three monitors, two different graphics cards and drivers

[abfitch]

Hi all. I know there are some really smart people on here so thought I'd ask a question.
I'm running W7 64bit and had two monitors hooked up to a GTX 770 4gb. I decided to add a third monitor but since I'm not gaming on the new, 2nd vid card I bought a cheap geforce 210 512 meg as I will only use it for photoshop and Bridge. I had to use a dvi to hdmi cable as the dvi cable I had was to short to reach the new third monitor from the geforce 210.
my GTX 770 driver was the most recent: 344.75 at that time. But that driver is not available for the geforce 210... version 340.52 is the latest written for the geforce 210. I installed 340.52 thinking my main monitor on the GTX 770 would keep using the 344.75 driver for them and the geforce 210 would use the 340.52 driver. But what happened is the 340 driver overwrote the 344 drivers so that both cards are now using that driver.
Now things are a little unstable. occasionally my mouse and software will freeze up so I have to reboot. Out of frustration, after loosing a work-in-progress photoshop file last night I unplugged the third monitor and havent had any freezes at all today. Was all this due to both cards using the same 340 driver? I do play Skyrim on my 770 card and would like to keep those drivers up todate. Is there a way to have both drivers installed and the latest driver work on the gtx 770...and the 340 driver work on the geforce 210? I saw the 340 over wrote the 344 driver so can I just install the 340 driver in a different location from the 344.75 driver and have the geforce 210 use that one? Thanks for any help with this one.

 

[ihog]

Having multiple driver revisions installed from one company (Nvidia, AMD, Intel, etc.) is not a good idea. It causes all kinds of conflicts.

Mainly, I'm wondering why you decided to get a second card to connect a third monitor. You can simply connect all three to the 770.

 

[abfitch]

thanks ihog...you just reminded me to try that. I think I forgot there was a hdmi port on the 770 also. for some reason, many many months ago I tried that by hooking up a 27" tv as a third monitor but it made the other two monitors go black so I forgot about trying it again. I just tried hooking up a actual computer monitor with hdmi and now have all three screens working. thanks for that!

 

[abfitch]

Actually, discovered that for some reason gpu acceleration is greyed out in photoshop cs6 when all three monitors are hooked up to the 770. something I can't have happen so will have to figure out something else. I do have a gtx 560 and it will use the same updated drivers that the 770 does so I might have to use the 560 as a second card for the third monitor?

 

[ihog]

First, I would recommend setting up Nvidia Surround and seeing if that alleviates your issue.