Jakobe 2010-01-09 05:23
I currently have a gateway gt5628
link to the specs:
http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/1014737R/1014737Rsp3.shtml
I am running 3 monitors
2 monitors are running from the Invidia 8500gt
and the 3rd is running from and external Aluratek usb to DVI card.
the third monitor works decent as I only use it for my ftp program, but it does get choppy sometimes.
I have my ram maxed out and I am running Vistsa sp2 with no issues
the system works perfect.
runs fast and as solid as my Mac
I am a hard user and this machine runs about 14 hours a day in a busy office environment.
Now, I need to add a FOURTH monitor.
and I want to ditch the USB to DVI adapter.
My total slots are:
One PCI Express ×16 (graphics interface)
Two PCI Express ×1
One PCI conventional
So...What would be the best way to get this to run Quad monitors efficiently?
- Adding a dual port PCIE x16 and a dual PCI conventional?
-Adding two dual port PCIE x1's
-Adding a PCIE x16 4 port card?
Each monitor displays something different,
I dont just need clones.
I do need a decent amount of ram to each one
needs to be smooth not choppy.
My main monitor is hdmi and I would like to keep it that way.
I dont do any gaming on this machine, but do watch alot of videos and do alot of graphic work.
Mainly graphic work for the print industry web graphics and web programming
Currently my main monitor is
1920x1200
2nd monitor is
1680x1050
3rd
1440x900
the fourth monitor will be
1680x1050
any suggestions or advice?
please dont just tell me to buy a new computer this one runs smooth and fast..like I said it rivals my Mac.
I have been a hard professional user of gateway products for many years and have never once had any major issues...the only major problem I ever had was my Emachines laptop's cord broke.
other than that the machines are always running prefect.
thanks!
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Christian Studer 2010-01-09 08:24
I would probably get a PCIe x1 or regular PCI card for the 3rd and 4th monitor, for example the Nvidia Quadro NVS 295. The only problem is that the two cards might not work together, but there's no way to determine this in advance.
Christian Studer - www.realtimesoft.com
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Jakobe 2010-01-09 14:27
yes, I have found a few cards that might be compatable.
(using the x16 and conventional pci route)
but I need to know the cheapest best solution
I am not trying to reinvent the quad monitor desktop, just want something that works solid and smooth.
- Adding a dual port PCIE x16
to run monitors 1 and 2
and a dual PCI conventional
to run monitors 3 & 4
OR
-Adding two dual port PCIE x1's
with 2 monitors on each card
OR
-Adding a PCIE x16 4 port card?
with all 4 monitors on one card
PCIE x1 video cards in the 1gb range are not that common.
Thanks for the info
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ecarlson 2010-01-14 11:10
You could get a second GeForce 8500gt ($40), and either cut down the connector to be X1, or notch the back of one of your X1 slots to fit the X16 card. You can search Google to find out how to make either mod, but the slot mod is rather obvious.
With the same chipset card, which uses the same driver, you have a very high probability that they will work together.
I'm probably going to do the same thing with an 8400GS card. I already bought the second card ($32) that I plan to modify to X1. The slot should be easier to modify than the card, but I can afford to lose a $32 card if the mod doesn't work, and if it does, I can use it in any PC.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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Jakobe 2010-01-25 11:47
I cant figure out what you mean by making an x16 card work in an x1 slot?
the X16 is much longer.
Yet the X1 is a tiny little slot.
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ecarlson 2010-01-26 10:15
See the post below this one (or my web page) for details.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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Jakobe 2010-02-11 00:57
okay now I understand
I am going to try the mod..but with 2 identical cards.
my old card took a crap on me last night and melted the fan.
so I am going to buy nvidia 2 x16 cards each 512 or 1gb
I will install one in the x16 slot ..and the other I will nip the card or the port on the board to make it fit.
I think nipping the port slot will be easier.
and that way if the card doesnt work I can return or sell it.
yes/no...suggestions comments?
any card installation tips?
thanks
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ecarlson 2010-02-11 08:50
> I think nipping the port slot will be easier.
Probably, though I haven't tried that mod yet. Just make sure there is nothing in the way that would touch the extra pins sticking out the back of the slot. If there is stuff nearby, you might want to insulate the pins with some electrical tape to make sure nothing makes contact with them.
Also, be careful that you don't accidentally cut anything other than the back of the slot.
