Having 2 ATI cards fitted at the same time

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rab
  • Start date Start date
R

Rab

Hello, i have Win2000 pro installed with a ATI 8500DV AGP card fitted as
a primary card and a Voodoo 3 3000 as a secondary.
I got a cheap ATI 7000 PCI card today and wanted to use as another
secondary card.

Got all the latest drivers from the web site and install them, however
its a total non-starter. With both cards and drivers installed, windows
hangs on start.
If i install the 8500DV with drivers then power down and install the
7000, when i start the computer again, windows auto installs some
software then tries to shut down, if i say "no" and manually install the
driver only it hangs again on start up.

Any advice would be appreciated, i'm still reading the ATI site to see
if there is anything on it, no luck so far.
 
In my experience with this is that you must have a winning combination
of cards, never is it a 'any card with any card situation'. I have a
lot more trouble getting this to work when using ATI cards. XP (os)
seems to make this even harder. I finally gave in a bought a dual head
card (fireGL - for use with Adobe production suite). Way easier for my
scenario, may not be what works for you. Btw, you certainly wouldn't
need to hit that price range (FireGL) to have a decent dual head
solution.

Joe
 
JAD said:
In my experience with this is that you must have a winning combination
of cards, never is it a 'any card with any card situation'. I have a
lot more trouble getting this to work when using ATI cards. XP (os)
seems to make this even harder. I finally gave in a bought a dual head
card (fireGL - for use with Adobe production suite). Way easier for my
scenario, may not be what works for you. Btw, you certainly wouldn't
need to hit that price range (FireGL) to have a decent dual head
solution.

Joe

Hello, i have Win2000 pro installed with a ATI 8500DV AGP card
Click to expand...

fitted as
a primary card and a Voodoo 3 3000 as a secondary.
I got a cheap ATI 7000 PCI card today and wanted to use as another
secondary card.

Got all the latest drivers from the web site and install them,
however

its a total non-starter. With both cards and drivers installed,
windows

hangs on start.
If i install the 8500DV with drivers then power down and install the
7000, when i start the computer again, windows auto installs some
software then tries to shut down, if i say "no" and manually install
the

driver only it hangs again on start up.

Any advice would be appreciated, i'm still reading the ATI site to
see

if there is anything on it, no luck so far.
Click to expand...
What i find the worst part is that sticking the Voodoo card in was
painless and though (mistakenly)that this would be as well.
Windows found the voodoo card and i installed the drivers, restarted and
no problems. I found the voodoo card in a car boot sale about 3 or 4
years ago and its not caused me any problems.
I intend to keep trying until Wednesday next week, if no luck the 7000
is going back to the shop.
Thanks for the os tip, will try that.
Click to expand...
 
You won't find any help from ATI. They've explicitely have told me a number
of times that they do not support using multipule cards in a system.

I use a Radeon 7200 (agp as primary) and a Xpert98 (pci as secondary) and it
works but as you've found out, ATI's installtion routines leave a lot to be
desired.

The way I get it to work is install the Radeon stuff first without the
Xpert98 even in system (else Radeon's install doesn't work properly if at
all). Once that's done and all is working correctly, put the Xpert98 in and
install ONLY it's driver. If I allo it to install anything else, it hoses
the Radeon and more specifically it's video abilities. As best I can tell,
the Xpert98's install sees no Rage Theatre chip on the Xpert98 and never
even looks at the Radeon, instead just blindly disabling everything. Even
following this procedure may end up with a mismatched Control Panel as there
seems no way to stop the second install from "updating" it as it thinks
appropriate. If you don't want that to haoppen, you have to figure out what
files to backup and then later restore out of "\system" etc.

I'm fed up with it and finding there's no alternative but to swap one of
them out for a nVidia based card. It'll probably be the Radeon.
 
pjp said:
You won't find any help from ATI. They've explicitely have told me a number
of times that they do not support using multipule cards in a system.

I use a Radeon 7200 (agp as primary) and a Xpert98 (pci as secondary) and it
works but as you've found out, ATI's installtion routines leave a lot to be
desired.

