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at the moment i have a dual monitor setup on my main PCIe gfx card.

I know that on windows it is almost impossible to have a second card (eg no thrills PCI card) running without having an SLI motherboard because of a driver issue. Well this was my conclusion after many weeks of research.

I was thinking...is it possible to use a VM in order to utilize the secondary card as the default video output to feed another monitor?

let me know if you want me to clarify

Thanks :)

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    Where did you get that idea from? I've set up dual monitors using separate cards under windows before. Before dual-head cards came about it was the only way to do it.
    – Andee
    Feb 15, 2011 at 21:27
  • ive been struggling to install the second PCI card in windows it just doesn't recognize it as an adaptor. I currently have a dual head GFX card witch serves 2 monitors but what i need is the third output to come from the secondary card
    – Arturski
    Feb 15, 2011 at 21:57
  • @Arthur can you be more specific about which motherboard this is and what cards you're trying to use? Because @Andee is right - it's trivial on 99% of setups to install a second card, especially if it's identical.
    – Shinrai
    Feb 15, 2011 at 22:52
  • Hi Shinrai, I have a Dell Dimensions e520, its an Intel board with a PCIe slot for the gfx and 2 additional PCI slots. hope this helps. thanks for the prompt reply :)
    – Arturski
    Feb 16, 2011 at 23:38

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The VM will certainly output to a second monitor (I do this in the office), but for that to work the underlying PC will have to be supporting two monitors to start with anyway - and this is certainly very possible under Windows 7 using 'standard' (non SLI) graphics cards - my old desktop PC (Asus motherboard, I think - I don't have it any more) drove one monitor from its VGA port and a second from the DVI. Certainly a few motherboards do not like some mixes of cards and you should be able to find out what will work with a bit of Googling.

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  • i have 2 monitors running from an ATI x1300 which is the maximum number of monitors that it supports. ive tried adding a second pci card but it doesn't get recognized at all. i searched around on google and it seems quite unclear whether this is possible or not. like I mentioned earlier i have fund some reference to the fact that windows has issues with more than one display driver.
    – Arturski
    Feb 15, 2011 at 22:04
  • @Arthur - That's wrong, it's certainly possible. I've run SEVEN QUAD OUTPUT CARDS on a single Windows 7 machine before. See my comment on the question.
    – Shinrai
    Feb 15, 2011 at 22:53

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