Multiple Graphics card problem

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Hodsocks

Posts: 417   +2
I am hoping you guys can help me out here.
I have been looking at a pc I built for someone, it had two matrox graphics cards connected to 6 monitors and was working well for a couple of years, the spec is basically Athlon x2 4800 processor; ASUS M2V mobo, 2 GB memory and was running Windows XP.
We recently upgraded to Windows 764bit and have since had problemswith the graphics and the machine freezing. After several e-mails with Matrox it seems that the 2 cards we have are no longer supported and Win 7 drivers are not available, they suggested upgrading to their latest cards but at a cost of about £700.
I looked around and decided that we may be able to use 3 graphics cards of the same type. one being PCIex and the other 2 being PCI. I bought 3 Geforce 8400GS cards and fitted them this morning, the first two went OK and everything worked fine but problems occurred after the third one with problems with freezing and running slow, I updated to the latest drivers which at least enabled the pc to boot up fine but still it seems to be slowly and freezing particularly if we try to open several things at once. We have ordered some more memory thinking that it may just be running slow with the extra cards but I am not totally convinced that that will cure the problem.
Have you guys any thoughts?
 
I suspect that W7 is the culprit here and the issue of drivers where it starts. I have had problems with mixing the slots with the same sorts of cards so if you have two 8400GS cards in PCI slots, perhaps try something else in the PCI-e slot?
Adding memory is always a good idea but not part of this fix I think!
 
I did originally replace the Matrox PCIex card with an ATI radeon card but Win 7 disabled the Matrox card due to the different drivers, hence my reason for using 3 cards of the same type.
 
Try removing all the cards you want to keep and starting the thing off with a PCI card you are not going to use long term. Call this card A
Then install the PCI-e card, reboot and remove card A
Reboot the make sure the drivers for the PCI-e card are installed OK and the system is stable. Power off and reboot. Power off.
Install a PCI card (one you plan to keep) and the drivers. Make sure the system is stable and reboot.
Power off and reboot again.
Install the second PCI card, install the driver and reboot.

You may think I am mad with all these reboots but I have found that sometimes it makes a big difference to reboot twice - no, really I am not having you on!
 
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