trouble with second monitor

S

Straps

Member
Hey,
I'm trying to hook a second monitor but I keep getting a no signal on the screen. I picked up two screens from goodwill which both work. An Emachine which has a vga, and a Viewsonic which has vga and dvi, though the dvi doesn't work. I have the Emachine hooked up using a dvi converter. It's working fine. when I try to hook up the view sonic into the second slot with a dvi-d converter nothing. I currently have a Mitsubishi hooked up through a dvi-d cable and it's working. If I swicth the Emachine with the Viewsonic it also works. MY graphics card is a Geforce gtx 670. Any help with this is greatly wanted. I didn't know if I try a straight vga to dvi-d cable would be any different.
 
Straps said:
Hey,
I'm trying to hook a second monitor but I keep getting a no signal on the screen. I picked up two screens from goodwill which both work. An Emachine which has a vga, and a Viewsonic which has vga and dvi, though the dvi doesn't work. I have the Emachine hooked up using a dvi converter. It's working fine. when I try to hook up the view sonic into the second slot with a dvi-d converter nothing. I currently have a Mitsubishi hooked up through a dvi-d cable and it's working. If I swicth the Emachine with the Viewsonic it also works. MY graphics card is a Geforce gtx 670. Any help with this is greatly wanted. I didn't know if I try a straight vga to dvi-d cable would be any different.
Click to expand...

The only input I can add is that a DVI-D cable can only deliver a digital signal; it doesn't have the pins for analog. For a DVI-VGA conversion, you need a DVI-I cable or a DVI-VGA converter on a card with DVI-I ports. Maybe that's your problem? Here's an image of the pinout difference:
DVI-D.ccom
 
my first slot is like that of the second image, that one they both work on, the second slot is like the first image. I had just got the converter for that type which didn't work with either monitor.
 
Straps said:
my first slot is like that of the second image, that one they both work on, the second slot is like the first image. I had just got the converter for that type which didn't work with either monitor.
Click to expand...
That's your problem; after Googling, it looks like many people are running into this problem with newer Nvidia cards. The DVI-D port simply can't output an analog signal, but companies still rip people off by selling DVI-D to VGA converters. It looks like you basically have three options:
  1. Try to get the DVI port on the Viewsonic monitor to work, or buy a monitor that has a working DVI input.
  2. Buy a cheap secondary card such as this that can output VGA to your secondary monitor.
  3. Buy a Digital-Analog signal converter, which will likely be somewhat expensive for a decent model. This is still definitely an option, though.
 
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Thanks. Since I'm a bit broke at the moment, I'll just have to stick with my Mitsubishi monitor for the second for now. I picked up both monitors at goodwill for 10 each so it wasn't a big loss, 20 for the one is still a huge improvement over what I had originally.
 
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