My friend has an old PC tower that he wants to upgrade to run 3 monitors.

He wants to keep as much or the rest the same as possible (also he doesnt have a motherboard).

So, he has a AMD Duron of some description, a Radeon 9000 with VGA and S-Video out and 512Mb of DDR (as well as all the other gubbins).

Is it possible to get a motherboard with onboard VGA and then run 3 monitors (1 from onboard, 1 s-vid and 1 vga out)?

easier to just throw in a PCI VGA card tho?

edit, didnt see the bit about no mobo

Would my plan work? 2 outputs from the existing card and one from a new motherboard with VGA out?

should do, unless for some reason the board turned off the vga out when a video card was present.. could possibly force it on in the BIOS anyway, depends on the board

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Compaq-Matrox-G200-MMS-PCI-Quad-Display-Graphics-Card_W0QQitemZ290157427643QQihZ019QQcategoryZ3762QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Tried this at work and it didnt work.

s video will be crap for a 3rd screen anyway

Quote from: EggtasticoEbay linky

Cheers, looks like a good option.

Quote from: sdpTried this at work and it didnt work.

Was this in response to the idea of motherboard and graphics card at the same time? Any idea why it didnt work?

I have had that experience before that you cant run dual monitors using the onboard VGA the times that I have tried it... But not to say that this is always the case? Maybe something to do with sharing the AGP bus or something?

XE

Quote from: sexytw

Quote from: EggtasticoEbay linky

Cheers, looks like a good option.

Quote from: sdpTried this at work and it didnt work.

Was this in response to the idea of motherboard and graphics card at the same time? Any idea why it didnt work?

Joe is using 2 graphics cards thats how he does his 3 monitor goodness lol.

Id go with NO on the motherboard thing, most of em would disable onboard as soon as you plug in a graphics card. use the dvi and vga output on his card, and then shove a cheap PCI graphics card in for the 3rd one.

I got one of those Matrox cards I might be prepared to part with

mine does at work, then again its radeon xpress 200 i think onboard.



the matrox cards are well designed to run multiple monitors, your other option is an external matrox box.

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/gxm/products/th2go/

Quote from: EggtasticoI got one of those Matrox cards I might be prepared to part with

On further inspection, my card is the GX450 Series.. so add a Zero to those £25 cards.