So, this project has turned out to be a complete disaster. Here's what has happened so far. 1st card purchased: ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB. Plugged the card in and when rebooting my system, it would shut down after 10 seconds. Could not install the driver as the system kept shutting down. Also, the metal front piece would not fit into the back of my box, so I had to bend the metal to make it "fit". The installation guide made reference to replacing the screw to lock the card in place. I have no such screw. Customer support tells me that this card won't work with the ATI Radeon cards because the drivers are different. Out $40 because I ruined the card by bending the metal. 2nd card purchased: ATI Radeon 7000 64MB. This time, the instrux told me to uninstall all other drivers before replacing this one. I don't want to replace the card, I want to add it to an existing card. Called ATI customer support and they told me that this card will not work with my existing card as the driver is not compatible with the "x" series. Was advised to purchase the exact same card that's already in the the box. What is going on??? Am I being jerked around by the good folks at ATI? Should I attempt to install this second card? Someone please help as I have not been able to get my third monitor up for over 3 weeks. Thanks in advance.
one way to deal with it is buy a bunch of cards and see which one works. I always buy from microcenter so I can return them without hassle.
Suggest: 1. Uninstall all video drivers. 2. Go to Driverheaven.com and use their driver cleaner to remove all remnants of ATI drivers. 3. Mount only the PCIE card and install Catalyst driver. 4. Mount other ATI cards without installing more drivers. The Catalyst should handle ALL Radeon cards. If this doesn't work, ask ATI what PCI cards will work with your PCIE card.
I've seen where ATI says, "If your card is listed below, use this driver... if your card is older, use a different driver". That being the case, it's possble that older cards may not be compatible with newer. Depending upon the slots in your mobo and the number of monitors you wish to run, you may have to give up on ATI completely and get new Nvidia cards.
I'm on the horn with dell customer service and they are trying to tell me that there is no way possible to add an existing video card to the one currently installed, even though i have 2 available PCI slots and 1 available PCIe slot in addition to the one being used. Can this be possible?
thanks gnome. but what they are saying is that this is impossilbe with ANY video card, not just the one I am currently using
That is absolutely NOT true. Tell me what you have and what you want to do, and I'll offer you at least one workable solution!!
Thats what i'm saying as i have done it before. i'm still on hold with these clowns. I made it VERY CLEAR when i bot this system that i wanted to be able to run 4 monitors off it and they yeah yeahed me to death. they told me all i needed to do was install another compatible card and it would work. now they're talking about using port replicators, which i have tried and hasn't worked. should i try to get them to send me a video card that will support the port replicators and send this card back?