Ok i posted something simlar to this in the ICE forum, but we all know how fast paced that is, and off-topic is more the place for it anyways. Right now i have a matrox g450 AGP dual out-put card, and i love it. Its still not enough i want a thrid monitor, i have an extra PCI and Monitor that i would love to setup on the system, but for one reason or another windows will not activate the PCI card it gives a code 10 error in the system dialog, im running XP btw. So is it just this old pci card is shot, or the system dosnt want 2 video cards in it? And is it easy to add the 3rd monitor without buying a specific card that supports 3 or more monitors? Thanks

Pull the AGP card and see if you get the BIOS POST stuff out of the PCI card at bootup. My suspicion is either a duff card or duff drivers.

HTH,

A.

I'd suspect it's either the driver for the card, or the card itself is causing conflicts, or just too old I've had 3 video cards (AGP Geforce2, and 2 PCI ATI cards) in a machine at once driving different monitors (in XP) and it worked just fine.

Try 1 AGP and 4 PCI, each driving 2 displays in one system.

And to the original poster... Not all system BIOSes play nice with certain confirgurations of graphics cards. Not all graphics card drivers play nice together either.

If you need a recommendation on a new PCI card though: ATI Radeon VE. It's currently our lowest end chip, but it's more than adequate for a PCI bus card and to drive a third monitor. The plus: it will also drive a fourth monitor if you want to add one later (or TV).

Bruno

Certain PCI cards simply won't work in a multi-head configuration, whether from bios or driver problems seems unclear. I've had exactly the same problem with multiheaded use under windows 98 and 2K. The solution was simply to try different PCI cards until one worked. It helped to have a box full of old PCI video cards in the attic

In general, I've found that of older cards, S3 ones seem to have the highest probability of being happy alongside AGP cards. SIS ones, on the other hand...

I eventually got a PCI Geforce2 MX440 card to go along with the dual output AGP version of the same thing, and that all works really well.

pca

I'm currently running a Voodoo5 as my second display. How does the Radeon VE compare in terms of performance?

Calvin

The VE is a cut-down Radeon, but I can't remember what the performance of the Voodoo5 was... You might want to do a quick scan of a site like Anandtech for some old numbers (probably in Quake )

Bruno

I have my eye on the Shuttle sv25, a motherboard that has only 1 PCI slot. It would be an ideal use of a VE card, except it throws out any chance of using 802.11b. ugh.

Calvin

I wouldn't use a PCI 802.11b card. USB all the way. My main machine has an Orinoco USB Gold adapter. Orinoco stuff is dope. Just my $0.02.

When you have a USB adapter, you can move it around to get better reception. It's unlikely that the back of your PC has a good line of sight.

Good idea!

Calvin

cool i got my thrid monitor all up and running, thanks guys maybe ill go for four one of these days.

I'm jealous! I'm only up to 2 monitors!

Calvin

Matrox parahelia supports up to 3 analog monitors or two digital displays on one card, making it ideal for surround gaming. It also runs well with matrox real time rendering cards such as the rt.x100.

yup ive seen the card, im really not into gaming much, but it dose look sweet.

I would use USB as well but there are some "issues" with the Linux driver for it i.e. it's useless and crashes a lot The reception is certainly a lot better since there isn't a big metal box shielding the aerial.

At the moment I've got a Shuttle SV-25 with a cheapo generic Intersil Prism-II PCMCIA card in host AP mode. Works quite nicely as a gateway. VPN is driving me nuts though, Windows is refusing to work properly with it unless I use a shared secret. Blah

- Trevor

The parhelia (what a strange name) has 10 bits of dynamic range per color gun, and has the best looking 2D graphics out there as well, for the non-gamers. :-D

Calvin

What's your opinion of the Shuttle Sv-25? Is it worth it? I have my eye on that. I'm curious, can you check your SV-25 manual and tell me if the sv-25 motherboard accepts/supports VCM RAM? (Virtual Channel SDRAM). I have 3 extra sticks of of rare memory and would love an opportunity to employ it.

Calvin

I don't have an SV25 (but I do have an FV24 mobo), but all recent VIA chipsets should be able to take Virtual Channel memory. Last I heard, they were the only ones supporting it.

I would be surprised if it wasn't accepted.

The SV-25 is the casing along with the FV-25 motherboard so I'm not sure which bit you're asking so I'll answer for both

It does mention VCM but I don't have any so I can't tell you for sure. The Shuttle website mentions it in the specifications for the FV-25. There is only 2 DIMM slots though so you won't be able to use all of them.

It's quite a nice compact system if you're not looking for extreme amounts of storage or processing power. You can only fit 1 HD inside assuming you don't use the CDROM bay. The floppy bay isn't long enough to accomodate a HD so you're stuck with only one HD.

There is the SV-40 and SV-50 if you want a Athlon or P4 processor inside. These have 2 PCI slots so it's better for expansion. If you want play games then you'll defaintely want to get a PCI graphics card as the built in video is rather bad for 3D acceleration.

The main problem is that the CPU fan that comes with the SV-25 casing is hideously loud and you definately have to think about getting it replaced.

Overall I'll say it's quite a nice looking and performing system. You can get cheaper if you don't need it to be this small or if you don't mind it not looking as good.

- Trevor

I'm jealous! I'm only up to 2 monitors!

dont feel too bad, 2 of mine are only 15in surrounded by the center 19in 15 are hardley even monitors, im looking to buy 2 17's for the sides.

I have my eye on the C3 processor, so no fan would be required. :-D

Calvin

Yeah. The VIA C3 is quite nice if you want a silent or nearly silent system. What you going to use yours for?

I have to use a fan as I've got a Celeron 1.3GHz in there and it gets hot with one My system stays at constant 38C so there isn't any problems with overheating.

- Trevor

I had a C3 700 I ran without a fan. No problems.

I now have a VIA Eden 533 that officially has no fan.

What do you mean by officially?

Calvin

Have you noticed that when you do shift-printscreen it does a screen shot of the *entire* desktop spanning all the monitors. You can create *humongous* screen shots that way!

Calvin

I just like the *idea* of a cheap and silent system. It obviously wouldn't be a performance rocket. Since I don't have a purpose for it, I haven't built it! :-D

Calvin

What do you mean by officially?

The C3 says on the heat spreader something to the effect of "Heatsink and Fan required".

The Eden chips are soldered onto the motherboard and come with a heatsink attached. The board is made by VIA, and the heatsink bears their logo. Below is a picture of my board. You can see more pics of the machine here. I use it as an MP3 server. I actually have it sitting in my stereo cabinet, so it had to be silent.

Bah, 10bit. Just wait.

The Parhelia, unfortunately, was vastly outdated before it was ever announced. And as far as gaming is concerned? Forget about it. Read Carmack's last .plan for Doom notes.

BTW, the ATI Radeon line all has 10bit colour. Always has.

Bruno

Yeah, I'm so waiting until Doom3 hits the shelves before I upgrade my video card...

See, thats why I figure I'll upgrade when the R300 comes out. It's already running Doom 3 very well.

And looking at ATI.Com with it's recent change, I think the time is very close...