I recently bought a computer and 2 geforce 7800gs cards that were on sale. I found out that for some reason though there were enough PCI express slots, they are too damn close together and I can't use them as the card is pretty big with the fan. I have an onboard ATI X1250, but I can't seem to get the card to come back up in the device manager now that I've plugged in the new card. I read that it's tough to match up different cards, but was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction. Are there any good cards <200 bucks that I can hook up to get quad monitor support AND be able to game? Or is that not possible? I heard good things about Matrox doing a search, but it does not seem that they are gaming cards.
Search posts by gnome.... if anyone can come up with a solution... it will be him... but it is my understanding that you do NOT want to mix video card drivers.... good luck
1) its not possible to use a onboard video card if you plug one in the agp or Pci-express port. its unfortunate your motherboard wasn't designed to accommodate 2 high end video cards, but you can still use 2 cards. and matrox are not gaming cards at all, they are cards made for workstations. for 200$ you can still have 4 monitors but you wont play the very last game (forget crysis) look here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...00380048+4027+1069609641&name=PCI+Express+x16 You will need to buy video cards that have a smaller form factor (not those behemoth high end gaming ones.) i was thinking of 2 ati HD2600 or geforce 8500 (or anything in that category) they are good enough to play games at medium details, but they will be more than enough to display charts and doms and newsfeed etc. which leads me to point #2 2) you should not be gaming on your trading platform at all. if trading is a serious business to you you will have a computer dedicated to trading and then another one where you can play your video games. Gaming lead to installing a myriad of driver updates all the time and direct X updates and game patches (and bad cracks and fishy keygens if you download your games off bittorent like everybody else) each update has potential to screw your windows install, give you display issues, locking problems, blue screens, etc, if you live on your trading, why take the chance when in 2007 a top notch gaming computer costs 1300$ and wont affect your trading if its down for a few days?
Thank you. I made my post sound too much like I *needed* gaming. Truth is I only game 2-3 times a year, but from my post I wasn't clear about that. I will return the geforce cards and look around for what you have suggested (and GNOME sent me a PM regarding similar advice). I will dedicate the comp towards trading. That was the original intent. No need to get fancy.