I am hoping to install a second video card in order to hook up a TV to my system. I currently have two monitors hooked up to a Radeon x800 on a A8N-SLI motherboard. I am just trying to figure out what type of video card to buy. All information I have seen online talking about secondary video cards only mentions AGP or normal PCI cards. I currently have a spare PCI-E slot on my motherboard and was hoping to use that. Can anyone confirm that two PCI-E cards (not using SLI or Crossfire) would work?
That's the plan but as far as I understood it with two monitors already hooked up to the current video card if I added an S-Video connection it would blank one of the monitors. Is this incorrect?
Because you can only have two monitors active at one time, on the X800 at least. I tried this a while back, but you can only have either both monitors going, or the TV and a monitor, doesn't matter what mode it is either. even clone. And yes, if you bought another GFX you can put it in your spare PCI-E slot. Just make sure its an ATI card, otherwise you can end up with driver conflicts.
r4tch3t is right. The second PCI-Express slot is just that, a PCI-Express 16x slot. Another video card in there should work just fine to run another monitor. Might need to reinstall the drivers, though. And yes, you should probably get another Radeon. Running both ATI and nVidia graphics drivers on the same machine is just asking for trouble.
No you cant have the three, hooked up. I tried it with my 6800GT Ultra. I brought another card on PCi-Ex and it works fine, I did have a few restarts (when I first plugged it in) where Windows was getting confused. I didnt get the exact same card, which is why I think I had a problem. Altho today im re-installing windows so everything will be nice and fresh, should be interesting to see if windows likes the idea with a fresh install? I would recommend getting the exact same model of card, should make things easier. One tip tho, to get my 2 cards working I had to use the Microsoft Drivers first and then install the Nvidia drivers, I know your on about an ATi card, but no doubt windows will be a bitch Regards GiGo
So even with two cards you can't have three visual output devices working? Can anyone else confirm this? Would I just be better off keeping the one card and then switching the profiles when I want to output to the tv instead of the second monitor?
No no no, he was confirming that you can't have 3 visual output devices on one GFX, if you put another in you will be able to use up to 4 visual output devices.
OK, thanks everyone. Didn't want to go through the hassle of having to return a card if I couldn't use it. Going to buy the card today.
Either the x1650 Pro 512 MB PCI-E or x1950 Pro 256 MB PCI-E depending on how much extra I want to spend (have a gift card for part of it).
All Done!! Well the new card is installed and I have my primary monitor running off of it. The secondary monitor is run off the old card and the TV is a clone of that. Got Meedio running to the second monitor and also displays on the TV in the other room. Thanks for the help everyone!
