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hope someone can help me i am trying to set up my pc to run with 3 monitors. at present i am running a 22" monitor throw my nvidia 9400gt (pci express)card, i also have a nvidia 5500 (pci card) and would like to run 2 x 17" monitors thou it.is there anyway for me to do this?
So you have a PCIe card and a PCI card? If so, you should be able to do that in Vista. You could in both WinXP and 2000. That assumes the cards support those monitors.
You may need to designate one card as the default and designate a primary display if two monitors are connected.
Having both nvidia cards simplifies the installation. Google for multiple displays in Vista. Look at on link below for managing software.
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The drivers/application software for your video chipset has to support three monitors. Most supports two at the most, sometimes they support a TV out output as well, which is inferior to a monitor output even if your monitor (or TV) has the jacks for that.
If you want to connect three (or two) monitors and your video chipset software doesn't support it, or if the video card has only one monitor port, if you don't mind the display on two or all three monitors being identical, you can buy and use a video splitter box and connect two or three monitors to that. Those are the same thing that are used in computer related stores to display the same thing on two or more monitors.
They start at about $40 for one with VGA ports and all have a built in amplifier, so if one or more monitors needs to be farther away and connected via a long connection cable, that's not a problem.
E.g.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...
Don't rely on just the info in the ad - look at the manufacturer's info for the model too.
You will also need at least a video extension cable for between the box and the computer (e.g. VGA M to VGA F - it depends on the gender of the input port on the box).
One thing you will find is some programs will display an image only on the designated primary monitor in Windows when you have more than one monitor connected to one video card with two or more monitor ports - e.g. Power DVD, and some other DVD decoder/player software. That problem can only be fixed by using a splitter box and connecting to only one monitor port on the computer and having identical displays
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Look at the link below. Pay special attention to the nView Specs link on that page. You should already have nView on CD with nvidia drivers.
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One of my neighbors has done this. It looked like he had a 22" in the center with a 17" on each side. These are all wide aspect ratio LCD panels and the 17" monitors are turned sideways and angled in slightly. Looks like a fancy vanity mirror, but the screens are all different stuff, whatever programs he wants is in whichever screen. So it is possible. I think it was just XP being used, but I think it was done with some hardware that was intended for doing this.
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need more help i have installed both cards independently and they both work fine but putting them both in together and one one card works, in property's windows keeps saying "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)". my motherboard is a m2a-vm. also how do i designate one card as the default (im still a bit of a novice)
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You may need to move the PCI card down and away from the PCIe slot.
I meant you may need to do that in the software you are going to use to control the various desktops. You will need to choose which display will show the OS.
As far as which one will show the POST screens and after that Windows, am pretty sure the PCIe card will be the default. Be sure to connect the monitor to the primary port on the card (#1). That is probably where you already have the 22" monitor.
Go into Device Manager and see if the second video card shows there. The problem may be that the slot you installed the PCI card in may share an IRQ with the PCIe slot. That is why I suggested moving it.
There may also be an option in the BIOS screens to assign resources (IRQ) for your graphics. If you find that option then enable it. That in itself may clear up the current problem.
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The PCI slot closest to the first PCI-E X16 slot is forced to share the same IRQ as the PCI-E X16 slot if it has any video card in that slot you are using - that usually causes problems if there is a video card in the PCI-E slot. The video usually does not get along with it's IRQ being shared with anything else.
Similarly, any PCI card other than a PCI video card will probably not work properly when installed in that PCI slot. If there is no video card in the PCI-E X16 slot, then if you have onboard video, the first PCI slot shares the same IRQ as the onboard video uses.
If you move the PCI video card to another PCI slot, that should cure your problem.
Since your mboard has onboard video....
I have seen cases where installing a PCI video card in any PCI slot when there is no card in the designated AGP or PCI-E slot causes problems.
When you have onboard video, installing a PCI-E video card in the PCI-E X 16 slot will almost always disable the onboard video automatically, but when you install a PCI video card when the PCI-E X 16 slot has no card in it, sometimes the onboard video does NOT disable automatically, and the two video chipsets try to use some of the same resources - in that case the video is a jumbled mess, and you may not be able to fix that even if you manage to navigate to Device Manager and Disable the onboard video display adapter (Un-installing it won't work - it will come back after the next time you reboot).
You designate one display adapter as the default in your bios Setup. There is a setting for "Intialize video first" or "Primary video" or similar - that should be set to PCI-E, or the PCI-E slot rather than onboard whatever video, or similar, in your case.You can have more than one display adapter in Windows, but only one can be the Primary one at any one time.
In Windows Display Properties, at the Settings screen, Windows may designate whatever port you have a single monitor connected to on a card that has more than one monitor port as the Primary adapter on that card, whether you have the monitor plugged into the card's primary port or secondary port - make sure a single monitor is plugged into the card's primary port, otherwise that monitor may not display correctly.Other problems you can run into......
- both video chipsets must be capable of being used when there is another activated video chipset present on the system. Most, but not all, are.
- some video chipsets, mostly ones on now quite old cards, cannot work properly on a mboard that has onboard video, even if the onboard video is disabled, unless there is a jumper you can move to disable the onboard video on the mboard and you use that, which is quite rare.
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