Two Video Cards / Three Monitors

[Ethryx]

I have a Radeon HD 6950 and currently have two monitors connected to it via DVI. I'm not able to connect a third monitor unless I buy an active DP to DVI adapter. Instead of doing that, I looked around my house and found a few older video cards. Since my motherboard has two pci-express slots, I popped in an older video card (Radeon X1650). Once I turned on the computer, I noticed the video card (the older one) was not working. I opened device manager and the device was reporting this error:

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the device driver is still in memory. (Code 38)

After looking on the AMD website for older drivers, I discovered that AMD has a "legacy catalyst driver", although I'm not able to install it without uninstalling my newer drivers (which are needed for my main video card).

Is there any way to set up a configuration like this? Or is the 2nd video card simply not an option and I must purchase the adapter for the main card.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[dook43]

You would be able to run a secondary card based on HD 2400 pro and later. The fixed function cards have a very obsolete driver that isn't compatible.

For 1920x1200 and below, you can get by with a single link active adapter, $25 at newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815129011

 

[nxcess]

There's a way if you feel comfortable modifying the AMD INF file. Pick an ati2mag line similar to your second video card, copy & paste, and modify the device id string to match the second video card. It might work and it might not. I did it on a customer's computer that needed more than 6 monitors using 3 different ATI video cards. This was before Eyefinity was release.

Or buy an active DP adapter. That's the easier route.