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Need help on surroundView and multi monitor set up

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hello everybody. first post here. =)

my motherboard gone caput and i had to get a replacement.

in my old set up i had a matroxG200 + radeon x1950 + integrated nvidia working together to run 5 monitors + TV.

every since i got my replacement motherboard i havent managed to get the same set up running.

my new motherboard is a biostar TA790GX A2+. this comes with an integrated radeon HD3300

i have had a few issues while setting up the whole system again.

first the master PCI-e slot is very close to the normal PCI slots. and i havent found a way to make the computer run by placing the X1950 on the slave slot.
the issue this causes is simple. i do not have enough room to place the matrox card in a PCI slot cus the Radeon 1950 is in the way.

so if anyone knows a trick to make the computer run the x1950 in the slave slot that would be awesome.

the second issue is SurroundView.
i have read that surroundView only works with ATI cards + integrated ATI. which i got.... but i cant get it to work. i have tried different configs in the motherboard but the best i got was windows booting up in safe mode while recognising both integrated and PCI-E card together. but the same bios settings windows failed to load in "normal" mode.

any help refering surroundView is also welcome. since as far as i know it *should* be working fine but it clearly isnt.

Side note: getting an upgrade is not a viable option for me currently so ill have to play around with what i got.

my specs:
biostar TA790GX A2+
4GB ram ( 2x2 )
athlon 64 X2 2.0 (not overcloked)
currently running only Radeon X1950 pro (in master PCI-e slot)
Windows XP professional 32 bit
550watt PSU. unbranded.

any help is welcome. let me know if you need any more info.

Thanks in advance.

PS to Ops. since the whole issue started because i changed the MoBo i posted in the MoBo section (chipset and bios cus i suspect the soluction will be in the bios) of the forum if this is the wrong section just move it.

More about : surroundview multi monitor set

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Monitor Expert
Motherboard Authority

tuga2112 said:


first the master PCI-e slot is very close to the normal PCI slots. and i havent found a way to make the computer run by placing the X1950 on the slave slot.
the issue this causes is simple. i do not have enough room to place the matrox card in a PCI slot cus the Radeon 1950 is in the way.

so if anyone knows a trick to make the computer run the x1950 in the slave slot that would be awesome.

Ween you say slave PCIe slot, do you mean the greenish pcie slot beside the heatsink with Biostar label?

tuga2112 said:

the second issue is SurroundView.
i have read that surroundView only works with ATI cards + integrated ATI. which i got.... but i cant get it to work. i have tried different configs in the motherboard but the best i got was windows booting up in safe mode while recognising both integrated and PCI-E card together. but the same bios settings windows failed to load in "normal" mode.

any help refering surroundView is also welcome. since as far as i know it *should* be working fine but it clearly isnt.

Side note: getting an upgrade is not a viable option for me currently so ill have to play around with what i got.

Surround view in AMD is called Eyefinity & supported only AMD 5XXX and higher ( 6XXX & 7XXX) graphics cards. You may have multiple monitors across many cards as you did in your old setup but they will work as extended desktop instead of one big deskstop display.

randomkid said:
Ween you say slave PCIe slot, do you mean the greenish pcie slot beside the heatsink with Biostar label?


yes thats the one i want to fit my x1950 on. but when i try i cant get output from it.

randomkid said:
Surround view in AMD is called Eyefinity & supported only AMD 5XXX and higher ( 6XXX & 7XXX) graphics cards. You may have multiple monitors across many cards as you did in your old setup but they will work as extended desktop instead of one big deskstop display.


if you mean by extendended desktop as having 1 main monitor and the other monitors are on the side that i can strech the windows and move about to use them. that is what i had before and it want im looking for at the moment.

i have never seen a multi monitor set up where all the monitors worked as a single desktop without making clone view.
it would be impossible to use all monitors as a single desktop because i have 3 different resolutions in my set up.

how do i do to get windows to recognise both onboard card and my radeon x1950 so i can use my other monitors ?
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Motherboard Authority

tuga2112 said:

if you mean by extendended desktop as having 1 main monitor and the other monitors are on the side that i can strech the windows and move about to use them. that is what i had before and it want im looking for at the moment.

Yes. That is what I mean.

tuga2112 said:

i have never seen a multi monitor set up where all the monitors worked as a single desktop without making clone view.
it would be impossible to use all monitors as a single desktop because i have 3 different resolutions in my set up.

