PCI Video Cards.

BoomAM · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:33

Hi.
A while back i bought a PCI Video card to run my second monitor. The problem i had at the time was that it wouldnt accelerate video on the screen that was connected to the PCI card, and windows ran really jerky for some reason.

Can anyone think why that might be? Because i could really do with a second video card without replacing my mobo, and for the life of me, i cant find anywhere that sells that PCI-E X1300.

Thanks in advance all.

MAllen · 19 Oct 2006 at 17:30

Was your PCI card from the same manufacturer as your main card?

I got a mate with a PC which he wanted to slave some more screens to. We already had the monitor and TV attached to the Ati PCI-E video card. Now he wanted to add his new Sony Projector into the mix. (And at a later time a second PC monitor)

So we have now bought an "HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon 9250SE 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (PCI) - Retail (R9250-PTDW128-64bit) (GX-013-HT)" from this page - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ATI_PCI_Series.html

This seems to be doing a great job. Now, he isn't a game player... more of a video junky. So movies are downloaded from the internet, then played using Winamp. The video is dragged from the PC to the TV and now over to the Sony Projector which is attached to the new PCI card. There is no noticable difference or slow-down when using that PCI card to drive the projector.

In this setup, I made sure both cards were from the same manufacturer. In this case Ati. This made it much easier to setup the multiple screens. I also made sure I had the latest Ati drivers.

In fact I was amazed at the incredible quality of the projector hanging off a PCI card... the text is soooo crisp and readable. Makes his TV look really poor....

Edit: Also - are all motherboard drivers up to date? And what else do you have plugged into PCI?

BoomAM · 20 Oct 2006 at 11:07

MAllen said:
...snip...

Yes.
My main card is an X800XL, and the PCI card, was the one you are using.

Edit: Also - are all motherboard drivers up to date? And what else do you have plugged into PCI?

Mobo drivers were upto date at the time.
And tbh, i cant remember if at the time of trying it, if my Audigy was still working or not.
Either way though, i hope that its not a problem with having multiple PCI devices because i plan on getting that HDA sound card.

My plan was to have desktop screen 1 & my HDTV connected to my X800XL, allowing me to accelerate 3D on my main desktop screen, and on the larger telly, and have my 2nd desktop screen on the PCI card. Which would be used for general 3D work, and video viewing while i was surfing the net on the main desktop screen.
Problem was though, that videos didnt appear on the PCI card, just a black blob, and moving windows around all 3 screens, caused windows to go jerky.

El_Watcher · 20 Oct 2006 at 12:28

The reason you only get a black screen when running video on the second card is because of overlay, not a problem with the card. By default most video players can only overlay on one screen (usually the one with start button on). You could try a different video player, someone in another thread suggested BSPlayer although never tried it. I know Quicktime player can do it.
Maybe check in the graphics driver options for overlay, and see if you can change which screen it uses.
Stuttering while moving windows, can be due to limited ram or maybe fragmented hdd. Try a defrag.

MAllen · 20 Oct 2006 at 15:16

Ahhh... black video screens. Like El_watcher said, try a few different video programs. I know that Winamp works fine. So does Classic Media Player. Check you have up to date codecs as well. ( http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm I pick the "Loads Of Stuff" option and let it remove the advert laden RealPlayer and Quicktimes at the same instance )

If you want to keep using your favourite player, then you will need to use the drivers to change the primary screen. Set the primary screen to the place you want to watch the video - but this is inconvienient as it will also move the start bar.

Comments about other PCI cards was mainly a thought about the crappy old PCI Soundblaster Live, some TV cards, and some PCI SATA cards. These put so much traffic onto the PCI bus that problems can occur. A quick test would just be to pop the other cards out for a few minutes to see the effect. An Augdigy should not cause the problem. (And IIRC my mates PC also has an Audigny in it)

Defo make sure you have plenty of RAM in there. And lots of free disk space. And badly fragmented movies can be a right pain...

If you need specific settings from the Ati drivers on my mates PC, that can be done. But I don't see him too often.

