Dual Graphics Cards (Different models)

[MrHood22]

I have a GTX 260 PCI-E and a PCI 6200.

The 260 powers 22" x 2.
I use the one 22" as my main and the other 22" as an extension of that.

The 6200 powers 19" and 18.5"
The 19" and the 18.5" mirror each other. The 18.5" I keep beside my other two 22" and the 19" I have back to back with the 18.5". Most of the time the 19" is turned off. I only use it when I want to play Xbox on my TV (which is beside the 19") and I want to watch a movie on the 19" from my computer.


My problem is that when i'm playing a game (Counter-Strike: Source for example). The video lags behind the audio on the movie. CSS also had really low FPS like 40-60.

So my two questions are...
1) How can I get movies to play correctly through my 6200 (19", 18.5")
2) Why is it affecting my FPS in CSS if the monitor displaying CSS is through my GTX 260


Part of me is thinking that there might be some type of driver error because they both use the same driver.

 

[014]

I can only guess that it would be a common intersection the data has to travel, like north or south bridges, or even RAM.

You know, you could install this trial program and have it scan to tell you which drivers are out of date. It's at www.driverhive.com. I actually paid for it so it would do the work for me. But you can use it as sort of a recon for free just to point out what you should update one by one.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

I have a GTX 260 PCI-E and a PCI 6200.

The 260 powers 22" x 2.
I use the one 22" as my main and the other 22" as an extension of that.

The 6200 powers 19" and 18.5"
The 19" and the 18.5" mirror each other. The 18.5" I keep beside my other two 22" and the 19" I have back to back with the 18.5". Most of the time the 19" is turned off. I only use it when I want to play Xbox on my TV (which is beside the 19") and I want to watch a movie on the 19" from my computer.


My problem is that when i'm playing a game (Counter-Strike: Source for example). The video lags behind the audio on the movie. CSS also had really low FPS like 40-60.

So my two questions are...
1) How can I get movies to play correctly through my 6200 (19", 18.5")
2) Why is it affecting my FPS in CSS if the monitor displaying CSS is through my GTX 260


Part of me is thinking that there might be some type of driver error because they both use the same driver.

part of your guess is correct, that it is a driver issue. the other part is that more and more media players are supporting hardware accel and the 6200 obviously doesn't have hardware accel. but some programs completely ignore that and try to force hardware accel anyways. other part with the lag in games i've yet to figure out but i have the same exact problem in my system if i overclock 1 card higher then the other with sli disabled, the games will freak out even though the second card is sitting idle. the other issue is that nvidia drops a lot of legacy card support at depending on what drivers you are using now the 6200 could be on that long list of legacy cards that nvidia is no longer including in the drivers.

 

[MrWizard6600]

I can only guess that it would be a common intersection the data has to travel, like north or south bridges, or even RAM.

You know, you could install this trial program and have it scan to tell you which drivers are out of date. It's at www.driverhive.com. I actually paid for it so it would do the work for me. But you can use it as sort of a recon for free just to point out what you should update one by one.

that software looks like it might actually be useful but... man, posting a link to driver cleaning software (read:spam) aint takin' too kindly on these boards. But again, that software looks like it might actually be worth some salt.

part of your guess is correct, that it is a driver issue. the other part is that more and more media players are supporting hardware accel and the 6200 obviously doesn't have hardware accel. but some programs completely ignore that and try to force hardware accel anyways. other part with the lag in games i've yet to figure out but i have the same exact problem in my system if i overclock 1 card higher then the other with sli disabled, the games will freak out even though the second card is sitting idle. the other issue is that nvidia drops a lot of legacy card support at depending on what drivers you are using now the 6200 could be on that long list of legacy cards that nvidia is no longer including in the drivers.

Programs do not "completely ignore [lack of hardware] and try to force it anyways". Video cards as far back as the Radeon 9000's have had MPEG2 and MPEG4 decoding acceleration built into them.

There was never any official way to add your codec to a system library of codecs, typically any software that needs to render video will come bundled with video codecs, which is why trying to install a codec such that windows media player can use it is (or was) so difficult. I'm going to assume the vast majority of us just use VLC, and I'm also going to assume Microsoft published some API somewhere to allow codec manufacturers to integrate their decoders into Windows, and I'd imagine such a product would generate very little revenue since VLC is so good. The only really well-used API windows has is the Direct-X Video Acceleration API which has existed since Direct X 9, and is modified when a driver is installed to point parallel processing functions onto the GPU, so-called "hardware acceleration". If this API is called when the hardware doesn't support it, its run on the CPU as part of a default decoder provided by Microsoft.
TL;DR: Video codecs are a bit of a clusterfuck => use VLC

Anyways, relating back to the OP, multi-video card systems rarely turn out well, since you're a fringe market of what the Driver software developers have to write to, and video driver code is probably the most unstable driver software ever written --through no fault of the programmers, video cards are just too complex now--. Windows only provides management for running 2 screens, if you try to run 3 or 4 its entirely up to what Nvidia or AMD (or Matrox) provide you with.

I really cant offer much help and I'm reasonably certain not many on these boards will. Sorry.

If I were you I'd grab a 6800 series card, plug your two monitors into that and run the 19" and 18.5" through a dumb-splitter (which will duplicate the image on the two). I'll point you here, and tell you to be careful about display-port.

 

[MrHood22]

part of your guess is correct, that it is a driver issue. the other part is that more and more media players are supporting hardware accel and the 6200 obviously doesn't have hardware accel. but some programs completely ignore that and try to force hardware accel anyways. other part with the lag in games i've yet to figure out but i have the same exact problem in my system if i overclock 1 card higher then the other with sli disabled, the games will freak out even though the second card is sitting idle. the other issue is that nvidia drops a lot of legacy card support at depending on what drivers you are using now the 6200 could be on that long list of legacy cards that nvidia is no longer including in the drivers.

It's interesting that you note when you try to OC one of the cards you get performance issues.

My GTX 260 is OCed (to GTX 295 speeds) and I OCed my 6200 and that's when i saw the low FPS in CSS even though it was being run through the GTX 260. I set the 6200 back to stock (due to artifacts and general freaking out) and it seems to run fine.

Anyways, relating back to the OP, multi-video card systems rarely turn out well, since you're a fringe market of what the Driver software developers have to write to, and video
driver code is probably the most unstable driver software ever written --through no fault of the programmers, video cards are just too complex now--. Windows only provides management for running 2 screens, if you try to run 3 or 4 its entirely up to what Nvidia or AMD (or Matrox) provide you with.

I really cant offer much help and I'm reasonably certain not many on these boards will. Sorry.

If I were you I'd grab a 6800 series card, plug your two monitors into that and run the 19" and 18.5" through a dumb-splitter (which will duplicate the image on the two). I'll point you here, and tell you to be careful about display-port.

I'm starting to think this card is too weak. I thought it would be fine because 18.5" and 19" aren't that big but I guess on a little card like this it's a lot of work.

I'm still doing a bit of troubleshooting and testing my limitations. I tried last night with the 6200 just powering my 18.5" and it seemed to play the movie alright when I played CSS. There were a few times when I wasn't sure if it was briefly messing up or if it was all in my head.




Apparently with the 6200 (4 pixel pipelines) you can unlock the other pipelines (another 4, totaling 8 pipelines). And then on top of that you can overclock it a bit and it's practically a 6600GT. I'm currently looking into that but some people are saying it will not work because nvidia fixed that on the newer revisions of the 6200.