Dual Monitoring Question New Tatic

[squall_01]

Is it possible just to have it useing on board and a video card?

[patio]

No.
One or the other...

[squall_01]

thats what I thought.  This guy on yahoo tried to do it and wondered if you couldnt do it at all.  But I thought that it wouldnt be possible and had to do it with the right hardware.  So just wanted to try it if it would have worked.

[Kurtiskain]

TYes

ONLY if the card is PCI, and the onboard uses the AGP bus.

[squall_01]

How do I tell that?  I have my rig like that I think or at least the one that I would setup for use like this.

[Kurtiskain]

You must be using a PCI card not a PCI Express.

You must also boot with the PCI card as default in the BIOS if running XP, or the OS will more than likely blue screen.

The PCI  graphics card should be in the first PCI slot, not the first availabe, it MUST be the top PCI slot.

You may NOT have an AGP card and your onboard at the same time unless the chipset supports it...i have seem a few that allow it, but the AGP card used was pitiful, a 16MB nVidia Vanta.

Simply boot into windows with the PCI card as primary boot and see if both show, if it doesnt, try swapping them.

now as I said, I hd a few boards that could run both onboard and AGP card at the same time, but only if the onboard was selected for primary boot, and windows did the detection and utilization from there.

[squall_01]

so you cant say wheter or not the on board is.  I have a pci with a daul support

[Kurtiskain]

and I have a PCI-e with dual support...in fact i am running two now, You would not be able to run dual PCI monitors plus a onboard.

You can also run dual monitors with a PCI and a AGP card. so if you get a dual head PCI and dual head AGP I guess that would give you 4 monitors

[squall_01]

I thought that was possible, the thing is at the moment not sure if my board has agp but then would I set it like regulary and what is the point of dual monitoring?  Does it just display the same on both?

[patio]

TYes

ONLY if the card is PCI, and the onboard uses the AGP bus.

So you're saying a MBoard with a PCI vid card and an AGP card will run 2 monitors side by side ? ?
Which MBoards ?

[Kurtiskain]

So you're saying a MBoard with a PCI vid card and an AGP card will run 2 monitors side by side ? ?
Which MBoards ?

If the onboard is controlled by the AGP controller, it 'takes the place' of the AGP slot. hat is why when you place an AGP card in the onboard is disabled and there is nothing you can do about that

There is an example on This page.

Because the AGP bus and the PCI bus are separate (to an extent) You can run an AGP card alongside a PCI card.

I.e

I had a GeForce2 Ti 64Mb running alongside a little 4MB PCI card, it worked ok, except obviously the performance difference was crazy.

Another example Here (even though you cannot read the solutions) In the Question he states that if he uses a PCI card with his onboard he can use both the PCI and onboard for dual monitors.

I would imagine, however, there are boards out there that do not support this, by not using an AGP bus for its onboard, but a PCI-bus.

Anywho a interesting fact is that CH is noted as  reference on the AGP page for wikipedia 

[macdad-]

Used Dual-Monitor on my old Optiplex GX150, with a PCI graphics card and onboard(I believe it was set as AGP)

Works.

[squall_01]

it has a ati

[Kurtiskain]

Ati or nVidia wont make a difference, as long as it is a PCI card, not AGP, or, in the rare case it will let you use AGP and onboard. who knows, the onboard may be attached to the PCI bus.

[squall_01]

would the manual be able to tell you?