Configuring 2 Graphics Cards for Vegas

TETI wrote on 7/10/2003, 12:29 PM
I'm new to Vegas and PCs (coming over from the MAC world) and want to extend my desktop with a 3rd monitor. I'm running Windows XP Pro with an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro card supporting 2 LCD panels. I have a Radeon 7000 card to which I want to attach a third screen. ATI does not offer tech support on dual card setups and I've gotten no response from the RAGE 3D forum. Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks,
John

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 7/10/2003, 12:37 PM
Since you're already set up for multiple screens, the third should be available and used automatically as soon as Windows recognizes it. All you should have to do is install the card, install the drivers, and connect a monitor. After that you'll have three displays in your desktop instead of two. Windows allows up to nine displays, so three won't be a problem.
TETI wrote on 7/10/2003, 1:51 PM
I tried this but Windows only recognized the 7000 card. In Device Manager the 2 displays on the 9700 were x'd out. What did I do wrong? Do I have to install the 7000 driver before installing the card?

Thanks,
John
swampler wrote on 7/10/2003, 2:10 PM
Did you try putting the video card in a different slot?
TETI wrote on 7/10/2003, 2:49 PM
Not yet Steve. My experience is that the slot next to the AGP slot is the preferred place for additional cards. Was I misinformed? PC's are still mysterious beasts to me.

Thanks,
John
Chienworks wrote on 7/10/2003, 8:15 PM
Weird. Sorry, don't know what to tell you. We had a Matrox G400 dualhead card in an AGP slot which provided two displays. We put a G450 dualhead card in the PCI slot right beneath the AGP slot, booted up the computer and Windows said we had four displays. That was the entire installation procedure. Of course, in our case both cards used the same drivers. I don't know if that's the case with those two ATI cards.

Generally, the card in the PCI slot will be the primary video adapter and the card in the AGP slot will become the secondary adapter. It's possible that your BIOS is set to only access the primary card. There may be a BIOS setting somewhere you can change to activate a secondary card.
shogo wrote on 7/11/2003, 12:29 PM
No the AGP slot and the PCI slot closest to the AGP card allmost always use the same IRQ's. Though WINXP handles IRQ'S much better than Win9X I would recommend you put it on the second or third PCI slot's. When you look at the device property's of the 9700 card what does it say in the device manager I bet they are conflicting IRQ's or IO range's. see if that helps any.
TETI wrote on 7/11/2003, 12:57 PM
I checked with my system builder and discovered that, because of some troubleshooting we had done previously, the BIOS was set to see the PCI graphics card as primary. I changed it to AGP primary and the three displays now show up.

Thanks all for your input,

John