Two video cards?

ID:185365
 
Feb 20 2006, 6:22 pm
A friend of mine gave me a Geforce2 MX he had lying around. I put it in today, but found that it's only 32MB, whereas my onboard card was 64MB (I know that 64MB is coming from my RAM). I would go back to just using my onboard, but the Geforce has an s-video out, which I can hook up to my TV. Basically what I'm wondering is, if I can use my monitor with the onboard and have the s-video to my TV, or if I can somehow allocate an extra 32MB of my RAM to the video card.

When I open Device Manager, the only Display Driver there is the Geforce.

Any ideas?
Thanks!
Feb 20 2006, 6:59 pm
Well, it depends on your mother board, but in my experience, you should have both working. Right click on your desktop and go to properties, then go to Settings. You should see 2 or 3 squares there. 2 of them should be monitors(each head in the back of your computer) and than one would be the TV. You might need the drivers for your graphics card to work the S-Vid-Out. That is assuming you are running windows. Linux is a bit more of a pain to setup with dual monitors and S-Vid-Out.
Feb 20 2006, 7:08 pm
you could buy better graphics card with not much money...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121181
definately not a gaming card, but better than what you've got, and for $30!

Feb 20 2006, 7:13 pm
In response to Scoobert
Scoobert wrote:
Well, it depends on your mother board, but in my experience, you should have both working. Right click on your desktop and go to properties, then go to Settings. You should see 2 or 3 squares there. 2 of them should be monitors(each head in the back of your computer) and than one would be the TV.

When the GeForce is in the AGP (?) Slot, and I go to those Settings, there is only one box (even with two monitors physically plugged into the VGA connectors). Device manager only shows the GeForce as a display driver. Nothing else is under display drivers. I turned off the computer, removed the GeForce, and restarted. This time, my onboard video card was listed under display drivers. It appears for some reason, my motherboard is turning off the onboard video whenever something is plugged into the AGP slot. Note: I may have not gotten the names correct for AGP and VGA. By AGP I mean the graphics slot on the motherboard, and by VGA I mean the blue "socket" on the back.


You might need the drivers for your graphics card to work the S-Vid-Out. That is assuming you are running windows. Linux is a bit more of a pain to setup with dual monitors and S-Vid-Out.

I don't have an S-video cable long enough to actually set up the TV yet, but it appears NVIDA software has a thing to help detect the TV, so I don't think that's too much of a problem.
Feb 20 2006, 7:20 pm
In response to Airjoe
Well, I suggest fooling around in your bios, but I warn you, you can ruin your computer by fiddling with some stuff. Most of which is common sense. Just don't change anything if it doesn't seem releated. Alternitivly, you could get a good graphics card, but I suppose money is an issue.

Like I said though, some motherboards disable the onboard when a graphics card is detected, some, however, do not. I do not know if there is anything you can do about it. You could also try googling for some information on your board and running dual screens(even if you don't want to, the result will be the same, and people wanting to dual screen is more common).

Also, what are you doing on your PC that a 64MB and a 32MB makes a difference? I doubt any normal visual stuff will be affected, only games would make the difference, but since you are going from an onboard to an AGP, the ram difference is probably made up by a speed difference.
Feb 20 2006, 7:24 pm
In response to Scoobert
Scoobert wrote:
Well, I suggest fooling around in your bios, but I warn you, you can ruin your computer by fiddling with some stuff. Most of which is common sense. Just don't change anything if it doesn't seem releated. Alternitivly, you could get a good graphics card, but I suppose money is an issue.

I just took a look around, and I did toggle a couple things that had to do with AGP/VGA, but still no luck.


Like I said though, some motherboards disable the onboard when a graphics card is detected, some, however, do not. I do not know if there is anything you can do about it. You could also try googling for some information on your board and running dual screens(even if you don't want to, the result will be the same, and people wanting to dual screen is more common).

I'll take a look.

Also, what are you doing on your PC that a 64MB and a 32MB makes a difference? I doubt any normal visual stuff will be affected, only games would make the difference, but since you are going from an onboard to an AGP, the ram difference is probably made up by a speed difference.

I do run a First Person Shooter every now and then. Since the onboard is disabled, I do have my full 512MB of RAM rather than 448, but I'd still prefer to somehow get that card up to 64 or be able to use the onboard as well. I'm getting another 512 stick of RAM soon, so the 64 allocated to onboard doesn't matter much.


