Help a noob with his triple monitor set up?!

[messy]

Hey,

I'm new and am looking for advice for setting up my 2 x LG 22" LCD monitors and my 32" Samsung TV. The two LGs will be used as normal monitors on a desktop while the Samsung is used for media; TV shows, movies, bed-browsing etc.

I currently have a dual monitor setup consisting of one of the LGs and the Samsung and have the other LG en route. The graphics card I currently have already has two DVI slots, one of which is being used by the Samsung via a DVI to HDMI connection, the other is using an DVI to VGA adaptor to connect the LG.

I have just ordered a VGA splitter from ebay for £3 hoping that I could get 3 unique displays that way, but I have since realised I was probably being naive and will need to buy an additional graphics card.

Like the thread title suggests I am newbie when it comes to hardware and graphics cards etc, and have had to goto my device manager to find out what the graphics card is. It is:

NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM)

I have 2 questions;

1) Will my computer allow me to use 2 graphics at once?
2) Assuming yes to the first question, what is the most basic and cheapest card that I can buy to do the job?

I am of course open to any other suggestions that do not require me purchasing a new card.

I hope someone can help me with this, thanks in advance!

 

[Mashed1316]

Hello there, first of all. you need to fill your system specs with your actual computer specs, not your email.. hehe.

Download Speccy - System Information - Free Download and post a screen shot of the summary for us to see the components in your PC.

Additionally, a single Nvidia card can't handle 3 monitors at the same time. but in SLI they're capable.

Post the Speccy screenshot, please

 

[messy]

Whoa, damn Chrome auto completer!! Lucky you noticed that! I have updated the specs I know about or think are important, will take a sceeny now, cheers!

 

[messy]

Heres the screenshot...

 

[Mashed1316]

OK, i've checked your motherboard's details and it seems that it's not possible to run 3 monitors from it. take a look (i'm guessing your PC is a HP Pavilion (because of the motherboard, being an OEM ASUS)

Motherboard Specifications, P5LP-LE (Emery2) PC de sobremesa HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7570.es - Asistencia Técnica HP (España - Español)

Unfortunately i can't find the documentation in english, but most of the page is in english, weird.

sorry to bring the bad news, but the only way around would be to buy an ATI/AMD HD5000 series with Eyefinity technology to run 3 monitors at the same time.

BTW, the Y-Splitter only duplicates the image on both monitors, it doesn't expand both monitors!

The only downside about upgrading your video card, is that you'll probably need to upgrade your PSU as well

 

[stormy13]

Actually Punkster if he has a free PCI slot something like a cheap 6200 PCI card would do for the third monitor (or a fourth even),

Zotac GeForce 6200 512MB DDR2 PCI DVI (ZT-62APH2N-HSL) - dabs.com

 

[Mashed1316]

Really? without needing to SLI both cards? :shock: didn't know that.

Yeah, the motherboard has a PCI slot, so i guess it'd work :huh: but, could the PSU be compromised by the fact that he's adding another video card? you know those HP PSUs are not too great

 

[messy]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Remember, noob here.. whats a PCI slot? I know there are about 3 unused slots at the back of the PC? Could you possible point me to a card that would do the job, not too expensive, just one that does the job?

Many thanks

Edit: Would this be suitable?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Matrox-Parhel...TV_Cards_TW&hash=item41569bac91#ht_691wt_1139

 

[Mashed1316]

This is a comparison for PCI ports.

I'd recommend the one that stormy13 suggested.

 

[messy]

Ah sorry I didnt see that link he posted! Hmmm 40 quid is abit to steep for me, would the one I posted not be ok then?

Edit: or this one 7500 128 MB DDR PCI Dual VGA Monitor Output Video Card on eBay (end time 04-Mar-11 08:52:20 GMT)

 

[Mashed1316]

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)

 

[messy]

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?

 

[Mashed1316]

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

 

[messy]

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..

 

[Mashed1316]

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.

 

[stormy13]

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,

http://www.sevenforums.com/sound-audio/3756-latest-realtek-hd-audio-driver-version.html

As for that 1080p issue you mentioned, let's get the drivers installed and then see how that goes.

Really? without needing to SLI both cards?

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.

 

[messy]

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..

 

[Mashed1316]

Yeah, sometimes Realtek's website is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too SLOW, sometimes i get 5kbps downloads... so, hang in there hehe

 

[messy]

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.

 

[messy]

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?