Which would be the way to get 3 monitors working?
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Hello all, I'm thinking on get 3 new monitors (now I have two of them that are not very good). I'm working with Vista Business and my Graphics Card is a NVIDIOA GeForce 8500 GT. I'm not in the hardware side and as far as I've been able to see in the NVIDIA web page the SLI option (something that it seems that my card has) is what I do need. The question here is: if my computer has only one PCI Express port, how can I connect another NVIDIA card to it? Thank you in advance.
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Hello all, I'm thinking on get 3 new monitors (now I have two of them that are not very good). I'm working with Vista Business and my Graphics Card is a NVIDIOA GeForce 8500 GT. I'm not in the hardware side and as far as I've been able to see in the NVIDIA web page the SLI option (something that it seems that my card has) is what I do need. The question here is: if my computer has only one PCI Express port, how can I connect another NVIDIA card to it? Thank you in advance.
To be short the only way to get 3rd monitor going is if you add another videocard to your PC. Since you don't have another PCI-E slot you'll have to buy PCI card (either that or upgrade motherboard). It also has to be nVidia card to avoid driver problems. You can still find them if you look hard enough. Another important thing is that both of your videocards must be supported by the same driver. Usually it's not a problem since nVidia has unified drivers that work for the majority of the cards, but it sometimes is when the videocard becomes too old to support or when videocard manufacturer makes custom changes to the card requiring custom drivers (7900 AGP series come to mind). BTW don't touch SLI tab, it's not what you need
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Hello all, I'm thinking on get 3 new monitors (now I have two of them that are not very good). I'm working with Vista Business and my Graphics Card is a NVIDIOA GeForce 8500 GT. I'm not in the hardware side and as far as I've been able to see in the NVIDIA web page the SLI option (something that it seems that my card has) is what I do need. The question here is: if my computer has only one PCI Express port, how can I connect another NVIDIA card to it? Thank you in advance.
Here's a little info on the experience I've had. I run 3 monitors using NVidia cards. I have an 8600GT in the PCI-E slot and an NVidia 6200 card in a PCI slot. I originally started with a 5200/FX PCI card but the NVidia driver couldn't support both the newer 8600 GT and the older 5200 at the same time. NVidia support told me that their drivers only support 3 generations (8, 7 and 6 series) so the 5200 was too old to run along side the 8600. I found a 6200 PCI card online, I think it was at newegg. I didn't have to mess with SLI stuff, and the only issue I've had is with hibernation. After hibernation my PC didn't want to wake up, but I think that's more of an issue with their driver's Vista 64 bit support which is the OS i'm running on this PC.
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Hello all, I'm thinking on get 3 new monitors (now I have two of them that are not very good). I'm working with Vista Business and my Graphics Card is a NVIDIOA GeForce 8500 GT. I'm not in the hardware side and as far as I've been able to see in the NVIDIA web page the SLI option (something that it seems that my card has) is what I do need. The question here is: if my computer has only one PCI Express port, how can I connect another NVIDIA card to it? Thank you in advance.
It's not SLI, you just need dual gfx cards. SLI (or crossfire for ATI) lets you use two (or more) cards to drive a single monitor for better performance in 3D applications (normally gaming). If you have a free PCI (not express) slot you can get a lowend card that'll be fine for nongaming use. EVGA recently released (announced?) USB graphics adapters able to run 1440x1050 or 1600x1200 (different models), but I haven't seen any reviews yet. While somewhat more expensive these'd have the option of adding a 3rd screen to a laptop, which is normally otherwise impossible. Matrox sells splitter (dual/Tripple head to go) boxes that'll let you connect multiple monitors to a single hardware port. The catch is that your OS will see a single extra wide display not two separate monitors. That may result in maximize behavior different than what you want.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Hello all, I'm thinking on get 3 new monitors (now I have two of them that are not very good). I'm working with Vista Business and my Graphics Card is a NVIDIOA GeForce 8500 GT. I'm not in the hardware side and as far as I've been able to see in the NVIDIA web page the SLI option (something that it seems that my card has) is what I do need. The question here is: if my computer has only one PCI Express port, how can I connect another NVIDIA card to it? Thank you in advance.
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Hello all, I'm thinking on get 3 new monitors (now I have two of them that are not very good). I'm working with Vista Business and my Graphics Card is a NVIDIOA GeForce 8500 GT. I'm not in the hardware side and as far as I've been able to see in the NVIDIA web page the SLI option (something that it seems that my card has) is what I do need. The question here is: if my computer has only one PCI Express port, how can I connect another NVIDIA card to it? Thank you in advance.
We use a DisplayLink USB adaptor for this: http://www.displaylink.com/installation.html[^]. It seems to "just work", which is fine by me. :)
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To be short the only way to get 3rd monitor going is if you add another videocard to your PC. Since you don't have another PCI-E slot you'll have to buy PCI card (either that or upgrade motherboard). It also has to be nVidia card to avoid driver problems. You can still find them if you look hard enough. Another important thing is that both of your videocards must be supported by the same driver. Usually it's not a problem since nVidia has unified drivers that work for the majority of the cards, but it sometimes is when the videocard becomes too old to support or when videocard manufacturer makes custom changes to the card requiring custom drivers (7900 AGP series come to mind). BTW don't touch SLI tab, it's not what you need
> It also has to be nVidia card to avoid driver problems Not strictly speaking. I have an Nvidia 8800GTS (dual-head, PCI-E), a Radeon 7500 (dual-head) and a Radeon 7000 (single display). Both ATIs (obviously) are PCI. The real kicker is that my OS is XP x64--surprisingly, it actually picks up both cards without any problem. What I don't understand though is that the Radeon 7000 can do 1920x1200 (!!), while the 7500 will, at most, do 1280x1024--any higher than that, and it'll start shifting the display as you move the mouse close to the edges...so the 7000 drives a 24" monitor at 1920x1200, while the 7500 is hooked up to an older 19" monitor...