Can i have 2 GFX cards?

[DanWoodbury]

i have a MSI NX7300 GS (NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS) and on that card i have 1 DVI-Sub connector, 1 S-Video connector and 1 DVI connector.

for some reason the s-video connector will not work with the other 2 connectors plugged in so is there any way of me getting another GFX card of some sort so that i can have another DVI-Sub connection so that i can also plug my PC into my TV?

thanks

 

[wahnula]

What's your slot availability? You did not post your mainboard specs. You can run a PCI graphics card for TV but would get more throughput with PCI-E, even a x1 slot has almost twice the throughput of a standard PCI slot.

Plus, PCI-E has a different architecture for more sustained speed of connection with the front-side bus.

Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

 

[DanWoodbury]

sorry my motherboard is Gigabyte GN K8NF 9.

i have 1 PCI-express slot but it has my MSI card in it, i do have available PCI slots.

so if i got just a standard card with a VGA output it should work? all i want it for really is to watch movies on my TV instead of having to watch the computer

i know before that i have had to link the 2 cards in order to have 2

 

[wahnula]

If your motherboard looks like this:

http://www.techzine.nl/f/u/6361.jpg

...you have (3) PCI-Express slots, (1) x16 slot and (2) x1 slots. The small black sockets are x1 slots. You can either buy a PCI-E x1 card like this:

http://www.directron.com/h155hmf256edde.html

or a PCI video card:

http://www.directron.com/3dfr55256p.html

Don't expect great quality, but either should be fine to run your TV. You will have better bandwidth and a faster connection with PCI-E.

Tony

"...an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind" - M.L. King

 

[Amos43]

DanWoodbury, you don't need PCI-E. The best resolution you can get with S-video is 576i, or ~21MB/s - which is well under the 133MB/s bandwidth of the PCI bus. You're not likely to see decreased performance of other PCI devices, unless maybe if you have lots of legacy PATA hard drives.

576*720 resolution * 50Hz * 8bit color = 165888000bits/s = 20.74MB/s

Unless you really don't need that PCI-e slot and the price is equivalent to legacy PCI, go with a PCI card.

 

[vacunita]

or some reason the s-video connector will not work with the other 2 connectors plugged in

In what way doesn't it work?

I have a similar setup, and I need to set the TV out of the S-Video to be the Primary display device. Otherwise the DVD's copy protection kicks in, and all I see is a black window on the TV.

Once set to Primary the DVD can be seen fine on the TV, but shows a black window on the computer. Its the Copy Protection, DVD's usually will only play on the Primary Display Device.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[DanWoodbury]

i have a dual monitor setup as it is so if i used the s-video that would be a third monitor on the same gfx card but i cannot get the s-video output to work at all, it does not recognise that it is plugged in or anything, it may aswel not be there.

so what im looking for is another gfx card so that i can have a dvi-sub output to go into my tv as the third monitor.

Amos43: so do you think that a normal PCI card would be fine for this and would work along side my current gfx card?

 

[Nelviticus]

Dan, some TVs can't be automatically detected by graphics cards over an S-video cable. In the graphics drivers there should be an option to 'force TV detection', which should solve your problem.

Where to find this setting depends on which driver version you're using. I have pretty old drivers here at work so I find it as follows:
- Right-click desktop and choose 'properties'
- Go to the 'settings' tab
- Click the 'advanced' button
- Go to the tab for your card (probably 'GeForce 7300')

Now here's where it gets different depending on the driver version. On mine I get a tree menu of special settings and the option I need is under the 'tools' item. If yours is different just have a hunt around until you find it.

Regards

Nelviticus