Well, i looked into Matrox's website and they don't list any Windows 7 drivers, they do have a Windows Vista one that could work in "compatibility mode" but i'm not sure if that card supports Aero, and i wouldn't recommend it for running a 32" monitor let's say in a 1080p resolution, meant to play videos and media files (according to your original post)
Funny you should mention 1080p as I tried watching a mkv a while ago in 1080p and it didnt work at all, kept glitching out, would this be due to the lack of memory on my machine or on the card? 720p works fine incidentally.
How about the second card I just posted?
Not too much on the CPU but on the GPU, if the GPU isn't "powerful" enough, it won't play 1080p files smoothly..
The problem is that i don't think that your current video card could play a 1080p file smoothly and the one that stormy13 suggested is actually a lower end video card, so it won't help at all at that resolution
Well I'm not overly bothered about 1080p to be honest, 720p is just fine for me atm. I just want to be able to use all 3 adequately, most of my media isn't HD anyway..Not too much on the CPU but on the GPU, if the GPU isn't "powerful" enough, it won't play 1080p files smoothly..
The problem is that i don't think that your current video card could play a 1080p file smoothly and the one that stormy13 suggested is actually a lower end video card, so it won't help at all at that resolution
I see, well... the other issue that has to be taken care of is the fact that they're both different chips (Nvidia and Matrox) and i don't know if that could lead to a drivers issue, but i'm definitely sure that it'll cause an issue.
It's like mixing an AMD/ATI card with a Nvidia one.. they will create a driver conflict, my suggestion, use both Nvidia chips since you already have a Nvidia card on your PC.
That 7500 you linked too has even less support than the Matrox you linked to. ATI dropped support for it back before Vista came out, so at best you would have to use the ;ast XP driver for it (and then no Aero, and not sure what if any affect those old drivers would have on the Nvidia drivers).
One reason for recommending the 6200 is to avoid any possible driver problems. Both cards use the WDDM 1.0 driver model,
Windows Display Driver Model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
where that old 7500 would be stuck using the XPDM, There are slightly newer Nvidia PCI cards (8400 GS for example), but they use the WDDM 1.1 driver model. Now as far as I know you can have cards that use different driver models, but they cannot use the same manufacturer driver (Nvidia WDDm 1.0 with a card that uses WDDM 1.1). What happens is that the older spec driver cancels out the newer one, causing the newer card to not work (quite a few threads about it here in the forum). That's why I said as far as I know you can mix them as long as they are from different manufacturers (ATI with Nvidia, Nvidia with ATI), but I don't recall seeing confirmation one way or the other.
Speaking of drivers from that Speccy screen shot you haven't installed either the audio or video drivers, both are running on the Windows default drivers. For the video considering the age of the 7600 GS I would avoid the latest drivers (2xx.xx series) and go with an older driver, something like this one,
NVIDIA DRIVERS 197.45 WHQL
for the audio according to the specs for the motherboard it has the Realtek ALC882, which can find download links too here,
Latest Realtek HD Audio Driver Version
As for that 1080p issue you mentioned, let's get the drivers installed and then see how that goes.
SLI has never been needed to use two Nvidia cards for more than 2 monitors. In fact when Nvidia's version of SLI came out (3dfx was first) if you were running two cards in SLI and more than 2 monitors, you had to disable SLI for the extras to work.Really? without needing to SLI both cards?
Thanks stormy the display drivers are installed and for some reason the audio is taking an age to download... Will try a 1080p now n get back to you..
Yeah, sometimes Realtek's website is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too SLOW, sometimes i get 5kbps downloads... so, hang in there hehe
Nah 1080p is just the same.. I'm not fussed about that tho...
My PC is ever-so loud atm btw! Sounds like its about to take off, think it needs a good dusting! So if I take the plunge and get the card you posted, thats all I need todo? Infact I'm gunna take it apart now and dust it. BRB.
Bloody hell I hate Virgin Media.. can never get onto the internet after a reboot.. WTF!
Ok so I checked my machine and there is a space, right at the bottom of the tower. So your recommendation is to just get a PCI Nvidia card yes, the most suitable one for me being the one you posted earlier stormy?
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