second card to run 3rd monitor

I have a Crossfire mother board so it has two PCI-E slots

What I want to do is buy a cheap second graphics card to add a 3rd monitor to my setup.

If I add a cheap ATI graphics card into my system that already has an X1900XT will this cause any problems and will it do what I want (just display as an extension of my current desktop)

also will this effect my ability to play games? Currently i only play CS:S on the main monitor and the second one just has TeamSpeak, Xfire and speedfan on it while I play. This causes no problems.

Going to do exactly the same thing only just driving two monitors from 2 cards. Hopefully everything will arrive tomorrow. Best advice I think is to stick with ATI to simplify drivers. Shouldn't case any problems but I'll let you know tomorrow how I get on!

Im thinking about doing the same as i may get a new 22", keep my 19" and also have my LCD tv pluged in XD

Out of interest, what would happen if i used an nvidia card with an ati?? Also my primary card will be better that my secondary, so how would that pan out gaming wise, i wouldnt have the TV on for gaming so would it jsut be the sake of setting up seperate profiles for gaming, tv and normal use???

Thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nvening

Im thinking about doing the same as i may get a new 22", keep my 19" and also have my LCD tv pluged in XD

Out of interest, what would happen if i used an nvidia card with an ati?? Also my primary card will be better that my secondary, so how would that pan out gaming wise, i wouldnt have the TV on for gaming so would it jsut be the sake of setting up seperate profiles for gaming, tv and normal use???

Thanks.

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A few important things to be aware of…

XP:

With XP's display driver model you can mix and match cards just fine. I ran a main rig with several different cards driving 4 screens for years. It just loads an instance of the driver for each chip found. Up to a limit of 4 cards IIRC without specialised kit.

Vista:

With Vista the display driver model was changed to ONLY allow initialisation of cards that share a driver core.

In reality that means you must have two (or more, up to 4 again I think) cards from the same manufacturer and ideally the same subtype (i.e. X1300 secondary, X1900 main).

You can get away with using older cards (I have an X600 and an X1950) but should support be dropped for the older cards from future drivers this could cause you a glass ceiling. Exactly the same applies to nVidia's cards.

In both cases the 'bus' that is used to connect the card is not relevant provided your PC can support it. I have used PCI+AGP, PCIe+PCI and in my current box PCIe+PCIe+PCI.

It is totally separate from any SLI or CrossFire sort of technology but don’t forget that if your board and cards support it 2+ identical cards could drive 3/4 screens then be called on to do CF/SLI duties when needed.

so this can be done?

If I have 1 X1900XT PCI-e card and then install a second low power graphics card in the second PCI-e slot just to run a 3rd screen?

What I would like is a card that is powered by the PCI-e slot and is really cool. It will not be doing any intesive graphics just displaying a desktop, webpages etc so what card would be best?

Well my setup runs just fine:

17" 4:3 tft @ 1280x1024 running off a HD 2400 Pro on the primary PCI-E slot

22" 16:10 @ 1680x1050 running off a X1950 XT on the secondary PCI-E slot

XP-Pro, CCC 7.8. Games run fine on the main screen with other programs up on the second one. With CS:S a alt-tab minimises the game so responding to msn/irc will minimise it but no disruption whilst just viewing them. Primary monitor is set in windows to be the 22" screen and games default to that. All groovey!

if you play in windowed mode (set it to the same rez as your screen anyway) you get a full screen game but you can interect with your desktop on the other monitor without the need to minimise