|
Post Reply
lw27 2004-05-30 02:46
Hi everyone,
I have been trying very hard to make my 3 monitor setup work but no success yet. The following is my hardware specifications:
AMD 1.2G
ECS K7S5A motherboard
384 DDR
S3 Savage4 32M AGP Video Card
Nvidia Riva TNT2 Model64 PCI Video Card
ATI Rage XL PCI Video Card
Hauppauge Wintv PCI TV Card
Windows 2000 Professional
Everything is workin fine with the first two video cards connected to two monitors. When I plug in the ATI Rage XL and connect it with the third monitor, the Device Manager can recognize it succefully and is showing it works fine, but in the Display Properties, it still only shows the first two video cards. I have tried to make the PCI as primary video card in the BIOS, but the computer won't recognize the AGP card.
So my question is:
Is it because the mother board or video card too old to support 3 monitor setup? Do I have to get a dual head video card instead? Or is there anything I can do to solve the problem?
Thanks in advance.
|
Tantalus 2004-05-30 03:23
your problem stems from the number of additional pci VCs you have in the box - i count 3 addt'l pci cards not including the agp card. as the number of pci cards go up, the chances of resource contention and memory addressing/driver conflicts goes up. this can still apply even if device manager looks ok.
if you are willing to invest the time, you can try to get this to work thru trial & error. i would suggest you ghost or image your machine (and carefully write down which cards are in which slots). then uninstall all the video drivers except for your primary. reboot & verify all is well and begin adding the remaining cards (beginning w/the ati rage), rebooting each time.
|
ecarlson 2004-05-30 11:08
I'd say the problem is with the old ATI Rage card. If you replace it with another NVidia card, all 3 would probably work, or replace the AGP card with an NVidia card, then you can use the old Rage card, because the NVidia card will most likely work even if it is not set as primary in BIOS.
The issue is that both the S3 and the ATI Rage have to be first in BIOS (but not the NVidia Riva card), so those 2 cards won't work at the same time.
- Eric www.InvisibleRobot.com
|
lw27 2004-05-30 12:33
Thanks Tantalus and Eric for your replies.
Eric, I am thinking about getting a Matrox G400 dual head AGP video card to replace the S3 Savage AGP card, do you think this will work? Will I be able to use up to 4 monitors if I use ATI, Nvidia, Matrox cards together?
Thanks once again.
|
ecarlson 2004-05-30 14:56
I don't know if Matrox cards like to be initialized first, or if they work like NVidia cards, which don't care. Why not just get a dual-out NVidia card? And with 2 NVidia based cards, you won't have to run 3 different video driver sets, since the Nvidia cards would both use the same driver set.
- Eric www.InvisibleRobot.com
|
X-ray 2004-05-31 03:09
nVIDIA and Matrox-cards should work very good together. However, one thing you could look for, is the power-supply on your system. My light-end system has 1 AGP and 6 PCI's. I had a 235W and once I initialised the Hauppauge TV-card during install, the system came to a halt. After upgrading to 300W, everything runs fine.
|
Post Reply
|
