I read somewhere that it was possible to have two graphic/video cards in one computer. Is this true and if it is, does it help out much?
I am just wondering because I have a Voodoo 3 card that I can't add to my new cpu (because the graphics card that is in there, is built into the the system and can't be easily replaced with another card, or atleast that is what the people at Staples told me).
If you want to use dual monitors, then you need to have (and can have) two video/graphic cards(Or you can get on of the new Matrox cards which allows dual monitors from one video card). Then you can use two monitors as if they were joined together. You know, you can drag things from one to the other.
Its really great if you want to use something like photoshop and keep all the pallettes on one monitor and the canvas on the other.
Of course you need to have a motherboard that has room for two cards.
oh, and wsresource, you can disable the onboard video very easily, there is either a jumper on the motherboard, or a bios setting, it depends on the board, and usually if you put another graphics card in, the bios will detect it and use that card rather than the built on video card. I would highly suggest doing this because the built on video always sucks.
So I don't actually have to pull out the old graphics card and insert a new one, for my computer to use the new one? I can just put in the new graphics card and it will automatically use that card instead of the old one?
You can install 2 graphics cards but you can't play 2 games at once one it:
1. Your computer simply isn't powerful enough to handle it. The CPU still does quite a bit of work.
2. Software doesn't support it.
3. It's hard to get 2 keyboards hooked up.
What you can do is share your Windows desktop between the graphic cards and drag windows between them. Ie) keep sitepoint open on one, have photoshop full-screen on the other with extra palletes on the other monitor. and so on.
At a computer store (such as Best Buy, CompUSA, etc) you'll probably find a system with multiple monitors on one computer. I believe the maximum is 9 monitors, but I have never seen a computer with 9 free PCI slots.
I really appreciate it.
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