I'll take a look on google, thanks.
Feb 20 2006, 7:36 pm
In response to Airjoe
I just downloaded a BIOS upgrade from the manufacturer site which says it has some sort of upate/fix for VGA. It's a .bin file. How would I install this? I can't find a how-to on their site.
Feb 20 2006, 7:47 pm
In response to Airjoe
Look in your manual. Normally, you put the bin on a floppy and restart, your mobo should reconize it as a bios update and take care of it, but consult your manual.
Feb 20 2006, 8:21 pm
In response to Airjoe
Last time i tried to use both an onboard and a vga card only the vga card worked. I could never get both to work at the same time
Feb 20 2006, 8:27 pm
In response to Scoobert
I've upgraded the BIOS, but I can't find any new options, and its still disabling the onboard video. I sent an email to the manufacturer support, hopefully they can help.

Thanks.
Feb 20 2006, 9:50 pm
Usually what happens when you install a video card on a computer that had on board graphics installed into the motherboard, the new video card will just take over.

Some times it wont, and when that happens you will have a conflict of drivers and video cards.

Take my PC for example I had a 64MB TNT video card onboard my PC. When I installed my new PNY PCI card the TNT card like fought with it.

After reading the manual it suggested I just uninstall the old video card's drivers and it would be like it wasn't even there.

So thats exactly what I did and it runs great now.

BTW word to the wise... If your new video card has a S-Video and a normal out, you can use your monitor and your TV at the same time with the one card.

Also just because the new card you got was only 32MB that dosen't mean its crap. I would compair video cards and see what runs best.

Usually onboard sucks.
Feb 21 2006, 8:40 am
In response to Airjoe
bios upgrade might not fix the issue you are dealing with.

from my own experience, AGP video cards and onboard video don't play very well together, expect maybe with windows 98 SE.

on my desktop (when i had a spare AGP card), i set the bios to say that the onboard was the primary video. then windows could see (and install) drivers for the agp card and i could set it up as a second desktop (extending the primary).

there were issue with refresh rate and the monitor the agp card was on, so eventually i scrapped the agp card and inserted two old trio64 pci cards. they play nicely with the onboard video and now i use 3 monitors without trouble. even got them owrking under Linux after a bit of tinkering with the xconfig file.
Feb 21 2006, 10:07 am (Edited on Feb 21 2006, 10:23 am)
In response to digitalmouse
"On 2/21/06, MST tech support <[email protected]> wrote:

no. you can only use EITHER the onboard video or a video card"

:(

so eventually i scrapped the agp card and inserted two old trio64 pci cards. they play nicely with the onboard video and now i use 3 monitors without trouble.


So, you think a PCI Video card should work? I just want something simple with S-Video out that I can hook up to my TV. I'll shoot them another email before I buy anything, of course.

[edit]
Hmm, I guess if I'm going to buy a card, I might as well buy something at least as good as the onboard so it doesn't matter if the onboard is disabled or not.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/ item-details.asp?EdpNo=716810&CatId=319

That doesn't look too bad, but I wasn't hoping to spend that much :[
Feb 21 2006, 11:20 am
In response to Airjoe
Airjoe,

You keep telling us that you have an integrated graphics processor (IGP), but you never tell us what chip it is. Memory on a graphics card isn't as important as the graphics processor itself. The 32Mb GeForce may be a better card!

~DasFalke
Feb 21 2006, 11:22 am
In response to DasFalke
Feb 21 2006, 11:57 am
In response to Airjoe
Personally (and without being able to test both GPUs) I would use the GeForce 2. because you're interested in the S-Video and the two processors probably have similar performance.

Actually, I would save up the $40 to get the GeForce 4 you linked to earlier in this post. But I realize money can be tight at times.

~DasFalke
Feb 21 2006, 2:21 pm
In response to Airjoe
NewEgg.com has some great PNY video cards, I got a 128MB Radeon for like $50 and it works great.
Feb 21 2006, 2:59 pm
In response to Airjoe
I believe you'd have to use the AGP and PCI, or PCI and PCI, leaving the IGP totally unused, since it obviously takes priority away from all other card detected.