Mixing Nvidia and ATI???

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bobn4burton

Gawd
Joined
Aug 19, 2002
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All,

Just wanted to get some opinions and user experiences. Is it possible to mix an nvidia card with an ati card? I have an nvidia 6800GT as my main graphics card. Well...I want to get a triple monitor setup going and so I'm trying to decide on a pci based video card for my third monitor.

Do I need to get another nvidia card? Or can I put an ATI card in there. If you can put an ATI with nivdia...how do you work drivers?

Does anyone have any good reccomendations for a cheap pci vid card with DVI?

Thanks in advance for any help....
 
I've never tried this, but I think asking both ATI and nVidia driver to co-exist peacefully is asking for a headache you don't need.
If you have to buy the card anyway, get another nVidia.
 
No, Currently its not possible, And knowing the GPU Interfaces would make people less confused. I hope you mean PCI-e :D
 
I am currently running 7800GTX SLI set up with an ATI 9250 PCI card for the second monitor. The Control panel thing is not to tough when you are in the display properties you select the monitor and hit advanced and it takes you to the Nvidia or ATI control settings. The down side is that the 80 series drivers do not agree video cards other then Nvidias (lock ups and such, I tried the beta and offical and they have the same problem). The 77 and 78 series have no problems with mixing video cards, so I am currently running the 78 series until I get motivated enough to change out the ATI PCI card to see if it fixes the problem.

As for PCI cards with DVI, look at the 5200 or the 9200/9250, they arn't going to win an awards for 3D but they do a sufficent enough job at 2D
 
VoloxitySF said:
No, Currently its not possible, And knowing the GPU Interfaces would make people less confused. I hope you mean PCI-e :D
Click to expand...

If you read the post properly, you would proably be less confused :p

He wants his main vid card(either agp or pcie, whichever) to have two monitors plugged in. He then wants to use a PCI slot to put in another card and run a third monitor off of that video card.
 
Would a matrox pci card work better than ATI? Has anyone heard whether matrox plays better with nvidia or not???

Yeah...I just tried the new 81.85's last night and they broke my dualview mode. Clone and Span modes worked fine...but the second I tried to enable dualview...my system froze and BSOD. I did a little researching on this and found many people having the same issue and the new BETA 81.87 drivers seemed to fix the problem.

debello...so yours works good with 78 series drivers??? That's good to know. Also...are you using the full catalyst driver for your pci card? Or just the windows default driver?

Oh..and BTW my 6800GT is AGP. Thanks for the input so far...if anyone else has any input to add it would be great!
 
VoloxitySF said:
No, Currently its not possible, And knowing the GPU Interfaces would make people less confused. I hope you mean PCI-e :D
Click to expand...

Yah must of missed this article from Toms Hardware early on in the SLI reviews:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041123/sli-performance-32.html

They've got both an ATI X800 and an nVIDIA GeForce 6800 running simultaneously.

So, yes, it's currently possible, with PCI-E and and SLI board. Please don't missunderstand my statement, this isn't for mult-GPU enhanced 3D SLI magic, but for two different displays running off of two different cards. It would also be interesting to see if this compatability and computer restarts need has improved with much newer drivers than what was available during the time of Tom's review.
 
what you need is an sli mobo with the central monitor running of some card and the side two running of the second card. Better get 2 GTX's so you can have huge real estate goodness going in games.

/joke

Good luck with running 3 monitors. I wouldn't get a matrox as there is a reason no one uses them. ATI/nVidia will usually have a better price for performance. And seeing as there are plenty of success stories of the 2 running together, go for it!

The 81 series lockups aren't good, but as long as there's a beta out that fixes it, just use those drivers. I've never had a problem with beta drivers that would be attributed to their beta-ness.
 
Listen, if he is not trying to do 3d acceleration, all he needs is ANY OLD PCI VIDEO CARD.

I know people who are running a Nvidia AGP card, and a ATI pci card on the same system to get more desktop space (4 monitors).

And I know some people run even more than this.

==>Lazn
 
Lazn_Work said:
Listen, if he is not trying to do 3d acceleration, all he needs is ANY OLD PCI VIDEO CARD.

I know people who are running a Nvidia AGP card, and a ATI pci card on the same system to get more desktop space (4 monitors).

And I know some people run even more than this.

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

Good to know. I definintely DO NOT need the second card for 3D acceleration. Just for desktop 2d apps. So Lazn...my next question is this. Do the people that run mixed ATI/nvidia install both ATI and nvidia drivers? I could just use whatever default driver windows gave the pci ati card, but usually the windows drivers annoy me (slow/jumpy scrolling, etc).
 
bobn4burton said:
debello...so yours works good with 78 series drivers??? That's good to know. Also...are you using the full catalyst driver for your pci card? Or just the windows default driver?

Oh..and BTW my 6800GT is AGP. Thanks for the input so far...if anyone else has any input to add it would be great![/QUOTE

I just use the driver and choose not to install the control panel because is only used 2D stuff
Click to expand...
 
bobn4burton said:
Good to know. I definintely DO NOT need the second card for 3D acceleration. Just for desktop 2d apps. So Lazn...my next question is this. Do the people that run mixed ATI/nvidia install both ATI and nvidia drivers? I could just use whatever default driver windows gave the pci ati card, but usually the windows drivers annoy me (slow/jumpy scrolling, etc).
Click to expand...

Use the latest drivers for your main 3d Card. As for the other (ati) card, if windows has built in drivers that recognise it, use those, otherwise download the latest WHQL drivers fro the ATI card.

==>Lazn
 
But, seriously, you really, really, REALLY *should* keep the brand the same.

With a mixed nVidia (AGP) and ATI (PCI) setup, sure, you can get multi-monitor across your desktop.

But what happens when you DO feel the urge to see Quake III stretched across all three monitors? Mixing video card brands like that means you'd be out of luck. With nVidia AGP and nVidia PCI, you can span across all three monitors and play Quake III with a huge, panoramic view. (Technically, of course, Quake 4 can also do that...technically. But who has the GPU horsepower for THAT?).

Keep in mind that the extra video card is truly irrelevant as to what core it is - it's not used at all in the rendering process, your "main" card is doing all the 3d processing for all three monitors....the PCI card just has to be the same brand so that the drivers can talk to each other in 3d mode well enough to output to it. (IE., you are asking the PCI card to output to a monitor the rendered scene of another card entirely...which requires that certain driver friendliness)
 
dderidex,

You make a good point...and I'm sure that I would have the urge to do this because I like to game. However...my triple monitor setup isn't a typical one because the third monitor is actually my 37" LCDTV located in my living room. I'm just running a long DVI cable (~35 feet) + long usb cable + fiber optic cable to my living room. So I can use my main computer as a HTPC.

On a side note...it was a bit of a challenge to extend the DVI signal out that far because my LCD is 1920x1080/60hz. Well...I should say its a challenge to do it CHEAPLY. I ended up getting it to work perfectly for about 120 bucks...

I'm open to getting an nvidia card as I haven't boughten any card yet.
 
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