nVidia and ATi Cards Together

[dave-lew99]

Hi All,

The Background: I run four monitors on my desktop, this requires two graphics cards, when i was last running windows i used an AGP Radeon 9200 and a PCI Radeon 9200, this worked perfectly without problems.
I moved to Linux and because i wanted proper dual screen support i changed the AGP card for an nVidia 6600GT which works more or less OK with the PCI Radeon card to give me 3 screens.

I attempted to use this configuration under windows and the nVidia drivers just obliterated anything else that i plugged in (Radeon or old Voodoo card).

The Aim: Is there any way to get them to play nicely with each other (maybe using the Omega drivers?)

This used to work, it's something nVidia changed...erm...post Geforce4 era... but it definitely used to work. I don't need powerful cards, just lots of outputs and therefore im loathed to spend a lot of money on something like a quad head card when there's no sensible reason for it.

I can't test it out as i don't want to go to the effort of installing windows again to find it can't be made to work - just wondering if anyone has/is doing this already.

Failing that i'm going to have to buy a PCI nVidia card i suppose...

 

[gurusan]

As far as I know....no can do.....need to be both ATI or both Nvidia cards

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Is this something your after :- http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=6269

Mainly for SLi, but it may also work for more displays without SLi using an ATi card.

 

[Bomag]

I got a ATI 1900 XT and a nV 6600 to work together without problems when the 1900XT card was in the primary PCI-E slot. However, I did not install the Catalyst control panel.

 

[dave-lew99]

Thanks guys, the problem i was having was that the nvidia control panel was knocking out anything else i tried to use - both the ATi and Voodoo cards.

Not sure if that forum/guide will help as i don't even have PCIe on this machine, nevermind a card with SLI support!

I may give it a go later on, if i get around to swapping the HD out of my mediacentre that it. (need this disk as it's my 30gig test OS disk)

Is it easily possible to do 'driver only' installs for nvidia cards? Last time i checked you were forced into installing their control panel app.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Can you not just install the driver from Device Manager, by selecting your card then update driver.

 

[HighlandeR]

Had a similar thread where people suggested it can be done... but wasnt possible under vista.

I originaly wanted the ATI card to pump out and display Video Sources and Nvidia obviously for gaming, but aint had the chance to test that ever

 

[dave-lew99]

If i can extract the actual driver from the setup executable then maybe it can be installed in device manager otherwise probably not.

I'm avoiding vista, i'm happy with XP - it works. I'll be able to give it another shot soon.

 

[dave-lew99]

So far it's a no go, once the factory nvidia drivers are installed, the Ati installer refuses to accept i have an ati card and just exits, same for trying to use device manager to point to the driver.

 

[dave-lew99]

I give up, it cannot be done, i've tried multiple different revisions of the drivers, the omega drivers and still no go.

nVidia absolutely refuse to coexist with any other GPU type.

ATi works fine with none ati cards but nVidia won't.

 

[HighlandeR]

yeah tbh the other guys sorta said similar.... its not a proper setup at the end of da day... for whatever reason we need an ATI or Nvidia card its just not gonna be the best or possible route.

Hopefully ill figure out a way to stream Videos or Video mirror it with 2X Nvidia cards, or get 2x 4870GX2s

 

[Monkeynut]

I currently have a NVIDIA 8600GT working perfectly in harmony with the ATI card in sig. The drivers installed painlessly and both are working fine. (although the 8600GT is only used for CUDA, no screen output)

 

[dave-lew99]

Well thats annoying....obviously it can be done!

Just perhaps not with my two cards - you are able to enable a screen output on both cards though?

 

[The_Abyss]

Windows 7 next year is touted to be able to offer multiple display outputs from different GPU manufacturers.

 

[dave-lew99]

Windows 7 next year is touted to be able to offer multiple display outputs from different GPU manufacturers.

Hehe, my main machine won't even run vista....

But at least they're working on it, even decent multi monitor on linux is slowly coming along (but only if you use nVidia cards it seems) but that's still a long way off for me - one of the reasons i've gone back to windows.