wanting to add a second monitor...

I was helping a friend out installing his new video card (an ATI PCI video card, what specific one I forget), and without meaning to, he had a dual display cause of his on board video. I think I might be using the wrong term "dual display" what I mean is that his ATI and the display from the on board video would show different things.

My question is I wanted to add a second monitor by adding an ATI PCI video card, but I want to make sure all my games are displayed through my Geforce 3 and not the ATI card. It's all a little confusing....

you can have two or more video cards in your system and each of them can have one or more monitors. the thing is some video cards are incompatible with others. i would reccomend borrowing your friends ati card and test it out with yours, making sure both monitors display correctly, if they do either buy his card and use it or buy the identicle model.

there is a website somewhere that has a list of which cards are compatible with which, unfortunetly i dont have the addy but i would reccomend doing a lot of research to find out what video cards will be compatible with yours.

Also check that you have the option in BIOS to choose which card to boot from, PCI or AGP. Some old games (dos age..) use this to choose the card to use, and this also choose the primary card in windows..

Anyway, dual displays have little use aside from the "cool" factor. I did use dual displays for a short time trying to learn Java in school. Had one monitor showing compiler, programming window and stuff and the other showing various tutorials, Java books and such.

I want to do it mainly just so I can have my games being displayed on my main monitor through my geforce3 and keep overclockers.com up on a second cheapo monitor I have through the ATI.

My thanks to both of you