I do know that all I did when installing the new Ati card was to make sure the drivers were up to date. Then used the Windows Display properties to "extend the desktop to this monitor", using the same page to shuffle the order of the screen. I didn't actually change any overlay settings in the Ati drivers.

Winamp then drags smoothly from one screen to the next. I can't remember if I was actually playing the video as I dragged it, but I do know that it played fine on all three screens.

BoomAM · 20 Oct 2006 at 15:36

MAllen said:
Ahhh... black video screens. Like El_watcher said, try a few different video programs. I know that Winamp works fine. So does Classic Media Player. Check you have up to date codecs as well. ( http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm I pick the "Loads Of Stuff" option and let it remove the advert laden RealPlayer and Quicktimes at the same instance )

So why is it that i can use all my video apps on both screens connected to my main card at the moment, but not on a PCI card?

The overlay settings havnt been changed, and as said, work perfectly fine on monitors connected to my X800XL. Just not with the PCI card.

Defo make sure you have plenty of RAM in there. And lots of free disk space. And badly fragmented movies can be a right pain...

My movie drive is never fragmented, and with 2Gb of ram, the stuttering has no excuse. The only thing that changed between everything stuttering and everything running smooth/working was the addition of a PCI video card to run my second screen. So logically, the problem is rooted around the PCI card.

MAllen · 20 Oct 2006 at 16:00

At this moment I am 10 miles away from the system I am talking about. But the PC ain't anything special. In fact, it is an Advent PC. Roughly two years old, using a P4. It was sold to my mate as an "entertainment PC" and was fairly Hi-Spec for an Advent. (1GB of RAM in it)

Last month I wrenched it free from it's nasty small case and put it into a bigger OCUK box to allow it to breath and stop boiling it's internal parts.

The graphics drivers I installed were just the standard one on the Ati site that were available in September (or may of been end of August).

This PC has never been "tweaked" and never had any games on it. All it is doing is running AVG Free. I have cleared it of excess carp like Norton, AOL, etc. Though every time I return to visit my (non-IT literate) mate, he has installed more items in the task bar. Chat clients, download clients, etc. Must be 15-20 icons down there.....

The PC spends it's time as a download box as he is an illegal download addict. This has also meant that the hard disk is almost jammed full - and probally horrendously fragmented.

The Sony Projector that we have connected to the PCI card is using a standard VGA connector.

The 19" flat screen in connected to the PCI-e VGA connector. And the Toshiba TV is connected to the PCI-e S-Video DIN connector.

I don't know what else to suggest to you. What else are you running at the moment on the PC? Have you tried reducing some of the programs being loaded up? See if something is interfereing?

As mentioned before, the only settings I messed with after installing the PCI graphics card was to "extend the desktop to this screen" using the standard XP Display Properties. The same screen was used to change the order of the screens. Then I also remember being in the Ati (advanced) control panel with the multi-screeen settings in there. But I am fairly sure I didn't change anything.

The only hassle I had when setting this up was getting the PCI card to send out it's signal. Initially I had forgotten the "extend the desktop to this screen" setting.

I am probally seeing my mate next week, so I'll take a closer look at the specific setup.

Have you tried Winamp and/or Classic Media Player to see how they behave on your setup? Sounds like the codecs are probally fine on your system if you get no stuttering on your main PCI-E card - but it wouldn't matter if this got another update.

MAllen · 20 Oct 2006 at 16:07

DUH!!! I forgot the obvious comments.....

Which PCI slot is this video card in? Try a different slot. And definatly don't use the slot right next to the PCI-E graphics card - this must always be left free. You want to try and get the PCI Graphics card onto it's own IRQ.

Check out Device Manager and "View resources by conenction". Then crack open the "Interrupt Request (IRQ)" list and move the card from slot to slot until you share the least number of items.

(Ask for more details if you don't know what I am talking about.... and a list of what PCI cards you currently have installed, and which slot they are in, would help greatly. The PCI slots count from the top down - so PCI Slot 1 is the one next to the PCI-E card) :cool:

LoadsaMoney · 20 Oct 2006 at 16:18

Surely thats a typo, can't find a PCI-E x1300, these guys have got a shed load, as does everywhere else. :confused:

FrankJH · 20 Oct 2006 at 17:38

to be honest even as an experienced user and builder of pc's I cant get an 9250 to work as a second card with CCC installed.

