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Two PCI Graphics Cards in one system




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Profile: enthusiast
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Hey,

I was wondering if I had two PCI graphics Cards in the same system if I can run two monitors on the system?

I tried it once with two S3 Trio cards but they were very basic and didn't like each other, or rather windows 2000 didn't like the cards anyway on their own so together was asking for trouble.

So I am asking if I have two windows compliant graphics cards and if I put them both in the same system can I drive two monitors?

If not windows will Linux let me do this?


Thanks
Julian

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Profile: Honorary Poster
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Wow! Today I tought the same thing, but I wanted to put an old PCI Cirrus logic side by side with my Radeon 8500 to see if I can extend my windows desktop on 2 monitors...

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Profile: Forum Fixture
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it will work. some cards wouldnt support it but most will

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Profile: enthusiast
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hehe, I have been thinking about it for a while, it is only today I actually decided to do something about it.

My reason? I need to run about 4-5 monitors from one pc and I don't need 3d accelleration but just basic graphics on each one.

Profile: enthusiast
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Thank you :D

Profile: Honorary Poster
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Is your setup actually working? I would like to know!

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Profile: Forum Fixture
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ive had three monitors going before. two on my 9500p and one on some old ati card. i think it was a rage.

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Profile: Honorary Poster
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Your 3 monitor setup was working fine, because you had 2 ATI video cards???

I want to know, because I want to test a setup with 2 different cards.

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Profile: Forum Fixture
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doesnt matter who made the video cards. they are separate devices, they dont have to be compatible with eachother.

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Profile: enthusiast
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Oh I haven't tried yet, I was just wondering to see if it is worth trying because a friend offered me a geforce 2 and an ATI radeon pci card, both dual monitor and I was going to see if I could get a quad monitor set up :P

Profile: Eternal Poster
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I used to have an old PII at work with an old Ati AGP card (a rage3d or something - NOT a radeon) with a PCI Ati RAGE 'XL' card as a second display. Worked fine for ages, but I recently got a new work PC with a Geforce2 MX AGP card & could not get it to work with the PCI ATI card.

So I know it's not the ATI card, as it was fine as a second display on the old PC, and can only conclude that either windows XP has <i>removed</i> compatability with the Rage XL (old PC was Win98), or the drivers for the nvidia & Ati cards hate each other.

It was really odd, the PCI card was installed quite happily in device manager, but refused to show up under display settings.

It's not a problem for me anymore, as I upgraded to a 9800Pro at home, so I'm now using my old GF4 Ti4600 at work, and that supports 2 displays all on it's own. Just thought I'd post my experience regarding of trying to mix a AGP Nvidia card & a PCI Ati one. might prove different with a more modern PCI card though.

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Profile: enthusiast
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Actually when I tried an AGP S3 Trio and a PCI S3 Trio they refused to work together under windows 2000. The computer wouldn't accept both cards.

I think it was a motherboard problem though.

Profile: Eternal Poster
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Oddly enough, I earlier gave the old PCI card to another guy at work so he could see if he could get it working. He's also on XP, and also using a Geforce 2 MX (IIRC) as the primary adapter, but he's on a completely different motherboard (not sure what it is, but he's running an AXP whereas I'm running a P4 2.8 on an Aopen i865 mobo) so I'll try to remember to post back here if he gets it working

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Profile: Eternal Poster
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Just thought I'd post back like I said I would.

He tried it, and had the same problem as me. Plus his network stopped working too! :lol:

So it seems Having a Geforce AGP card & an older ATi PCI card does not work. Narrows it down to either Windows XP or a driver issue.

Might still work with a more recent Radeon-class PCI card though...

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