scotth 2005-01-05 06:04
I just bought a new computer and would like to go from the two monitor setup I was running on my old machine to a three monitor setup.
I had been using a Radeon VE x-hydra card in my old machine and had no problems running two monitors (both VGA, using an adaptor on one)
My new machine (running Windows XP) comes with the FX5200 128MB AGP card which has two ports for a two monitor setup as well.
Is it just as easy as adding a PCI card to run a third monitor? If so what is a good choice for a PCI card? Any special trick to getting it to configure properly or is more so just plug and play?
The store that is building the computer didn't think it could be done because the PCI card would be slower than the AGP and would cause a bottleneck. I wasn't so quick to believe them so that is how I found myself here.
If anyone can shed some light on this topic I would really appreciate the help.
thanks!
scott
|
Christian Studer 2005-01-05 06:16
Usually all you need to do is install the PCI card and reboot.
Make sure you get a recent PCI card, old cards (S3 Trio, ATI Mach, etc) will only work if they are primary in BIOS.
I would recommend getting an Nvidia PCI card, this way you can use the same driver for both cards.
Christian Studer - www.realtimesoft.com
|
scotth 2005-01-05 06:18
Christian,
Thank you for the very very quick response. I am going to go ahead and pickup an nVidia PCI card and give it a shot. I'll come back and post my results.
Thanks!
|
scotth 2005-01-05 06:21
Christian,
One quick follow up question. I just got done looking at PCI cards and I see there is a GeForce FX 5200 PCI 128MB Video Card PCI card that also has two ports for two monitors.
I would imagine that I could possibly run four monitors in this setup? If so, what would be the best card to run as the primary video card? the AGP or the PCI?
Don't know if I even have room for four monitors ;o)
Thanks again,
Scott
|
Christian Studer 2005-01-06 02:28
You should use the AGP card as primary, if you use games or 3D applications, they will use the primary monitor, and the AGP card is faster than the PCI card.
Driving 4 monitors with two dualhead cards should work fine.
Christian Studer - www.realtimesoft.com
|