I reckon if you just install the drivers for your main card and different drivers for the 9250 everything should be ok

El Watcher , what you say is correct but usually only if the 2nd display is connected to the same card as the main display - I have heard (even though I stand to be corrected) is that usually its actually the hardware that can only do the overlay on the primary display - therefore having a 2nd card and attaching 2ndry monitor to this instead should aleviate this problem

As stated above I havent yet bothered to uninstall CCC and just use the X1900 drivers on their own along with drivers for My 9250 to see if it works but I would suggest its more a hardware than software problem

BoomAM · 20 Oct 2006 at 18:33

The only thing 'wrong' that i found at the time was that the PCI video card was sharing the same IRQ as the PCI-E video card.
Which IIRC, at the time, i couldnt change the slot it was in because of my Audigy. And i didnt want to manually assign IRQs.
But im not shelling out money to buy the card again for another try that may not work.

FrankJH · 20 Oct 2006 at 18:38

I think nv make it slightly easier currently because their drivers actually work with available pci cards as well as PCIE top range ones - the only pci ati cards use seperate drivers which **** up CCC, which is good to have in some ways and awful in others

any more advanced pci cards from ati are hard to come by it seems

BoomAM · 20 Oct 2006 at 18:44

FrankJH said:
I think nv make it slightly easier currently because their drivers actually work with available pci cards as well as PCIE top range ones - the only pci ati cards use seperate drivers which **** up CCC, which is good to have in some ways and awful in others

any more advanced pci cards from ati are hard to come by it seems

?
The latest Cats at the time worked fine with both my X800XL & the 9250 PCI? :confused:

Ive been searching around for that HIS X1300 that uses a PCI-E x1 slot, but i cant find anywhere in the UK that sells it unfortunatelly.

MAllen · 20 Oct 2006 at 19:02

BoomAM said:
The only thing 'wrong' that i found at the time was that the PCI video card was sharing the same IRQ as the PCI-E video card.

That would have caused the problem. Sharing IRQs on the video cards would cause the jerkiness you described.

From a rough memory, the PCI VGA card was in the third or fourth slot in my mate's rig. Sharing an IRQ with either the USB or NIC (can't remember for sure).

On my mates setup that works, we were using the CCC. Whatever was latest in late august / early september. Just a standard Ati install, with latest patches and updates to XP (making sure that .net was fully patched)

When I get to see him next week, I'll post back on here with the exact driver version we are using. As well as the exact models of Ati cards in use.

To repeat - we definately have two Ati cards working fine. With ONE driver set for both cards. (In fact, I wouldn't know how to install a different driver set for the two cards due to the need for the dlls to live in the system folder)

I think the key thing here that was causing your jerks was the sharing of IRQs. When I setup my mates PC this is a very important step I looked into avoiding. (Been setting up hardware since the days of the 486... so well used to the effects of IRQ clashes, etc

The fun of non-plug 'n' pray kit and setting everything up with jumpers... yipee... :cool:

)

Please also note that I am actually an IT Engineer by trade, so do this job for a living.

FrankJH · 20 Oct 2006 at 19:07

BoomAM said:
?
The latest Cats at the time worked fine with both my X800XL & the 9250 PCI?

Ive been searching around for that HIS X1300 that uses a PCI-E x1 slot, but i cant find anywhere in the UK that sells it unfortunatelly.

Thats interesting because My basically brand new 9250 refuses to work with X1900 master - hmmmmm ( with fresh install)

Are you using CCC?

BoomAM · 20 Oct 2006 at 20:00

MAllen said:
Please also note that I am actually an IT Engineer by trade, so do this job for a living.

Might get the card again then and try.

Im also an IT Engineer by trade as well, and as proven, probably by lazyness that i didnt investigate further when i found the conflict, that its not a certification of being correct.