Let us know how it goes.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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Jakobe 2010-03-13 06:33
OK SUCCESS!...sorta
I do indeed have 4 monitors running on dual identical cards wiht one in a x16 slot the other inan x1 slot.
first I addded 2 MSI nivida gt220's 1gb both pcie 16x
instead of cutting the slot or nipping the card, I found an adapter/riser from Startech
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200157&cm_re=startech_pcie_adapter-_-12-200-157-_-Product
so I added this and and added my cards..POOF!
upon first boot they both installed using my old nvidia drivers.
and then POOF! again in 15 minutes I got a BSOD.
so I rebooted and installed the drivers that came with the card.
it worked fine for a few days, then when my screens would load, particularly in windows explorer..the folders or folder content would not immediately show up.
it took a 1-2 seconds for the screen to populate.
I am guessing the term for this is "slow post"
anyways, this is unacceptable , so I hit the Nvidia forums, apparently this is a common issue with these cards, prolly my BIOS arent compatible..but they are the latest bios avail from gateway.
so I returned the cards and ordered the ASUS nvidia gt9500 series, got a good deal from newegg
the screen lag was slightly gone but now the cards had freekin giant fans on them and would not fit in the case properly.
and to top it all of they used the same driver and now Vista wont wake from sleep.
well the harddrive wakes up but the screens dont.
I can hear the HD buzzing and clicking liek it should.
this was never and issue before, my machine would normally wake up within just under 5 seconds.
even running 3 screens (2 on the card and 1 on the external usb video adapter)
so I tried every driver fix I could find added a patch to the registry for my monitor, made sure bios set to S3, changed the order of the cards and monitors...nothing worked.
so I have to completely shut down every night and boot fresh every morning.
the machine would sleep just fine but the screens would not wake, the only way to get back running was to do a hard power off.
and reboot twice as the first reboot gave BSOD.
so I thought maybe the cards were not seated correctly (because of the giant fans). So I removed those cards, and bought 2 low profile ASUS gt220 cards.
I read many posts that the slow post is cause by nvidia latest driver and not my BIOS & card combination, so I figured I'd rather have the better card.
got the cards installed, the low profile allows me to mount in the case while still using the riser adapter.
I still have a slow screen post sometimes and my screens will still NOT wake up from sleep.
using Nvidia driver 196.21
I tired some of the BETAS but those only gave BSOD over and over again.
then I unistalled the drivers completely and reinstalled.
still no change.
although I do have 4 screens (which is frickin awesome btw)
my two major issue now are.
- slower screen posts
- my monitors unable to wake from sleep
Computer:
Vista Home Pre 32bit sp2
Gateway gt5628 quadcore Q6600
4gb ram
600w PSU
Video:
2x ASUS nvidia gt220 1gb cards- driver 196.21
4 screens:
1 HannsG 281d
2 acer 22"
1 gateway 22"
Card and monitor setup:
card-1: pcie16x
1 monitor VGA port
1 monitor HDMI port.
card-2: (pcie16x adapted to pcie1x)
1 monitor VGA port
1 monitor HDMI from the card to DVI on the monitor
suggestions?
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ecarlson 2010-03-13 16:53
What happens with only one card installed, in the real PCIe X16 slot?
My 2 suggestions of things to try are:
1. Windows 7
2. Use the slot or card mod instead of the adapter.
Though I don't know if either or even both together will resolve the issues.
Maybe other people here have more suggestions.
- Eric www.InvisibleRobot.com
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Jakobe 2010-03-15 10:35
upgrading to win 7 may or may not help as the problem exists there as well, Many Win7 users are having the same issues.
but Nvidia hasnt responded and nobody can pinpoint the source, some have laptops running vista and win7 that have this issue when connected to an external monitor.
I dont want win7, not right now at least. I am happy with Vista, not one bug until now.
I dont want to pay for the upgrade and I dont want to wipe my drive for a clean install.
Too much going on to just start from zero.
1 card in x16 slot and the machine sleeps/wakes
or
1 card in x1 slot and the machine sleeps/wakes
or
both cards installed and 1 monitor running on each and the machine sleeps/wakes
the adapter is exactly the same as using the slot by its self, its just a riser.
using or not using shouldnt make a differance,
but I cannot try without cutting my card or board neither of which I am willing to do.
the riser seats solidly works fine when only 1 monitor. running off the card.
and now today I have been getting intermittent black screens for an instant.
but I think this may be due to memory resource as the new FireFox 3.6 now consumes almost 1.8gb+ of ram just running Ebay and a few other text only tabs on my machine.
