2 different vid cards on Asus A8N-SLI

[quadsevens]

I am hoping you guys will be able to help me out with an issue I am having. I am trying to run two different video cards on an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe.

I am not wanting to run SLI. I just want to run multiple monitors.

I know I am starting off on the wrong foot since I am using an ATI and a NVIDIA card but I should at least get crappy video out of it.

I am running the latest versions of drivers and software for all the monitors and video cards.

XP recognizes all the items correctly however I can only get the two monitor on the main card to work. The other monitor on the second card shows up in the display properties and there is no conflicts but I get an error saying that the driver is for an older version of windows so it defaults to the standard vga driver and I cannot change the resolution to anything other than -1 by -1 pixels.

Any ideas you may have would be helpful. I am using UltraMon as well to manage the desktops and all the monitors show up in the UM control panel but I can not extend the desktop to them.

 

[Nelviticus]

I am pretty sure that the problem is down to the fact that you're using a mixture of ATI and nVidia cards. I believe that multiple displays are handled by the video driver so all the cards you want to use in a multi-display set-up have to use the same driver.

You could try uninstalling all the drivers so you fall back to using the default drivers (I think they're basic VESA drivers) but even if that works it's likely to be very sluggish.

I would recommend getting a new graphics card. Even very cheap ones nowadays support dual monitors on a single card. My multi-monitor setup here at work uses an nVidia GeForce 6200 which you can pick up for peanuts.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[quadsevens]

Yeah I figured that was the problem. I can use either card alone and they work great as soon as the other one is introduced things get bad.

I am going to be upgrading the 3 LCDs on Friday so I will order a new PCI card at the same time.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[Nelviticus]

I missed the bit about three monitors, I assumed you were talking about two.

Matrox do something called the 'triple head 2 go' which you attach to a single video output and which with the accompanying software lets you use three displays. This is more of an integrated solution than using two cards - I've no idea how good the nVidia or ATI drivers are at driving 3 monitors attached to 2 cards but I have heard that the Matrox device works well.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[quadsevens]

Yeah the only reason I tried to mix the two chipsets is because I use an ATI All In Wonder as my main card and since I needed to hook up a 3rd monitor I had to put in a new vid card. Since I had a Nvidia 7300 laying around I thought I would give it a try.

I heard good things about the Matrox device but I want to be able to use the secondary PCIe slot.