Hay BG, Monitor woes.

[The_OG_Nelta]

I am running a 8800 Nvidia GT video card and I have been dual monitoring for awhile. I recently went out and bought a DVI splitter to add one more monitor on this video card, and its just producing a mirror image.

There's no way I can use the 3rd monitor separately?

[Furtwangler]

Your video card has to support more than 2 (It needs to have 3 ports.) The only cards I'm aware of that can do this, are ATI cards with Eyefinity, (Any of the new 5 series? someone check that) and the 3rd port is a DisplayPort, so you'll need an adapter to make it DVI, or to have a monitor that takes DisplayPort. Using a splitter, whether powered or not, will just make a mirror image which is what you're getting now.
Edit: or you can get another videocard, this guy seems to have done such a thing, I didn't think you could. http://daggle.com/my-multimonitor-se...ne-computer-76

[The_OG_Nelta]

Don't want to make a new thread, so i'll bump this one.

So anyways, I figure I would just buy a cheap video card just for the multi monitor capabilities. Now what i'm wondering is, is it safe to mix 2 different video cards? They will both still be nvidia of course.

[desertigloo]

had a buddy do this in college, he had two running of the PCI-E and just bought some shit PCI card for the third screen. He didn't have any conflict, but I would stick within brands (ATI vs Nvidia). I dont know if he had any issues as far as gaming goes (ie if he would have to set his cards to make sure they'd run off his gfx card or anything), but I would think your computer can figure out which card to use on it's own.

It's honestly pretty sweet, and well worth doing. I only have two atm, but due to their size (24" and 28") I'd have to buy in that range again for it not to feel wierd, and that's expensive

So what I'm getting at is:
make sure the card brands match (to limit driver related issues)
hook up the monitors
???
profit

should be easy as pie

[The_OG_Nelta]

Just put in a old 6200 Nvidia video card, it won't recognize, any idea?

[fishstix]

we also tried an 8500 gt, wouldn't recognize the 2nd card. we tried it with just the 8500 to register, and then run with both, but no good

[The_OG_Nelta]

so tl;dr for people

I have windows 7

Dual video cards
8800GT and 8500 both nvidia

plugging both of them in, the 2nd one will not be recognized.
Any idea? or i'll have to buy a external video card

[desertigloo]

that's really weird, might be something new with windows 7?
Sorry, worked pretty much out of the box for my buddy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-162-_-Product

That should do the trick though. sorry it didnt work for you, i'm not an expert on the subject, only thing I could think of would be having to tweak bios settings

[The_OG_Nelta]

I've read it should work, just no clue why it isn't recognizing the 2nd video card..

[toonces]

I don't have any personal experience with what you trying to do but, have you tried that old video card by itself? Maybe it just needs get installed first without the other videocard plugged.

[fishstix]

yeah, we tried installing the 8500 solo and it registered and installed fine. upon plugging in 2 cards, the 2nd card wouldn't appear on the device manager anywhere. it's as if that second slot is dead or disabled. I guess the one thing we didnt try was plugging in a card solo into the 2nd slot, but he's going out to buy an external video dongle thing anyways >.>