Multiple displays with 2+ vidcards

Hi all!

My brother was looking to purchase a Matrox Quad display video card for
work (office multi-tasking type stuff).

That card is kind of pricey so I told him it was probably possible to get
2 dual display PCI cards and run a total of 4 monitors off them.

I recall some people doing that, I just wanted to know if there was any
risks involved, what would I need to do exactly and does work 100%.

If its doable, he can save a good amount of cash and buy on other parts.

i think it is do able but then again would you need to install drivers for all these PCI cars?

I figured that much. What if both are the same?

We spotted quite alot PCI Dual Heads FX 5200 cards on eBay. Those would be perfect.

You can install multiple cards in one machine. I suppose two 5200s would do it if you werent for heavy gaming.

Windows should sort itself out.

Then use Windows display properties to set up the second monitor for each card.

Oh, save the hassle, get one dual head AGP (they're almost alweays cheaper) and one dual head PCI....I can't remember if you want to mix drivers or use the same though....I think it was the same...so just get a AGP 5200 dual head and PCI 5200 dual head (or if he wants to game try a 5900 or 6600/6800 card) then the dual head PCI...man your makin me want to go for 3 displays....hehe

Thanks guys.

No gaming at all. Its for an office type environment where he multi-tasks alot (Word, Excel, HTML editing, etc...)

I forgot what's the exact mobo he has but I know its one of those Intel 865 with all
onboard. He's got 1 AGP and 3 PCI. Right now he's using the onboard VGA.

So if we can run a 'budget' quad display with 2 dualhead VGA cards, its perfect.

As long as all 4 monitors can run independantly from one another.

in that case got 1 AGP 1 PCI unless you can get 2 PCI for cheaper.

I was able to run 3 displays, 2 from a PCI card and 1 from the onboard video. The onboard video sucks though.. it always does, but it worked on 3 screens and should be adequate for office stuff.

Used to have three monitors connected to this machine, with two video cards (one agp, one pci). I'd suggest this setup for BIOS reasons, just so your comp knows which vid card to start first. I don't think it'd be a problem, if they were both pci, but I don't know, either.
You can use the same drivers for both, just make sure they're both nVidia or both ATI... man, I really would not want to mess with mixing the two on a single machine.

They don't even both need to be the same model. I had mine set to run two crt screens and a television, one was an AGP geForce 2 GTS and the other was a PCI geForce 4 420, and I could hook them up any old way, and they'd work.

As suggested, set them up through the windows/nVidia control panel. Screens numbered three and four won't show up unless you have them plugged in and turned on *before* you turn your machine on... I think. I never did four screens, just so you know.

But yeah, they worked as clones, or connected screens, or independents, whatever.
To reiterate: from my end, I don't know about using two pci vid cards, or about the fourth screen, but all else seems kosher. Have fun.

~N.

I am currently using 3 monitors; one (primary) running off the DVI-out from my AGP card; two (secondary) running off a DVI-splitter from the DVI-out of my PCI card.

But nowadays there are affordable cards with dual DVI-out, so you should be able to use one video card for 3-4 monitors.

And yeah, those Matrox Parhelia's are absurdly expensive!