Did you folks that are having problems try flat out uninstall the drivers for onboard, not just disabling? I have never had to do that with the Dimensions I have, just disable them. It's been a year, so I am going off memory, but I use an older Matrox 4 head card with my Dell Dimension. It's an E4400. When I powered it up, I was getting driver conflicts because the Matrox drivers didn't like the onboard Nvidia so I quickly went to disable them. The other thing that comes to mind.,how much power does the PSU have? Does it have enough to power that additional video card. Some of the cheaper Dells are below 300 watts, cutting it close.
My card was an eVGA 6200 card, and so was the card used by another guy that I came across in a Dell Community Forum that he was trying to use on a Dell E310 system ( which is about 2 years old ). Hard to believe that simply turning "off" the Nvidia Display Services would allow the cards to work in concert with each other. I will have to call up nVidia later today and ask them about this.
My issue was that I couldn't even get the COMPUTER TO POWER "ON" with both cards installed! The power supply on the Vostro-400 is 300watts with an extremely strong +12v rail ( 18amps ). This is not the issue, especially when a PCI slot card draws only about 30 watts. I even disconnected my DVD drive just to "make-up" for the wattage. Again, it seemed to me that there was some sort of a "limitation" on my Foxconn G33 motherboard that does not allow for any other graphics card to be installed in the Vostro besides the 8600GTS that was in my PCI-Express slot.
The services didn't affect the card. It just stopped the error report. Ray put 3 cards into my friends Dell Dimension 9200 and he runs 6 monitors off of it. It took him 4 hours to get it going but like I said, Ray ain't the type to give up. John
I agree. Actually this was the first "store bought" machine I have gotten. Ray had built my machines in the past but suggested that prices have gotten so low that I just buy a Dell. Ray use to work at a CompUSA as a repair tech. He is about the only repair tech I have ever met who knew what he was doing. I just got lucky with it. Next time I will either just live with two monitors or get the card to drive 4 monitors. BTW, I got the Samung 226bw 22 in. They work great. John
I have a 5 year old Dimension 8300 and run 3 monitors on it. Unfortunately, it looks like some of the newer Dell units ( and their Foxconn motherboards ) refuse to support addditional graphics cards in the PCI slots. You either have to live with only 2 huge 22" or 24" displays supported by the correct graphics card in the PCI-Express slot . . . OR purchase a computer like the Dell Precision T3400 model that supports TWO PCI-EXPRESS cards and will thus allow support for 3-4 displays.
You understand, of course, that the D8300 was "top of the line" in its day and therefore should be "fully featured". The Vostro is "budget". And like earlier budget models, they often come with reduced features and restrictions... It's a savings to be able to run a multi-monitor trading rig on a budget machine, but perhaps Dell never conceived we'd be doing that or intentionally restricted the budget models so that guys like us would have to buy more expensive units. ?? In either event, a while back I priced out an equivalent Vostro and T3400 (presuming, of course the Vostro would allow 2 video cards), and I found only about $100 difference.... that's proably reasonable considering the higher quality and greater features/speed of the T's mobo.
Here is the link to the spec sheet for the Vostro 400 http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/vostrodt_400mt?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd Externally Accessible Video: 1 VGA standard; 1 DVI and 1 S-Video with add-in PCI-Express video card USB: 10 USB Ports (4 front, 4 back, 2 internal) Audio: Six back-panel connectors for line-in, line-out, microphone, rear surround, side surround, two front-panel connectors for headphones/microphone, integrated 7.1 channel sound Network: Integrated 10/100 network interface 56k8 PCI Data Fax Modem (optional) Expansion Slots PCI: 2 Slots PCIe x1: 1 Slot PCIe x16 (Graphics): 1 Slot Maybe they don't want a card anywhere but in the x16 slot. John
Um... Has anyone here actually bought a T3400 and hooked it up to multi monitors? I want to be absolutely sure that I wouldn't run into these driver conflicts, etc with the T3400. I have personally never had a problem because since I began using multi monitors about 8 years ago, I've always just used a quad card. Currently running a very old Appian Jeronimo Pro in an old Dell. Would prefer to go with multi cards as I upgrade however, cause newer quad cards cost much more than a few dual heads. Will do it if I have to though. Thinking of selling my entire rig cheap to a new trader and going with four 24" monitors. Does anyone know if a NVS 440 can run 4 monitors at the required resolution for 24's? I forget what they require - 1900 X 1200 maybe? Thanks, Jay