Dual Radeon 1650 Pro Card Vista Problems....

[Robert Barnett]

Hello,

First here is my system. This is a home built PC running Windows Vista Ultimate. It has an Intel D975XBX2 motherboard, Intel Core2 Duo Processor, 2GB of Ram, over 5TB of hard drive space between four internal drives and 4 External USB2 drives. I have two ATI Radeon X1650 Pro cards installed in the to PCI Express slots with two 19" Viewsonic monitors connected to one card and a 22" wide screen Westinghouse monitor connected to the other (all using VGA connectors) all of them are LCD.

My problem is that the Westinghouse seems to use an odd resolution it is something x 1050 and sometimes Vista or the ATI driver messes up and this resolution is no longer available as an option causing the Westinghouse to run in a non-native resolution which looks horrible. I have looked on the ATI support site and have found that this is a common issue and have only had luck getting it to work with I believe 7.5 drivers or something like that. Any time I have tried the latest drivers the needed resolution is not there. According to the information on ATI's site this problem was supposed to have been fixed long ago.

What I am trying to figure out is this Windows Vista, ATI Driver or Westinghouse monitor issue? Any suggestions would be very appreciated. I really like having three monitors and since the Intel motherboard doesn't support Nvidia SLI technology I don't know what else I can do as I can't replace the video cards. I am under the impression that ATI are the only ones supported on the Intel board with dual cards for more than two monitors.

Thanks,

Robert

[Bwall]

I am guessing it's an ATI driver issue. You can use two Nvidia cards in that board, you just can't use them in SLI whereas the ATI cards can be used in CrossFire.

I think you may be able to add custom resolutions to the display manager in Catalyst Control Center in the advanced options. I was messing around the other day in there and saw an option to add custom resolutions. You might try giving that a shot. Also, is the monitor with the higher resolution on the primary display adapter (first video card, video connector closest to the motherboard)?

[DMB2000uk]

Just to reiterate what bwall said, you will be fine running two Nvidia graphics cards to power three (or more) monitors.

Dan

[Robert Barnett]

First off thank you for taking the time to help. I appricate it emensly.

I don't know which video card closest to the motherboard you are talking about. There are two slots next to each other on the motherboard. I didn't know it would matter which card I plugged which monitors in to.

I have been thinking about going with two nvidia cards because of what seems to be a lot of problems with ATI.

So I should be plugging the monitor with the highest resolution in to the card in which slot the slot closest to the CPU or the second one over.

------------<CPU>---------------------

========<slot 1>================

=========<Slot 2>===============

So slot 1 or slot two. Also, should the other two monitors then be plugged in to the second card (the card without the high resolution monitor on it or should one be connected to the second port on the first card with the high resolution monitor and then the third monitor on to the second card?

Thanks,

robert