Two Monitors, One CPU

[Cid]

I wanted to set this up, but it ain't workin.

I have 2 video cards: one that's integrated into the motherboard and an old VooDoo3/2000. When I plug in the voodoo, and I hook up both monitors to both video cards, only the voodoo displays a picture. The power is on, it's all hooked up right.

When I go to display, I only see one monitor, instead of two. Any pointers?

[crono_logical]

You'll have to check your BIOS settings when you boot the PC up. As far as I know, most motherboards will disable the onboard one if they detect some other video card plugged in.

I'd guess you either want to tell it to not disable the onboard controller, or use the onboard as the primary graphics controller so leaving Windows to detect and do the rest for the other card after booting, but having not done this myself before, I can't say whether it'd work.

[Flying Mullet]

Why do you want to use the integrated video card?

[Cid]

The integrated one is actually better than the voodoo one. Either way, I just thought having 2 monitors would be cool.

[Rainecloud]

It is cool. When you have them set up correctly, you can drag items/windows from one to the other.

'Tis neat.

[Cid]

Yeah, you can have like all your instant messanger windows on one monitor and you webpages on the other. To switch, you just scroll on over to the other side of the screen and you're magically in the other monitor.

[Flying Mullet]

Okay, that sounds cool. :thumb:

[crono_logical]

Good for videos too, you can fullscreen it on one monitor and still have chat etc. on the other. Even better when the second monitor is actually a TV :p

[Peegee]

The only way is to have an integrated monitor port, right? I haven't seen any motherboards with two AGPs in my life.

If I could afford a second monitor just for the purposes of playing video games and chatting/surfing, hehehe....

[crono_logical]

You can get video cards with dual VGS/digital output though, I think ATI does a few. I'm not sure if Windows is capable of using a PCI and AGP card at the same time, not something I've been able to try before :p

I'd expect any decent card these days to have a TV-Out connector though so you can use a TV as a secondary monitor for video playback :p

[Endless]

I have a GeForce fx5200, and, even if it's the cheapest model, it has a TV-out connector, and for not much more, you can get it with a dvi connector on top of it. Since I'm fairly sure that dvi->rgb adapters exist, you can plug two monitors. Personally, the monitor+tv combo is enough for me, given that the main use of the second monitor is to watch DVDs on (tv's bigger, and it's in front of the couch).

I think Linux could, if you configure it to run enough display servers (1 per card), display stuff on two screens, reardless of what the bios says is the primary, and I found this for windows:

http://www.digitalroom.net/index2.html
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307873

[Cid]

Yeah, I finally figured it out. Indeed the bios had to be altered, as it thought the primary card was the PCI instead of the onboard one.