Three (or more) monitors & mismatched video cards

[eggothewaffle]

Right now, I have a 7600GT running a 19" CRT and a 20.1" widescreen LCD. I'm getting another 20.1 widescreen LCD and I'll probably just buy a cheap-o PCI card to run that.

My question is: when I get a new nVidia card (I guess when DX 10 necessitates such a purchase), can I still use the 7600GT in the second PCI-E slot to power a monitor or two?

 

[eggothewaffle]

Bump =)

 

[unfalliblekrutch]

If you have 2 PCI-e x16 slots, then yes.

 

[Peter]

You can mix and match any kind of graphics cards, PCI, AGP, PCIE (just not VESA and ISA ), as long as all of them are multi-VGA capable. Some verrrry old PCI cards aren't, and there have been a handful of engineering fsckups in later cards as well. Drivers need to play along nicely as well, so it might be a good idea to use graphics chips from the same maker.

You'll be surprised about just how much system bandwidth a PCI card driving a big screen will eat, though. You better run the smallest screen off the weakest card.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Peter
You can mix and match any kind of graphics cards, PCI, AGP, PCIE (just not VESA and ISA ), as long as all of them are multi-VGA capable. Some verrrry old PCI cards aren't, and there have been a handful of engineering fsckups in later cards as well. Drivers need to play along nicely as well, so it might be a good idea to use graphics chips from the same maker.

You'll be surprised about just how much system bandwidth a PCI card driving a big screen will eat, though. You better run the smallest screen off the weakest card.

like my poor S3 Virge