I've got a request at work to install 3 monitors on someone's PC. It's running Windows XP and has a graphics card installed which is already running 2 monitors through DVI and VGA. The mainboard has 1 VGA port that I have plugged the third monitor in but I don't actually know how to get all three working. I fiddled with the bios, setting the mainboard as the primary display adapter but then couldn't get the graphics card to output. Any help? Cheers
I might be wrong but I dont think you can use the on board graphics with a graphics card together. A Matrox triplehead 2go adaptor would probably work though Or add another GPU if you can.
Yeah, that was what I thought but I didn't know if there was a bypass. Cheers for the response, even if it wasn't what I wanted to hear. lol
An ATI Eyefinity card may be a quick choice for running three screens, although will depend on the monitors. Can pick the 3 monitor cards up from the lower end of the ATI range at the moment.
It's not worth the University buying new hardware for it now as they will be getting new PCs in a month or 2 so I shouldn't worry. Cheers anyway guys.
I used to run both onboard and a discreet graphics card off my Abit Fatal1ty F190-HD motherboard. Had an lcd tv connected through the onboard HDMI and two monitors running from the graphics card (GeForce 6800 first, then an X1950XT). All I had to do was set the onboard graphics as 'primary' in the bios. Must obviously depend on what motherboard you're running.
XP is very friendly about having two different display drivers from different vendors running(i.e. an ATI and nVidia), in that it actually allows you to. Vista and Windows 7 on the other hand don't allow more than one running at a time. Microsoft disabled suport because it caused a large number of crashes. I ran an nVidia 6800GT alongside an ATI 1250 onboard adaptor for several months with no problem. When I upgraded to Vista I also had to upgrade to the ATI X1950XT in order to continue running 3 displays.
i think youll find that win7 lets you run 2 different gfx vendors at the same time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model#WDDM_1.1
Ahhh, that's nice to know. Wonder why they changed their mind? I automatically assumed that Windows 7 would be the same as Vista as their reasons behind dropping support in Vista was the aparently poor stability of running two display drivers in XP (not that I encountered any stability problems).
Well I think 7 is just the Vista without the annoyances that they seemed to want to implement. You are right in thinking they would be the same since they usually are but 7 just has key differences that makes it well received as opposed to hated like seven is.
