Dual display w/onboard graphics plus video card?

[snoutmeat]

Greetings-

I have an older system I built a few years ago with an ECS 6100SM-M motherboard (came as a package deal with AMD CPU). I have been using the onboard graphics, but I have a spare video card and a spare monitor and thought it would be fun to use a dual monitor setup. When I install the video card, the onboard graphics seem to be disabled. Is this common? I looked in the BIOS and there's a setting that lets me choose whether to display onboard graphics or PCI-E first. No matter which one I choose, the PCI-E card and the monitor attached to it are the only ones that work. Control Panel in XP is showing that I have only 1 video card (the onboard graphics are not appearing). So this is clearly an issue with the motherboard/BIOS...is it possible to run both monitors? I think it would be silly to add two video cards when the work I'm doing (page layout) is not CPU or GPU-intensive. The onboard graphics are ample!

 

[tecmo34]

Unfortunately, there is not way run on-board graphics with your dedicated graphic card with your motherboard (need a hybrid SLI/Crosfire motherboard for that option). You will need to upgrade to a graphics card that can support two video cards, being connected by DVI &/or VGA.

 

[snoutmeat]

Thanks. I'd reached that conclusion and was feeling disappointed when I realized that the video card (which has DVI and VGA out) came with an adapter to convert the DVI to a 2nd VGA...both of my monitors are old VGA models, so I'm good to go. I'm typing this on one of my 2 active screens. Thanks for the reply.

 

[tecmo34]

Good to know you are up in running dual monitors. Glad you'd card came with the required adapter for VGA, as well

 

[ruff4life]

Upgrade to Windows 8. I have a dual booting system. Win 7 on one side and Win 8 on the other. Very reluctant to dedicate to Win 8 but I have same setup as you . One connection to video card through DVI and the other to MOBO through displayport. Only other Options I have is HDMI and I have no HDMI monitors. When I boot to win 7 only MOBO connection shows up. (mind you I had to activate dual Monitor in Bios) When I load Win 8 both monitors come right up. Assuming your MOBO has the option available in BIOS to allow for dual monitor support WIN 8 seems to be the only OS capable of handling.