The way I get it to work is install the Radeon stuff first without the
Xpert98 even in system (else Radeon's install doesn't work properly if at
all). Once that's done and all is working correctly, put the Xpert98 in and
install ONLY it's driver. If I allo it to install anything else, it hoses
the Radeon and more specifically it's video abilities. As best I can tell,
the Xpert98's install sees no Rage Theatre chip on the Xpert98 and never
even looks at the Radeon, instead just blindly disabling everything. Even
following this procedure may end up with a mismatched Control Panel as there
seems no way to stop the second install from "updating" it as it thinks
appropriate. If you don't want that to haoppen, you have to figure out what
files to backup and then later restore out of "\system" etc.

I'm fed up with it and finding there's no alternative but to swap one of
them out for a nVidia based card. It'll probably be the Radeon.


Hello, i have Win2000 pro installed with a ATI 8500DV AGP card fitted as
a primary card and a Voodoo 3 3000 as a secondary.
I got a cheap ATI 7000 PCI card today and wanted to use as another
secondary card.

Got all the latest drivers from the web site and install them, however
its a total non-starter. With both cards and drivers installed, windows
hangs on start.
If i install the 8500DV with drivers then power down and install the
7000, when i start the computer again, windows auto installs some
software then tries to shut down, if i say "no" and manually install the
driver only it hangs again on start up.

Any advice would be appreciated, i'm still reading the ATI site to see
if there is anything on it, no luck so far.
Click to expand...
I'm finding out slowly that it looks like i cannot have 2 ATI cards
fitted at once on my system by reading through their website.
Seems there are known problems when using the 7000 as a secondary
graphics card and it seems ATI do not support multiple controllers
unless you can change specific settings on your bios.
Seems my motherboard does not allow me to change the settings ATI
recommend, just waiting for them to reply to see if i can download a
specfic bios upgrade to change the settings.
Its taken me about 6 hours of checking and following links to find out
that i may have to get a card built by someone else, which most likely
means spending more money.
Click to expand...
 
JAD said:
Rab you tried the change of configuration settings/PnP OS already?




a number


secondary) and it


lot to be


properly if at


Xpert98 in and


it hoses


can tell,


everything. Even


Panel as there


out what


one of


fitted as


install the
Click to expand...

Not yet, thats tomorrows task. Its not looking good though.
I am considering going to the car boot sell on Sunday to see if i can
pick up a reasonable card.
 
Yep I hear ya....the voodoo series of cards were touted as 'true'
standalone video cards. CPU and resource related comment, I would
think.
 
I'm sure that the reason it's working here is at least in part to the fact I
can specify in the BIOS which device (agp or pci) to use for "boot display".

Tyan Trinity S1854 motherboard here.

P.S. I use an agp driving value of EC rather than Auto if that means
anything at all???

 
pjp said:
I'm sure that the reason it's working here is at least in part to the fact I
can specify in the BIOS which device (agp or pci) to use for "boot display".

Tyan Trinity S1854 motherboard here.

P.S. I use an agp driving value of EC rather than Auto if that means
anything at all???



and it
Click to expand...
I try setting both the PCI and the AGP card to be the first boot and it
froze both times.

--

'Woody. Human saying. I've heard you say it often when you don't trust
someone, or they make you nervous, then they give you-
Crichton 'The willies! She gives you the willies.'
Aeryn
 
Mangyrat said:
ok first start here http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/
try this in bios set it to boot to pci first. set up the pci card then
install agp card. but keep it set to boot to pci first.
it shuld be a working combination with the 2 ati cards. the 8500 and the
7000
Click to expand...
i tried that too, uninstalled all the drivers and fitted the PCI card
first and rebooted. Installed the AGP card and installed the drivers, t
still freezes on boot up.


--

'Woody. Human saying. I've heard you say it often when you don't trust
someone, or they make you nervous, then they give you-
Crichton 'The willies! She gives you the willies.'
Aeryn
 
you set it to boot to pci in bios? and it still didnt work then your probly
not going to get it working.
 
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