current AGP + buying PCI card == dual monitoring? need help where to begin?

[ruger357]

I have a AMD Barton 2800+ w/ 1gb ram, Asus A7N8X Deluxe mobo and currently have a NVIDIA Geforce4 TI-4200 which I dont have a problem with for now...it plays World of Warcraft and it looks fine with Doom3 as well, however, I dont really care about the game aspect of it since I wont be "dualing" in a games, I will still use my current AGP card for my games which again is fine for now. A friend is giving me a FREE 19" monitor and I got the great idea to have dual display desktop (currently have 21" running at 1600x1200). I am going to buy a PCI video card to make this happen, assuming I can make this happen w/ doing this. I have only ~$100 max to spend since i'm a broke college kid and this was just a crazy idea so I cant go above this. All I want is an additional PCI video card to allow me to use dual monitors, not replace my AGP card. Will there be an issue in doing this since I will be using my current AGP card for my primary card and a PCI for my secondary. How do I make this happen? Where do I begin? Please help! So far I have been thinking I would get this Jaton GeForce FX5700LE Video Card since it is in my pricerange and what I am looking for and is $100 on newegg. What do I do!?!?! Help!! Thanks

 

[CrispyFried]

Just install the PCI vid card, its pretty much as easy as that. Make sure you have the latest vid and chipset drivers. You may need to go into the BIOS and tell it to init the AGP card 1st but it will probably already be set at that by default. You should get another nvidia card as nvidia and ati usually do not play nice together.

When its its installed go to Display Properties -> Settings and select the 2nd display (click the picture of the other monitor), then check "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor". *Poof*, done deal. You can drag the pictures of the displays to match the physical arrangement of your monitors - IE which one is on the left.

With dual cards you can set the rez, color depth and refresh individually for each display. Almost all games will allow you to choose which display to use. Same with powerpoint. For everything else you just drag the windows or icons to whichever monitor you like, same with the task bar and such. Youll get spoiled fast with duals

I run 2 ati cards, 1 agp and 1 pci and have no probs.