Two Monitors One PC

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Hey guys,

I'm looking at chucking in a PCI graphis card into my PC, with the intention of using the second screen as an extension of the extisting. (I play a bit of poker in my spare time.)

I currently have a AGP graphics card (Nvidia) that I dual view with my TV, so I can watch the latest episodes of lost.

I cant remember if it is just a matter of chucking in a second Graphics card and plugging a monitor in and then just fiddling with settings.

Has anyone done this before?

Much thanks in advance peeps.

 

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well two cards also works (one agp or pci-express and a pci) if you going to use onboard make sure that its configured and working first then install the second... umm win xp right?

 

Yep, windows XP.

One will be AGP, the other one plain PCI.

 

There are some Nvidia cards that have dual output. IMHO this will be a better choice, as PCI video cards are now getting very rare.

Harry.

 

I have just purchased a second hand GeForce 6600 GT PCIe card, only to discover my motherboard, even through it's less than a year old does not have a PCIe slot..........me thinks a motherboard upgrade is on the cards, but don't tell the wife LOL. I was going to then use 2 monitors on the GT card and 1 monitor on the AGP card

 

Ohhh, not good Nelix.

I did the same thing with RAM a while back. I bought a 1 gig stick, only to find out that my motherboard wouldnt take it. So I replaced the motherboard.

I'm only looking at getting a seriously basic PCI graphics card. Even something like a 5quid E-Bay jobbie would do, as it is to only display very very very basic stuff.

 

How come you never decided to check your mobo for compatiniliy?

 

With the RAM, i checked that my Mobo would accept the PC2100, just didnt check that my Mobo had a limit of 512mb per stick. I kinda assumed it would take it.

 

I have 2 monitors on my ATI 9600XT 256MB AGP graphics card (cost me £60 on eBay) best card I ever bought in my opinion. I previously had a GeForce 660LE AGP and that was the worst card I ever bought. kept crashing my games and my PC had to be rebooted in order to work again properly. I have a 15" LCD and a 19" LCD. guess which one is the main one? Anyway the 19" has a DVI port and the 15" (which I have had for over 2 years) is VGA. In all honesty I would not waste money on getting 2 graphics cards (I mean if you have one PCI and one AGP and it does work well done) But I am happy with my set up. I am currently getting some new upgrades. I have now got me new motherboard (MSI Neo-4 F) and just in the process of getting (hopefully) either an MSI X800XT 256MB PCIe card or an ATI X1300 PCIe card. Incidentally people...if you buy a new mobo, get one that has 2 PCIe slots, cos you can either use 2 ATI PCIe cards with say 4 DVI ports (2 on each). whats known as Crossfire (it will say if the card is Xfire ready) or there is also SLi (used for GeForce nVidia cards) personally with my experience of nVidia cards, I would stick with ATI. But that 2c......

 

I have a 9600 video card as well. It is great. I have a 22" iiyama CRT and a 20" NEC TFT and this works well.

Harry.

 

Slightly off topic, I recommend to anyone with a multi-monitor setup to get a bit of software called Ultramon. It has loads of helpful options like being able to extend the taskbar across all monitors (although it baffles me why MS never made this a standard option).