Mixing ATI and AMD

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silentwolf

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I am in the process of building a new rig, and am doing my research on new video cards to put in it. The general consensus seems to be that the new 4870 is the way to go as far as "high end" cards are concerned. So here is my question:

I was previously running 2 nvidia 7800 GT's across a dual monitor setup, and I am planning on bringing one of them with me to my new build so I can support 3 monitors, since I am considering purchasing a third monitor sometime in the future. The question is will I run into a problem running 1 ATI card, and one Nvidia card in the same machine? I know it can be done when you run the cards on different bus's (like one on PCI E and one on regular PCI), but I dont know what would happen if I had both running on PCI E.

Anyone got any advice?
 
Its ok on XP but not on Vista.
Vista only allows one video driver to be active.
 
As Nenu mentioned under vista with the new driver model called WDDM. Every video card active under vista must utilize the same video driver. Under xp with the xpdm model you could have various cards active with different drivers.

So your 2nd card would have to be whatever ati's equivalent of a 8400gs would be if you go with a 4870.I only mentioned 8400gs cause its dirt cheap.
 
sh0vet said:
As Nenu mentioned under vista with the new driver model called WDDM. Every video card active under vista must utilize the same video driver. Under xp with the xpdm model you could have various cards active with different drivers.

So your 2nd card would have to be whatever ati's equivalent of a 8400gs would be if you go with a 4870.I only mentioned 8400gs cause its dirt cheap.
Click to expand...



Why do you say the second card would have to be an 8400GS? I am just planning on transplanting one of the 7800's I have and use it as the second card. Its not going to be doing anything above what it could handle.
 
Well when i say 8400gs I mean a cheap as dirt current gen card so future drivers are likely to support the cheap as dirt card to run the 3rd monitor. The card that runs the third monitor will do nothing but sit in windows and run a monitor.

If you get a really old card to run the third monitor chances are driver support will drop then under vista you cannot run it as long. So if you get a cheap card current gen it will likely be supported as long as the card that will be used for gaming.

I dunno what ati's equivalent of a 8400gs cause I don't care but rest assured it will be priced similarly.
 
See if you're running vista and you get an ati card to run games. Then to run the 3rd monitor you'd need another ati card since both will use same drivers.

If you get say a nvidia gtx 260 then your old 7800gt can be used since both the gtx 260 and 7800gt will use same drivers.

The problem occurs is when vista only lets you use one driver for all video cards so no matter how many cards you have in the system they all have to use same driver.
 
I don't plan on moving to vista for awhile, and if I do, it would be for limited tasks that I could live without the third monitor for. Even then, if driver support for my 7800 dies, I will get a low end card when that happens, otherwise I don't see the reason to spend money if it still is supported.

Thanks for the help though, it will come in handy down the road!
 
That's cool we just wanted to throw all the information out there. Nothing worse than upgrading to vista one day and getting a code 43 (i.e. disabled due to driver issue) on your 7800gt. Now you'll be aware when you go to vista you'll have driver issues unless both cards use same driver(i.e. same gpu manu.).
 
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