I have an EPOX 8KHAL MoBo, NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 AGP with 17" monitor and it works fine.
I add a PCI STB Nitro 3D 4MB with a 15"monitor. Now these are detected as primaries and I cannot change that. I have been told there should be some box to check in the monitor properties “set this monitor as primary” but the box is not there. I have also been told there should be in the BIOS a selection to configure the AGP port as primary but I can’t find that either.
The PCI card was correctly detected and configured the first time but then it had some problem and would only do 640x480, 16 color. So, for now, I have pulled it and I am just using the single AGP card.
I’ve managed to set up dual monitors several times, but, sh*t, it’s harder than it should be.
I’ve got a stable dual monitor system at the moment, but it uses a twin-head video card.
For the others, I searched, tried this, tried that, tried everything until they worked. I can’t remember what the secret was in each case, but it was different in each case. None of the instructions that I found were useful.
Some cards are harder to set as secondaries than others, I’ve found.
It sounds like your motherboard is set to boot with the PCI as primary. You might want to check your bios settings to make sure it boots to the AGP card.
What OS are you using? I’ve noticed that win2k, for example, is a lot pickier about dual monitor than win98/me is.
I forgot to say I am running WIN98SE. I have looked everywhere in the BIOS and cannot find anywhere to select the AGP slot as primary. Anywhere in particular I should be looking?. I don’t get it as you would think it is common sense if you have both PCI and AGP cards you would want the AGP as primary. Getting a dual head card is out of the question right now. I’ll have to keep messing with what I have or give up.
Well, for now iI have managed to get both going but I have the 17"monitor as primary on the PCI card and the 15"monitor as secondary on the AGP card which is a bit of a waste. I hope someone can find the way to straighten things out.
I only have XP but START: H then input in the search box ‘dual monitor’ there are info files on how to do it. For XP these are:
“To install additional monitors
Turn off your computer.
Insert your additional Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) or Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) video adapter into an available slot.
Plug your additional monitor into the card.
Turn on your computer. Windows will detect the new video adapter and install the appropriate drivers.
Open Display in Control Panel.
On the Settings tab, click the monitor icon that represents the monitor you want to use in addition to your primary monitor.
Select the Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor check box, and then click Apply or OK.
If the check box is not displayed on your computer, it may be because your video adapter does not support multiple monitors. See Notes for information about compatible hardware.”
Handy, It is the same in WIN98SE but there is no place to choose which one will be primary. I am now using the PCI as primary but it has some problems with the TV tuner card so. . . .
Hm. If it’s not in the bios, I have no idea how you’d fix it.
You might want to check to see if STB has some updated drivers or a bios update (for the STB, not your mobo) and see if those help. They probably won’t, though–on further digging, I’m pretty sure it’s not your video cards–Microsoft lists the Nitro 3d as being fully dual monitor compatible.
I’m still almost 100% positive that it’s the motherboard refusing to boot first to AGP. That’s darn annoying that there’s no setting in bios for that.
So maybe the motherboard does not fully support the dual monitor thing? Could it be that the BIOS just makes the first one it detects the primary? Is there any way to make it detect the AGP first? (IRQs?)
I am experimenting with the STB card as primary but it does not work as well as the AGP so, if I cannot get it to go right, I’ll just have to revert to single monitor.
I downloaded your manual for this MB from EPOX . This setting is in your BIOS under the BIOS page titled “Integrated Peripherals” and the sub category “Int Display First” .
If this does not show up in your BIOS choices you need to update your BIOS.
astro, I don’t know how to thank you. It was right there, staring at me, all along. My brain must have locked up and I just kept going over the same things and missing it. Sometimes it’s better to take a break and take it up later.
Even after I got the video cards configured correctly, the TV tuner card had no sound. I spent quite a while trying to figure it out as I had moved the audio cable out of the way when I installed the video card. I could not find the cause though until, finally, at long last, I realized I had turned the speakers off. Duh! I really am suffering from mental block today more than usual.
Anyway, finally it’s all working fine and I owe you a few beers any time we meet. I have only driven through Salisbury a couple of times some years ago but I used to sail my boat to Cambridge, Oxford and Easton all the time as I have an aunt who lives there and has a dock.
a) Open computer and insert any cards you wish to use to drive your monitors. If you are planning and then purchasing and have the budget you want to back you, you may wish to go with a powerful AGP card that supports two digital monitors at high resolution and color depth with great refresh rate and onboard video acceleration, but you should be able to mix and match different cards and different kinds of slots (e.g., one AGP card and one PCI card, one analog and one digital, etc) with no problems.
b) Attach monitors to the cards. You may wish to put your best monitor with your fastest card, or you may be matching digital flatscreen to digital card and trinitron to analog card; but for the most part you should be able to hook them up in any fashion that you can get the cables to fit, including with the use of digital-to-analog adapters and converters and whatnot.
c) Boot computer. Computer will arbitrarily assign one screen to be its primary screen and will pick resolutions and bit depth as it sees fit, not to mention arrangement. Doesn’t matter. Open your Monitors Control Panel. Set the bit depth, resolution, gamma color corection and profile, and refresh rates for each monitor. On the “arrange” tab of the Control Panel, drag the monitor screen icons around until you’ve told the computer which one to put on the left or right (or arrange them vertically or diagonally with only the corners touching if you prefer. Drag the smiley face to the one you wish to show the bootup screen, and drag the menu bar to the one that you wish to hold the menu and the drive icons (usually you’ll want these to be on the same screen). You’re all set.
d) If you are doing this with a laptop, you may wish to hook a complete different external monitor up to use as your second screen when you are at a different location (the laptop moves, the big monitors stay put); you may wish to arrange them differently or run them at a different resolution. Have no fear, the computer will recognize which monitors you’ve hooked it to and will remember on that basis which arrangment and resolution and etc. settings to use, so that you can have a big Sony Trinitron to the right of your laptop’s TFT screen at work and a nice NEC flat screen to the left of your laptop’s TFT screen when you are at home, and your computer will know which one is logically to the left or right and what resolution to run them at without you having to switch anything.
e) If you are running a PC instead of a Mac, some of the above statements may not be precisely applicable.
Dual monitor support was not added to windows until XP. if you are trying to do a dual monitor set up on a machin pre XP, you will probably need some specialized software from the video card manufacturer, and even then, they may not have anything for you.
I had an ABIT KT-7 motherboard. I ran dual monitors and when I booted up the computer first only used the PCI card. Once windows started to boot it switched over to my AGP card, leaving my other screen blank. Once the windows GUI started then both monitors kicked in like they were supposed to. I was running 2000 professional and had no problems. Took me 5 mins to setup. My guess is that it’s a motherboard problem because my motherboard switched between cards before windows even booted up.
I’m only a Mac person and therefore could remember wrong, but I’m pretty sure Windows 98’s claim to fame was the ability to do dual-monitor support (up to 4 concurrent monitors, in fact, IIRC); the NT family acquired it at some point as well, I’m not sure when but I would think prior to XP.