ATI 4200 HD Dual Monitor Support

[mlc]

I'm running XP on a new Biostar motherboard which has integrated video and 1 VGA and 1 DVI connector and running the latest 10.9 Catalyst driver from ATI. I want to run dual monitors in the Dualview mode. Mother board shipped with a VGA/DVI adapter. Both monitors are VGA. Only the monitor which connects directly to the VGA port works. The second monitor which connects through the VGA/DVI adapter does not see a video signal. The Catalyst 10.9 applet does not allow me to detect the second monitor - although Catalyst does see the second monitor.

Can I run dual monitors as I want to off the motherboard without buying a dual port video card. Wow...Nvidia is so much easier to set up dual monitors....

Not a technical guy so any help is much appreciated.

 

[mlc]

Two independent display controllers

* Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
* Full 30-bit display processing
* Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
* Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
* High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
* Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
Fast, glitch-free mode switching
* Hardware cursor

Thanks malmental. I read all that too and it sounds good. The catalyst driver does not detect the second monitor when I click on detect in the driver screen. I've had other VGA monitors connect through a VGA/DVI adapter just fine so I don't think that is the problem. Do you?

Do you know if Hydravision from ATI is needed? If so, where can I get it? I could not locate it on ATI website. I've seen this referenced as a tool to support dual monitors.

 

[mlc]

Thanks again. Its on AMD not ATI...that explains why I couldn't find it. I have the latest driver, but no Hydravision tab or access.

I'll download that and install and see what happens. If its a bad bridge as you say, then do I need a new motherboard or is there a driver fix for that?

 

[mlc]

new board..
if so, a little more troubleshooting doesn't ever hurt..

Hey malmental, you're going to love this one. Probably good for other non technicals to know about....

Yes the support is there for dual monitors. However, one must be VGA and the other must be DVI, at least on my TA785G3 HD motherboard from Biostar. Do not use the included VGA/DVI adapter to plug a VGA monitor into the DVI port. It wont work. I spent 5 hours horsing around with this thinking, as many non-technicals do, why would they include an adapter if it doesn't work?

Anyway, I just hooked up a DVI monitor and and a VGA monitor directly to their respective ports and guess what I have dual monitors!

So my issue is solved it seems. Wow, how much time would be saved if they'd just put that tidbit of info somewhere it could be easily found. I'm learning...