Dualing with PCI and AGP cards

[nitan]

Hi there, i have an old PCI gfx card lying around here and was wondering if i cud chuck it into my system and use it to dual screen with my AGP card. I have spoken to dicki about this and he sez it can be done but the card in the PCI slot will become the primary gfx adapter. Does anyone know of a way to prevent this (ie such that the card in the AGP slot remains as the primary card)... TIA

nitan:)

[nitan]

ok....i have a GF2 GTS in my AGP port....my plan is to chuck in an old (5 years...perhaps more) PCI creative 3d Blaster 8meg....and then dual screen....any ideas on how i shud go about this???...my plan is when i get home to rip out my modem (dont need as we are on broadband) and chuck this creative POS into the PCI slot that it leaves open.....then its a matter of finiding the correct drivers and then i suhd be able to dual screen right???....TIA

nitan:)

[dicki]

yeah when i did it windows detects you have 2 GFX cards installed pops up a dos screen tellinf you it's going to boot in dual moniter mode then it just goes and does it... very smooth no hassles. slap on the drivers and then have a play in the display control panal thingy (technical term for it :) )

you'll see a whole bank of new options for the second moniter and a screen that lets you choose how the moniters are "stacked" one on top of the other, side by side, or cloned that kind of thing

dicki

[nitan]

i just hope it does go as smoothly...a friend of mine was saying that it may not work if the PCI card is too old...is this true??....on the face of it i did not think it wud matter on the age of the card....

nitan:)

[Farabomb]

I used two s3 2meg PCI cards in my old amptron board and it worked fine. Plug and pray worked this time.You should have no problems Nitan.

[nitan]

sorted....dual screening right now :)....worked fine....just one thing....could do with a new monitor now:rolleyes: ....currently using an old 15in compaq POS....i have a dan 15inch which is ok....but i have just spotted a Dell 19" on ebay for £170 buy it now....£20 deliv....very tempted...but i am a god damn bum student....hence in masses of debt....sooooooooooooooo very tempted tho....

nitan:)

[DCMan]

Ok - lemme get this straight.... I have a GF3 AGP in my system, and i think i have a really old Permedia2 card lying around somewhere. I wanna play! :D

If i put the permedia2 (PCI) in aswell, will it use the PCI card as the default over the AGP though?

fanks :)

DCMan

[Farabomb]

I feel your pain Nitan. I'm not a student, just poor :(

But that's not stoping me from replacing my 15" with a used 19-21" I'm going to pick up this weekend. :D

[dicki]

yes thats right dc man... you've got to make sure you can select what graphics card to use in the game itself... i know q3 lets you do it... and unreal tourny... not sure about any others

dicki

[nitan]

hmmm...i dunno DC....dicki i my games all seem to run fine thru the AGP port....XP seems to have selected my monitor on the GTS as the primary monitor...i did nothing to achieve this it just seems to have done that....weird huh...???

nitan:)

[DCMan]

hmmm...

ok.. i gonna go play now, i think :D

fanks :)

[Player0]

Nitan, not really too weird. Since the AGP card was installed first, DirectX calls it the Primary Display Adapter. Of course, sometimes bad drivers for the PCI card may force the DirectX to switch primarys. But you can use 'dxdiag' to switch between which card is Primary and which one isnt.

As dicki sais, you can also change this manually in most games.

You might even beable to use both cards at once in something like Quake...if you can find the right drivers. There are some specialty GL drivers like that around.

[nitan]

Thanks for the info P0...hmmm...well the gfx card i have in my PCI slot is lame...it cant even cope with placing the output from my TV card onto it...ie the screen...the playback/viewing goes all jerky....perhaps a driver update will help....all i really wanted it for was so that i cud have WMP and IE running in one monitor and work and stuff in the other....works gr8 for that....:)

nitan:)