8400 GS PCIe + 6200 PCI to run 4 monitors

So, the 8400 GS (evga) is my main card, running 2 monitors already. I popped in the 6200 (evga) PCI card, only slot I had available, and figured it would be that easy.

BOY was I wrong. Both cards show up in device manager but the 6200 has the yellow triangle on it. I tried loaded drivers for both, playing with everything in Nvidia control panel.... to no avail.

I can run my monitors off the 6200 in PCI slot OR I can run as normal, 2 monitors from 8400 in PCIe slot.

PC is a HP 6300 Pro Microtower




Is there a BIOS setting or some other place I should be looking? Or because the 2nd card is a PCI (not express) is it not possible?

Anyone?


I've had limited, and completely mixed results. It works for a sec, then as soon as I try to enable the 3rd or 4th monitor it all flakes out again, or when I just try to rotate a display. Is it because of the cheap ass cards?

I'm trying a 9500 GT in the PCIe slot with a bit better results. But not much

smarteyeball said:

Which driver did you download? The 6200 is now considered a legacy card. Try these:

NVIDIA DRIVERS 307.83WHQL


By rights, there shouldn't be a need to change anything in the BIOS - but double check the Graphics Adapter is set to PCI/PCI-E

(The terms may be slightly different).


Off the top of my head, I can't think of a reason why it shouldn't work.

I'm using the newest driver for the 9500 GT, I think it is like the 320.17 or something.

Faladu said:

Both of those cards are junkers today, you could likely do a one card Radeon HD solution and handle all 4 with a drastic improvement, albeit you will likely need ACTIVE mini-DP adaptors or cables to pull it off, newer slot type, I paid $30ish for a mini-DP to HDMI adaptor and working great to my 39" HDTV. [doing 3 monitors atm, have 1 mini-DP still available]

Just thought I would mention that alternative to 2 different video cards, which isn't recommended, and junkers, performance I would expect to be horrid, any way.

Argue, the other way if you want, I won't mind.

Yikes, noticed that was a PCI slot video card for 2 monitors:

That PCI card is great spare for testing motherboards or emergency video on a motherboard with no on-board video, I have one myself, so old though I couldn't tell you what chipset it is. (14+ years old I think but stored away in a anti-static bag).

Yea, you can tell the cards are.... old, lol. Problem is that we were trying the cheapest method to accomplish this. With only one PCIe slot, which was already taken with what we use company wide (8400 gs) a second nvidia card seemed like it should have also been the easiest way.

I had zero luck with the 8400 gs, I just happened to have a 9500gt on the shelf and had mixed results with that. Nvidia control panel completely flaked out on me. Says it isn't even installed on my PC anymore, windows installed the drivers I had already downloaded (the 320 or whatever). If I run the nvidia driver download it says I don't have any version of the drivers installed. And in windows CP every time I rotate a display everything goes black. I was reduced to guessing the menus that popped up. Once I make a change and hit apply, everything goes black. I then hit left arrow and enter to 'keep changes' then enter again to hit 'OK'. At that point everything is still black, but if I hit ctrl-alt-delete I get the 'log-off, start task manager, etc, etc' screen. If I hit log-off it takes a while, but eventually does log off. When I log back in the change has stuck.

After 2 full days it seems it is working. Though I finally got it late friday evening/afternoon and didn't get much time to play with it.

Pic below if it will let me link to a G+ pic....







Appreciate the responses everyone. I will update here again if/when I start playing with this again. Oh and Faladu, the monitors we just got (in pic) came with display ports and the cords so we now have 25 cords. A card that handles 4 by itself would be best I think, problem is that we are using HP 6300's at work. 320 wt PSU can't really handle any cool GPU's