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Can you run more than 2 video cards on a PC?

B

Bozz

Senior member
A7N8X-E Deluxe MB, Barton XP2500, 1.5Gb RAM, GF2 GTS Deluxe 32Mb AGP vid card, S3 86C375 4Mb PCI vid card, Windows 2000 SP4

I have two monitors at the moment and am needing more screen real estate, is it possible to use a third PCI VGA card for a third monitor or can you only have two video cards in a system?

If only two cards are allowed, can something like a PCI Matrox G400 Dualhead work to provide three outputs (including the AGP card)???

Cheers
 
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe a lot of cards can support dual monitors themselves (2 plugs, VGA/DVI out), and also I know (because I have one) that you can get some monitor splitting cords that allow two monitors to be plugged into a single video card (even if it only has 1 out port), and windows will recognize them as two seperate monitors. Now, I don't know if you need a special card for that or not (for the splitting), but it worked here.

Anyways, as far as more cards themselves, I do believe you can have more than 2.
 
JohnVM - the Matrox Dualhead series have two video outputs, thats why I asked about them.

Problem is, PCI dualheads are a rarity and quite expensive, even secondhand, thats why I need info before I go hunting for one.

On the other hand, I could try a third PCI S3 card although I'd prefer something a bit better, I need 1280x1024x32BPP resolution which needs 8Mb of onboard RAM...
 
Originally posted by: Bozz
JohnVM - the Matrox Dualhead series have two video outputs, thats why I asked about them.

Problem is, PCI dualheads are a rarity and quite expensive, even secondhand, thats why I need info before I go hunting for one.
Click to expand...

Guh? Practically every PCI video card produced in the last 3 years is dual-head. Any ATI RADEON, and any GeForce2 or higher, pretty much, and many Matrox cards. They're everywhere, and they cost next to nothing. I don't understand the problem.

Yes, you can use dual-head cards to get more monitors. Yes, you can put multiple video cards in your system simultaneously (including multiple dual-head cards). The limit on the number of monitors WinXP can handle is 20 or 30, I think.
 
Originally posted by: Bozz
Matthias - are they dual 15 pin analog VGA out or analog VGA and DVI?
Click to expand...

Does it matter? Every consumer video card I've ever seen with DVI out is DVI-I can can be turned into VGA with a $5 DVI-I->VGA adaptor cable.
 
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