Apparently its a known bug Mozilla has not addressed yet.
gonna roll back to 3.5 and see if pushing the ram to its limits still produces black screens.
I would not think that low system memory would completely blackout the screens as the vid cards use their own memory?
never had this issue wiht the old much smaller single card.
I hope to get these issues solved soon I am falling so behind on my projects by screwing with the machine everyday.
hopefully somebody has a fix that works soon.
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ecarlson 2010-03-15 12:03
Since multiple people are having this issue, it sounds like you'll have to wait for a solution to be developed or discovered. Does it happen to people using 32-bit and to people using 64-bit versions of the OS?
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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Fiktik 2010-03-18 22:46
You may want to consider upgrading to 64-bit OS. As I read you have 4GB of RAM and two 1GB video cards - 32-bit Vista can address only 4GB of memory in total. This means you have half of your addressable space assigned to video RAM. With other caches here and there it can easily be that 1,8GB taken by Firefox the other day was your total usabe RAM. I believe you can see the amount of usable RAM in Windows Task Manager.
Anyway this shouldn't be a serious issue (other than a performance hit) if you have sufficient swap space enabled.
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Jakobe 2010-03-19 00:21
I dont understand....?
I have 4gb of system ram on my mobo
(yes I know that my 32bit system only see3.4 of it)
and then two 1gb video cards.
(From my understanding this is 1gb on the card not virtual ram)
So why would half of my system ram be allocated to video?
I dont think upgrading the machine or OS is the key here...I have run this system just fine and awesomly fast (it rivals my mac)
on 4gb ram and a 256 or 512 single vid card.
I am not going to to upgrade my system to a different OS, not anytime soon.
I dont have time to reinstall and reconfig a machine at this point during my projects.
that is not an option.
Nvidia has not responded to my emails yet.
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Fiktik 2010-03-19 04:34
I'm not saying this is the reason for your multimonitor-related troubles. Frankly I have no idea why this is happening. I just wanted you to be aware of that.
3.4GB visible RAM roughly corresponds to a 32-bit system with single 512MB video card. This doesn't mean the rest of the RAM was used by a video card. The rest of your RAM was not used at all. Because the address space is 4GB - system needs to be able to access all video ram, so all video ram needs to be addressed (receive addresses from system memory address space). There are also some other system resources that need its memory to be addressed, bringing down available addresses to something like 3.4GB - and that is used to address as much of your RAM as it can.
What you have now is 2x1GB of video memory that needs to be addressed plus some other minor system resources, bringing your available address space to something like 1.9GB, that is used to address your RAM. The rest of the RAM is not used and can not be used by normal means on a 32-bit desktop windows system.
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Jakobe 2010-03-25 04:48
so what you are saying is that
even though I have 4gb ram installed
AND I have 2gb video ram installed.
my system is only using 4gb no matter what.
So the OS uses the 2gb and then the Video uses the 2GB
So if I only had 1gb of vid ram..then the OS would use 3gb of its "installed ram"
I was under the assumption that my old vid card didnt have enough vid ram and was "sucking ram" from the system ram.
so a simple solution would be to install bigger vid cards and take the load off the system ram..but in essence it just cuts the amount of resource avaiable to the system.
and if I understand correctly I can overcome this limitation by using a 64bit install.
not sure if my system is upgradeable to win7 64bit OS
I dont think that it is.
I know my board can handle up to 8gb of ram, it states that on the site..so maybe....?
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Fiktik 2010-04-10 22:36
Thats right. The system address space limit is 4GB on all 32-bit client Windows OSes (check this table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension#Microsoft_Windows )
Also I believe that large video ram is generally only useful for gaming and some professional graphics applications, but there may be other software that benefits from that.
Determining 64-bit compatibility is a 2 step thing:
1. Hardware - you need a 64-bit capable processor and motherboard. But thats generally not a problem for many years now, definitely not a problem in your case.
2. Software - all software that directly accesses hardware or lowlevel system resources needs to be 64-bit. In practice this means drivers and some special apps like Antivirus, Firewall etc. Most of this is not a problem nowadays, but you might want to check if there are 64-bit drivers available to all your periferies - especially older ones, if you have some.
Sorry for the long wait...
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