Three monitors Under Win XP Pro

[paton]

I am running Windows XP Pro, and have a Matrox Millenium P750 card, and am successfully running two monitors in independant mode. What I would like to be able to do is run three monitors in independant mode (ie. three different screen resolutions, and maximising an app to one screen or another, not 'stretched' mode where the app maximises across all three screens).

My hardware supplier has made the following comments:-
- Two cards residing in PCI slot 1 and the AGP slot will try to use the same resources, and this won't work
- Even if the cards use different resources, XP Pro will 'get confused' upon bootup

Does anyone know if I can install another PCI card successfully under XP Pro ? Are there issues with it residing in slot 1 ? Do I have to use a specific brand of card or chipset in order for the card to co-exist with the Matrox card ? Matrox have suggested that their G450 PCI card will work, but their card is somewhat more expensive than others available ...

 

[mbackof]

I've worked on medical imaging systems with multiple monitors, some using Matrox cards so let me take a crack at this.
Concerning AGP and PCI resource sharing. There is a possibility that one of the PCI slots is sharing resources with the AGP slot for video. Usually you can get around this by moving the PCI video card to a different slot to find a combination that works. Who is your hardware vendor?
I would use a Matrox PCI card for the second card (so you should only need one driver, but you will probably have to install it multiple times).
I've run AGP and PCI cards in tandem under Windows XP and it hasn't gotten "confused".
Do some searches on google for Matrox multimonitor setups. I'm sure there is a CAD forum that would have some info on this, or possibly something in Matrox's documentation.

 

[paton]

Thanks mbackof. The hardware vendor is a local guy who doesn't do many multiple monitor setups. Yes, I've emailed Matrox support who say that two of their cards will work together - I was after a cheaper solution (Matrox cards are quite pricey), or confirmation by an independant.

Thanks once again. I'll do a search as suggested.