FrankJH said:
Thats interesting because My basically brand new 9250 refuses to work with X1900 master - hmmmmm ( with fresh install)

Are you using CCC?

No, at the time i didnt use CCC.
I uninstalled all the drivers, then ran driver cleaner. Switched off my computer, put the 9250 in, booted, then installed the latest Cats wo/ CCC.
Although at the moment, afaik, the latest drivers arnt available without CCC, ie; no 'normal' display panel.

MAllen · 20 Oct 2006 at 20:16

BoomAM said:
Might get the card again then and try.

Hang back until I get to see my mate later this week. I'll then have a "spec that works" to reel off to you via this thread. :cool:

All these comments about CCC, Driver Cleaner, etc I find slightly puzzling. I found the install of the second card surprisingly straight forward. Especially surprising bearing in mind the state of my mates PC!! IIRC his 160GB hard disk is so jammed full of films and pr0n that he only has a couple of GB left to play with!! So fragmentation must be the norm in that box.... and the heat!!! Ouch!! That Advent was boiling itself to death due to baaaad design. In fact the PCI-e Ati graphics card was having a very tough job to do as it's fan had died due to overheating and being chock full of dust!!

BoomAM said:
Im also an IT Engineer by trade as well, and as proven, probably by lazyness that i didnt investigate further when i found the conflict, that its not a certification of being correct.

Funny how that happens ain't it? Spend hours on perfectly solving customer PC problems, but when it comes to one's own PC, short cuts get taken and often left in a "that will do for now" state....

One of these days I may actually relocate the side of my PC and bolt it back on. Been sitting open since the late 90's... LOL.

MAllen · 20 Oct 2006 at 20:33

P.S. I just had a quick scan of your Project Log in your signature..... you would just LOVE some of the kit I have been setting up for my mate.

It started with just connecting the PC to the wide screen back projection Toshiba TV....

Now we have:

Media Players: DVD-RW; NTL Cable; VHS Video; MP4 player (chinese import); PC; Playstation

Audio for all of these goes out through a Sony Surround system.

Video goes out to: Sony Projector, Toshiba TV, PC Monitor.

Oh - and then there is the separate feed out to the TV in the bedroom and bathroom!! (These two screens show the same thing)

So, someone can be sitting in the front room watching a DVD on the projector, while someone else is in the bath watching NTL Cable!!

The cabling is a nightmare!! And now I have this all setup for him.... he breaks the news that he is moving house. I am tempted to physcially weigh all of the copper cablling that is in use. There is a HUGE amount of it.

BoomAM · 21 Oct 2006 at 01:59

MAllen said:
Hang back until I get to see my mate later this week. I'll then have a "spec that works" to reel off to you via this thread.

Thanks.

Funny how that happens ain't it? Spend hours on perfectly solving customer PC problems, but when it comes to one's own PC, short cuts get taken and often left in a "that will do for now" state....

lol.
True.
I suppose i get so fed up of fixing things all day that when i come home, ive just got no motivation to bother fixing things on my PC.
Its probably the reason why i havnt played a PC game in ages as well. Cant be bothered spending a few hours optimising it so it runs well, and cant be bother messing around installing a new gfx card so that i dont have to optimise it. lol.

MAllen said:
P.S. I just had a quick scan of your Project Log in your signature..... you would just LOVE some of the kit I have been setting up for my mate.

Its good to hear that someones read the log/looked at the links in my sig.

You should document your work down on here. It'll be good for people to view & learn off. Because thats the reason i did it, so people could learn off it/get ideas.

FrankJH · 21 Oct 2006 at 06:45

BoomAM said:
No, at the time i didnt use CCC.
I uninstalled all the drivers, then ran driver cleaner. Switched off my computer, put the 9250 in, booted, then installed the latest Cats wo/ CCC.
Although at the moment, afaik, the latest drivers arnt available without CCC, ie; no 'normal' display panel.

Ahhhhhh thats possibly the route I have to head down, as I indicated in one of My initial posts - ok cheers

edit I take it back I think I was talking about this in a different thread also