Possible stupid question (1 Viewer)

[Mike LS]

I know that XP has support for dual video cards. I don't have any experience with a setup like this. Would that allow me to say, connect a projector to one card and a monitor to the other and display different programs on each display?

I've got a PC I'm using at church to do PowerPoint and in the near future will be using it for recording as well. The problem I have now is that the projection system is kind of rigged (we're moving soon and didn't want to break the bank on a temporary system), so there's no really good way to freeze the screens while you're fooling with another program (and not have it show on the projectors).
I'd love to be able to have my recording software display on the monitor and PP display on the projector.

Is this possible, or is that how a dual card system would work? Can the cards display different info?

 

[JamesHl]

Yes, just make sure your computer is up to doing two things at once. Some video cards have builtin support for doing this so you wouldn't even have to have more than one card.

 

[Mike LS]

The computer should be fine. It's an AMD XP2400 with 512mb. It's pretty swift.

The vid card I have only has one output, so I'd have to get a 2nd.

How is this handled? Do you run the cursor to one side of the screen or the other to "jump" to the other display?

 

[MikeAlletto]

Do you run the cursor to one side of the screen or the other to "jump" to the other display?

Yup. You can also have windows be half on one side and half on the other.

 

[Eric_L]

I have a P4 2.4 with 1 gig and I had difficulty displaying vid on the second monitor. I had an AIW 9700 on agp and a radeon7000 on PCI (it was the best PCI I could find!)

There were multiple probs on video when I used the 7000 to run the projector. I finally removed it and went to a one monitor system. Very disappointed.

ATI only supports one video card systems. They said that if I wanted to have more than one monitor I'd have to use the jacks from one video card - and the only card they have which has two 15pin RGB connectors is the 9600.

Pretty annoyed. I ended up just using a dvd player and using my htcp for other purposes - waste of money.

 

[Tekara]

a majority of the recently released cards have 1 DVI connector and 1 HD15 connector. the AIW 9700 has support for two displays just as the normal 9700 but the second display is put out over s-vid/composite/component. I use component out when I mooch a projector from my work and svid for the rest of the time. the AIW cards have a theater mode that outputs the overlay, works like a champ.

I use a AIW9700pro in conjunction with a dual head GFFX 5200 pci to run three monitors, it works great, no problems whatsoever.

your computer speed shouldn't matter, I've been using multiple monitor setups since my old pIII 600 which ran dual monitors from a GF3 and an old S3.

 

[Mike LS]

The only options I have for the projector are 15 pin, and of course the monitor is the same. I need to be able to use either one card with dual outs or 2 cards with 15pin outs.

 

[Josh Mc]

ATI only supports one video card systems. They said that if I wanted to have more than one monitor I'd have to use the jacks from one video card

Is this true? I currently have a two monitor system running with two Nvidia cards. I am looking to replace my Geforce 3 with a Radeon 9600 with DVI out, making it a three monitor system (one monitor off my old Riva TNT PCI card and one monitor and my RPTV off of the Radeon)

 

[Eric_L]

Yes it is true right from the horses mouth to my ears to here. They support multi-monitor if you are usintg their card, but as soon as you plug two cards into a system they stop support.

That is not to say that it does not work. With my sys so long as I was doing pc operations it was fine. Only when I popped in a DVD did I have troubles. The picture was visible but the sound went choppy, or the sound was fine but the picture had random white pixels flashing - making it look like a scratched old movie - depending on the video program I was using (ATI 8.5 vs Theater Tek)

 

[Francois Caron]

You don't need to specifically locate a graphics card with two 15 pin VGA outputs. The DVI output on most graphics cards (even the cheap ones) will also support analog VGA. All you need is a DVI to VGA converter and you're in business.