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My laptop (Lenovo G510) has two graphic cards, AMD Radeon HD 8750M and Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600. The laptop has one HDMI port and one VGA port.

I tried to connect one monitor by the HDMI and another one by the VGA concurrently, but only one monitor worked at the same time. I searched a bit online to check if my Graphic cards support multi-monitors feature, but I could not find any helpful answer (but as the monitors did not work when connected together, I guess my graphic cards probably do not support that).

However, as my laptop has two graphic cards, can I run one monitor one the AMD and the other monitor on the Intel GPU? So I can overcome the limitation of my graphic cards to have 2 functional external monitors (in addition to the laptop monitor) concurrently.

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  • so you're trying to run three displays at one time? what model laptop are you using? to my knowledge, you cannot route a display signal through two separate internal devices if the devices share outputs. it's likely that your laptop supports two displays (if you close the lid it should be able to show up on both external monitors), but it sounds like you're hitting a wall when the laptop display is also enabled.
    – mael'
    Aug 21, 2019 at 12:17
  • @mael', thank you for your reply, my laptop is (Lenovo G510). Can I buy any affordable external adapter to be able to use the three monitor at once (the monitor of the laptop and the other external two)?
    – Mohammed Noureldin
    Aug 21, 2019 at 13:11

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While I couldn't find an official statement that the laptop can handle three displays, if you look up your video card it does show up on Intel's list of supported three-display configurations. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't also have an AMD GPU in your laptop - if that's showing up in your Device Manager you may have a bad driver or something else going on, which brings us to the first order of business:

1. Update all of your drivers.

Intel probably has some sort of built-in software you can use to manage your display settings - you don't necessarily need to update that, but definitely make sure everything under "Display adapters" in Device Manager is up-to-date - you can uninstall it/them and restart your machine if needed, as the driver(s) should auto-reload and you can check for fresh updates.

2. Test the two external monitors without the laptop display

Make sure you edit your power settings to not make your laptop sleep when you close it, connect both monitors, and then close your laptop lid. As long as one monitor displays you can troubleshoot the other from there - it's important to make sure they can both be detected at the same time and that they are each set to a compatible resolution (if one has a VGA and one has an HDMI, I would imagine the resolutions will vary).

3. Bring the laptop display back into the mix

If you can get both external displays working, open your lid back up - it may be good-to-go right off of the bat, or you may have to tweak some other resolution/display settings; sometimes a computer can support three-displays but not necessarily be able to extend to three (i.e. two displays may have to be duplicated).

Ultimately: even after you make sure everything is updated, sometimes getting your displays to all come up correctly just takes some playing around with. It's a familiar dance of power-cycling, unplugging cables, plugging them back in, and changing your settings. Let us know if this helps at all and we can go from there.

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  • I will try this and give you feedback ASAP.
    – Mohammed Noureldin
    Aug 21, 2019 at 13:47
  • it's no problem - it takes me a little while to type things out the way I want so I posted in the middle of it and just edited in the rest. hopefully it's useful.
    – mael'
    Aug 21, 2019 at 13:50
  • Lenovo list an AMD driver for that model support.lenovo.com/gb/en/downloads/ds103804 so it is likely there is an AMD graphics card on board as well
    – Randomhero
    Aug 21, 2019 at 13:52
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    Hi @mael', thank you very much for your answer again. Actually your notice that my GPU supports 3 monitors motivated me to try again with my monitors. The solution was really silly, after connecting the 3 monitor, I just had to activate it from the adapter settings (in windows OS). After activating it, it worked perfectly! Thank you again very much.
    – Mohammed Noureldin
    Aug 21, 2019 at 19:45
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    glad you figured it out!
    – mael'
    Aug 21, 2019 at 20:05
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From the Lenovo forums:

I’m sorry to inform you that only one display can be connected using any one of the port and both cannot be activated at one time, and external device cannot be supported to display video.

EDIT: It appears that is for a G500 series. But I think it would still hold true.

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  • What a weird situation here, it has the ports to connect a external monitor and they cannot be used?
    – CaldeiraG
    Aug 21, 2019 at 13:40
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    No - the G500 has an Intel 4000, which does not support three displays. The 510 has an Intel 4600, which does.
    – mael'
    Aug 21, 2019 at 13:42
  • I would assume it is to provide different options to connect to a screen, especially given there is VGA and HDMI. This would allow connection to a TV or an older monitor without any extra adapters
    – Randomhero
    Aug 21, 2019 at 13:43
  • @mael' But the discreet graphics card is the same on both models (AMD Radeon HD 8570M).
    – Randomhero
    Aug 21, 2019 at 13:45
  • @Randomhero can you link to where you're seeing either the G500 or G510 with an AMD? my google skills aren't adequate here. edit: nevermind you posted it on my answer.
    – mael'
    Aug 21, 2019 at 14:02

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