Running 2 monitors at once on my pc

[FTLOSM]

I have 2 lcd monitors and want to run them both on my main pc to extend my desktop for more workspace.

I am running windows xp pro

My Motherboard is

Gigabyte 7VM400M-RZ

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot...px?ProductID=1764&ModelName=7VM400M-RZ

Motherboard has a vga output I am wanting to run to a second 19 inch lcd from it.

Video Card

ATI 8500DV (dvi version)

http://ati.amd.com/products/radeon8500/aiwradeon8500dv/faq.html

Video card has a dvi output i am running to my main 19 inch lcd.

The ATI display menus show dual monitor support, and when I click on second monitor it gives me a dropdown menu of "SOURCE" to choose video card, but the only choice is the ati card which is running my main 1 display.

I am not sure if this is possible, but I want to use the motherboards vga video output as a second simultanious monitor and chose extend my desktop so they work together.

I have an agp style ati 8500DV as my primary video card installed in the system, but want to use the motherboards vga video for a 2nd display.

I went into the bios and I can't find anything about enable or disable the onboard video, and I inserted the gigabyte cdrom to see if there was any video stuff on there that wasn't installed and didn't see anything that wasn't already installed.

Is this a motherboard thing, a bios thing, a windows thing, or an ati thing?

The ati software here sure appears to support dual monitors, the motherboard has onboard video but in bios i cant find any option to turn it on or off, does the motherboard somehow auto disable onboard video if it detects an agp video card?

Or is there something in windows i need to adjust or do to make this work?

If it takes putting in a second video card into a pci slot ok I can do that, but wasn't sure if that would just muck things up even more.

Thanks for any advice and info on this,

Bill

 

[xalos]

I've had a couple motherboards that would allow you to use the onboard video along with a video card in the AGP slot. I haven't tried with a motherboard with a PCI-E slot so I have no idea as far as that goes.

If you didn't disable the onboard video by using a jumper or disabling it in the bios then I say it's safe to assume that the motherboard disables the onboard video when another video card is plugged in. So, to get dual monitor support you will need to add a PCI video card.

I hope that helps.