3 monitors. Will only work if your motherboard has 2 PCIE slots.

2) buy an ATI HD 5000 series card. It can handle 3 putputs, but the catch is the 3rd has to be DisplayPort, so if one of your monitors dose not have it you will have to spend ~$100 to get an active DisplayPort-to-HDMI converter. May also need to upgrade PSU.

Depending on your hardware configuration eather of these options could be the best/cheapest.

 

[murraj2]

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz
SI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard (which does have 2 PCIE slots)
RAIDMAX SMILODON ATX-612WBP Case With 500W Power
6GB RAM (2x2GB and 2x1GB)
Seagate Barracuda 1.5 TB HD
LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner
EVGA 256-P2-N758-TR GeForce 8600GT SCC 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card (this is my current video card which isn't HDCP compatible)

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate.

Ideally my new card would have one HDMI one DVI with Audio through HDMI.

Was looking at this card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127454

My biggest worry is if anything will wrong trying to view HDCP content having the one card that's not HDCP. Will the Blu Ray content only play on the two monitors connected to the new card? Will it see that I have a non HDCP card in my computer and cause PowerDVD to say it's not compatible again?

I don't do any gaming, but a little bit of Imaging work with Gimp and Photomatix. Any reason to consider a 1GB card or one with SLI?

Thanks again in advance.

 

[paperfox]

I am not sure if you will run into an issue with PowerDVD in your situation, perhaps someone else will enlighten us.

One option could be to get that card from a local store so you can test it out and if it dosent work out for you you could eather return it or buy a second so that you would have two HDCP cards.

 

[murraj2]

Thanks for your advice. I appreciate it.

Worst case scenario: my original plan was to manually switch one of the monitors with DVI with a DVI to HDMI cable to the TV whenever I wanted to watch a blu-ray or stream anyway, so I could always still do that with the new card.