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dual video cards (not crossfire/SLI)
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Hey guys, I've been thinking about getting a third monitor and second video card for my system (see here). It's an ATI I'm pairing with another ATI (9700) and it'll rest in the second x16 PCIx slot. I've never run two different cards on the same rig before so I was wondering if there was anything else I needed to consider. Like, do I have to install additional drivers or will the card be handled by the ones I already have installed?
Using Microsoft Windows? You should not have any issues in that case. Simply go to your display settings and enable a monitor connected to the second card. If it is the same card as another one already installed then the same drivers should be used. Only thing I can think of which might be an issue is whether your motherboard will allow multiple cards to be connected without them being crossfire/SLI. I do not think that will be an issue though.
Make sure that you get cards that use the same driver and known to be stable in that configuration... I can say that from personal experience. I was using an 8800GTS as a main card, and 7900GS for the secondary. First off this was not possible to do in XP (although I didn't mind as I was running Vista) and the unified Vista drivers were just not at a stable point with that configuration. This was about 3 months back, and it was such a hassle I went back from 3 monitors to two with a single card.
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