Dual Display Integrated Graphics

L

lazerradial2003

New Member
I'm planning on setting up a dual display system for my home PC however I am new to Dual Display setups having only used them on other peoples conputers.
My Current Home PC has an integrated graphics card which shares the main memory, which is adequete for most applications, word processing and so-on. However the motherboard has an AGP slot and i have a second monitor lying around the house.
I would like to purchase an AGP video card and spread the windows desktop across both monitors, meaning i could use one for games and watching dvd's and the other for word processing and browsing etc.
I am however unsure as to whether i could just put in an AGP video card along side my integrated graphics card and use the in built windows Dual Display facilities or whether i would have to purchase two new graphics cards (one AGP and one PCI) which are specifically compatable with Dual Display.
 
I think this won't be a problem getting a new graphics card and setting it up to work with dual display along with your integrated one. I think they should work fine with each other.

If they don't, you won't have to buy 2 graphics cards, (1 AGP and 1 PCI), you can just buy 1 AGP Graphics card that supports dual monitors, usually, most cards support this now, the other outlet is called a dvi, and you will have to buy a dvi converter as well.

In both cases, you will have to buy a graphics card, so go buy one with dual display capability, if it works fine with your onboard one, then great, if it didn't, then you got a card that can work on dual display by it's own.
 
most dual output cards come with a DVI->Analog VGA converter so you shouldn't have to buy one
 
Personally, i recommend an Ati All-in-Wonder series card. Not only do you get dual display but a TV tuner and Tivo function as well. Just my opinion.
 
Thanks very much, i definetely like the sound of the All-In-Wonder series cards, i'll look into those. I thought i'd have a go at setting up a dual display system with the integrated graphics card and an old PCI S3 Virge i had lyking around at home. I plugged it in and windows detected it and installed drivers in the background as expected. However if i look in device manager it tells me:

This device cannot start. (Code 10)

It is apparently plugged into:

PCI Slot 1 (PCI bus 0, device 9, function 0)

And is reckognised as a display adaptor however it fails to work, im stumped as to why this would be since i would imagine it is compatable with XP due to the drivers being packaged with the standard XP drivers. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Thanks, Ben.
 
Having looked at some other peoples solutions to similar problems, i set the Bios boot to PCI and restarted the computer. Although nothing was displayed on either card during startup, as expected once XP loaded the integrated card (my primary windows monitor) became active again and a picture was displayed.
I then went to display settings and both cards had been detected so I enabled the monitor and checked the 'spread my dekstop' box and clicked apply. After a few seconds of inactivity the computer then restarted unexpectedly (hard restart not a windows restarts). It then entered into a loop whereby whenever it reached the point where it was about to display a picture on the screen, it restarted.
My very very uninformed guess is that it is something to with IRQ allocations (one is on 16 one is on 17) or the like however i am something of a novice when it comes to IRQ's as i have always steared clear of them in the past and am therefor reluctant to make any changes without advice!
I'd really appreciate any advice on this, i know it would be mroe sensible to simply buy a new graphics card but i would like to make this one work as a matter of principle!
Thanks, Ben.
 
I had one of the real higher end all in wonder cards (9800, if i remember correctly?) it was like 300 bucks, i got it for a deal from work. anyways, i had nothing but trouble with it (as far as video production goes, im not a gamer so i cant comment on that). I liked having tv as my wallpaper though, that was cool...

anyways, my first dual display was a pci 32mb vid card (old old junker i had sitting around) and i used the integrated vga on my monitor. it worked fine. maybe try that for starters...

i now have an invidia gforce card i bough. you can get the dvi-vga connectors for a dollar on ebay.
 
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