Adding PCIe video to motherboard with onboard video

[3one5]

Over the past 8 years or so I've always bought motherboards with onboard video. I'm not a gamer so I didn't need anything more. I would like to add a couple more monitors to my system and therefore I need to add a PCIe video card. Is it still pretty common for additional video cards to disable the onboard video? I've gone through the manual and haven't found anything indicating that is the case. In the end I would like to end up with 4 video outputs.

I have an Asus M3A78 Pro motherboard.

 

[450]

The new video card should become the primary display, but the onboard should still work, provided you are running XP or 7.

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

The new video card should become the primary display, but the onboard should still work, provided you are running XP or 7.

That is true only if the PCIe card is from a different manufacturer than the chipset (e.g. Intel chipset with Nvidia video card). Then that method only works on XP and Win7, but not Vista. When the chipset and Video card manufacturer are the same, then it also works on Vista because the onboard graphics use the same driver as the video card.

I can confirm you can run the Onboard video and a PCIe card at the same time under Vista also provided the chipset and video card are the same manufacturer (e.g. AMD chipset and AMD video card) I have the M3A-78T and I initially set it up this way the first time I installed Vista x64.