That is AMD Eyefinity or nVidia Surround Vision.

tuga2112 said:

how do i do to get windows to recognise both onboard card and my radeon x1950 so i can use my other monitors ?

Let us hope some other helpful folks can see this & give advise.
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randomkid said:
Yes. That is what I mean.


That is AMD Eyefinity or nVidia Surround Vision.


Let us hope some other helpful folks can see this & give advise.


doesnt that contradict your previous statement about surroundView ? i though surroundView was just a new name for the option i had in my old motherboard called something of the style "dual chipset - enable/disable"
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tuga2112 said:
doesnt that contradict your previous statement about surroundView ? i though surroundView was just a new name for the option i had in my old motherboard called something of the style "dual chipset - enable/disable"

No. It does not contradict. Your old setup is just extended desktop. It is just window function but can not make all monitors ( even if they are same resolution ) to become one big desktop.
Surround view applies to AMD Eyefinity or nVidia surround but it is most useful for gaming to allow you to have more views of the environment. Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR7cNLUqPao

randomkid said:
No. It does not contradict. Your old setup is just extended desktop. It is just window function but can not make all monitors ( even if they are same resolution ) to become one big desktop.
Surround view applies to AMD Eyefinity or nVidia surround but it is most useful for gaming to allow you to have more views of the environment. Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR7cNLUqPao


i get it now. makes sence. so all i need now is to wait for someone that knows enough about this matter to lead me into a soluction to get my set up working again with extended desktop with more than one chipset like before.

thank for that explanation. that explains why surroundView is not exactly what i want to activate.
Monitor Expert
Motherboard Authority

Well one thing I know is that the XP will not support 2 discrete graphics card of different manufacturer so that jeopardizes that matrox working even if you get the radeon & the on-board work.

But on the other hand you said it was working before so perhaps the matrox being a PCI card is not a limitation for your specific case. What was you previous motherboard, anyway?

the motherboard itself doesnt specify but it came with an accer aspire t180, according to a seller in ebay its a
Foxconn MCP61SM-AM Socket 940 AM2

ebay link (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Foxconn-MCP61SM-AM-Socket-940...)

with this board to allow integrated chipset plus radeon i had to change a setting in the bios that was called something of the kind "dual monitor support" i have mentnioned this setting previous in the post, possibly gave it a different name as i cant remember the exact name.

Motherboard Expert

I'm sorry I can't help you and this thread is old but I must correct faulty information.

randomkid said:
Ween you say slave PCIe slot, do you mean the greenish pcie slot beside the heatsink with Biostar label?


Surround view in AMD is called Eyefinity & supported only AMD 5XXX and higher ( 6XXX & 7XXX) graphics cards. You may have multiple monitors across many cards as you did in your old setup but they will work as extended desktop instead of one big deskstop display.


Surroundview is NOT related to eyefinity. It does not combine monitors for a single desktop. It is a business solution from AMD. With the older integrated graphics, such as the 4000 and 3000 integrated series (ATI, not intel), there was an option to keep them enabled to use for a secondary monitor (or two depending on motherboard inputs) while having an ATI graphics card. This was AMD's first inexpensive multimonitor solution for business. If you can get a standard video card, it's as simple as driving 2 monitors from the card and two from the integrated. I used to use this in tandem with my 3870 for 4 monitors before I got my 6950+6450.

So as tuga 2112 says, surroundview sounds like it should be working. It's as simple as enabling the surroundview option on the motherboard.

I've recently had to switch back to surroundview because my videocard died. I recently updated my AMD drivers in windows 8 and it suddenly broke. If I manage to fix it, I'll see if I can update this. Although, since this is so old, I assume you've already found an alternative?

Some additional references:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual...
http://www.amd.com/it/products/technologies/ati-hybrid-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Hybrid_Graphics#Surrou...

I'm having a similar problem:
ATI Radeon HD 7770 on a Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 motherboard. all information points to the surround view option should be working, however on activating it the computer blue screens on start up and the primary display (PCIe one) drivers are destroyed meaning the card has to be uninstalled from windows and reinstalled. That is after I've turned off the option again of course.

The manual says you need to initialize the PCIe GPU first done; and have an ati GPU also done.

So can anyone think of any reason this wouldn't work. Not having a display plugged into the Motherboard wouldn't affect it would it?
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