How to set up 2 video cards/ 3 monitors

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 10:00 pm

Okay so I'm trying to get my home office a little more tricked out but running into some problems.

Right now my machine has two Geforce 8600 GTS video cards and three displays. On the main part of my desk I have a 24\" widescreen LCD and a 21\" Cintiq for doing work, and off to the side I have my little gaming station with a 17\" CRT + gaming mouse.

The problem is that even though I've installed the second Geforce and have the CRT plugged into it, the computer doesn't seem to be recognizing it at all. Is there something else I have to do to get my computer to recognize that I have 2 video cards plugged in at the same time? I thought this was going to be a plug-and-play type of deal but I guess I was mistaken.

This is on Windows XP 32bit. Although, I'm going to be dual-booting to Vista 64bit so if there's anything I need to do for that too please let me know. Thanks for any help.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 10:23 pm

Make sure your strong video card is in the primary PCIEX slot (if that's your situation).
Plug everything in.
Install all the drivers for all your cards.
Go to display properties and enable all the monitors and make adjustments to what is displaying what.

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:58 am

Thanks for your reply

After a very long 3 hours of troubleshooting last night I got it working!

Foil · Post by **Foil** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 11:11 am

What did you find out was causing the problem? Did the two cards default to SLI or something?

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 1:06 pm

I'm not sure what exactly fixed it, I tried a variety of things. I'll give you the cliff-notes version

Card 1 by itself would work in either slot 1 or 2.

Card 2 by itself would work in only slot 1. (I was originally trying to put it in slot 2). No clue why it was booting to a black screen in slot 2.

Also, Even with both cards plugged in my Nvidia Display settings would not recognize the second card unless I had one monitor plugged into each video card on boot-up.

Then, it started displaying both cards but I couldn't select the third monitor, it also would not detect the third monitor when I tried to to detect displays in Nvidia Display settings. I tried plugging it into both card 1 and card 2.

So I shut down again, and this time put monitor 1 & 2 into card 1 and monitor 3 in card 2 and this time it actually detected all 3 displays.

However, the third monitor (the CRT) is basically just there for playing d3, and when I would try to load d3, it would bluescreen on me (wtf?). However, d3 would run on the other two displays just fine. So, I switched monitor 2 & 3 so that 3 was on the card that was playing d3, and finally it all worked.

Also I should mention I wasn't trying to run these in SLI, I just wanted the third monitor off to the side for gaming.

Anyway I'm not totally sure why things worked the way they did, or if I made things harder on myself then it had to be. Also not sure why one card didn't work in one slot or why one card was bluescreening d3.... The whole thing was bizarre.

But, at least its up and running now and hopefully I won't have further complications.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 1:28 pm

Weird

Foil · Post by **Foil** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 2:24 pm

Very odd. You said those were both 8600GTs, right? Identical?

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 5:03 pm

Well, they weren't identical cause one was from Dell and the other from Best Buy.

Also in Nvidia Setup it lists one as a Geforce 8600GT and the other as a Geforce 8600GTS. So I guess I ended up buying different kinds of cards.

The wierd thing though is that I played D3 on each of those cards when it was the only card in the system. It was only with both cards installed that one of them would bluescreen on Descent 3 startup.