2 Graphics Card at once?

[CompuGeek247]

I know the title may sound stupid but had no better way to put it.

At last my dream system is nearing its completion. I will get a picture of it and post it. Its really stylish.

My new specs are:

Athlon Xp 2700+
New stylish modded Compucase
Asus A7N8X motherboard
1012 DDR 400 mhz pc3200 ram
TMD CPU FAN
8 case fans
480 watt PSU.
20 gig/40 gig/60 gig HD's
Windows XP/Windows Me
Fan controller
Rounded out ATA cables
CD-RW and CD drives
1 floppy drive.

It is looking really great. You may remember when I first joined I had the crappiest of computers and now it is a dream machine.

Only one more component is needed.

That is the FIC Radeon 9700. I managed to buy it for 211 dollars including shipping. Tell me about it that is a great price for it.

Well now to the question. Sorry about all that talk before just wanted to give an update on my comp.

Anyways I want to get a TV tuner for my computer so I can capture stuff from tv and save it on my comp. Like that (MTV Movie award with TATU ) how hot was that! anyways stuff like that. I was going to buy the AIW but 399 for a card is out of the question. So i was going to buy a cheap tv tuner to accomplish that which will be a pci slot one. So i was wondering is it possible to have my radeon 9700 pro and a tv tuner on at the same time?

 

[agissi]

Yeah that'll work no problem. You'll find yourself switching your moniters input however.

 

[LNCPapa]

Switching monitor inputs? I don't think I understand. I have a TV card in one of my computers - never have to switch monitor inputs. You can get an actual TV tuner card with only that function and you won't have to do anything different. No switching anything. I use PowerVCR with a recording schedule and it records all the shows I have it set up to straight into a VCD compliant mpg. I can also record straight to an SVCD compliant MPEG 2 file as well as many other formats. Just get a decent TV Tuner card and you'll be okay. Not sure I'd get a video card with TV-Tuner capabilities though.

LNCPapa

 

[CompuGeek247]

Not sure I'd get a video card with TV-Tuner capabilities though.



why arent u sure u would get one with both capabilities

 

[LNCPapa]

Because of the price difference - a TV Tuner card can be had for very little money - where a TV Tuner capable video card would cost a good bit more.

LNCPapa

 

[agissi]

Originally posted by LNCPapa
Switching monitor inputs? I don't think I understand.

Well if you have two video cards, the cord that comes out of the back of your moniter to plug into your PC, that you plug into your computer (the video card)...Well if you have to video cards, you'll have to switch the cable, to get the video output on your moniter.

Follow?

 

[SNGX1275]

I'd get a tv tuner card, I have a Hauppage WinTV card and it works fine. It is a bit of a struggle to get it to record decent video though. Watchign isnt' a problem, recording is.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Originally posted by ---agissi---
Well if you have two video cards, the cord that comes out of the back of your moniter to plug into your PC, that you plug into your computer (the video card)...Well if you have to video cards, you'll have to switch the cable, to get the video output on your moniter.

Follow?

If you run two video cards, yes, then this could be a problem, but if you run one video card and one tv card, you shouldn't have this problem...

The tv card could use a pass-through cable, which means you connect your video card to the tv card, and the tv card to the monitor...
(Like you connected the Voodoo/Voodoo2 cards back in the day)

Or

it could transfer the data through the pci bus to the graphics card... (Which is what hauppauge uses)
Of this latter way, there are 2 different techniques...

From Hauppauge's Support page:
There are two different ways to display a video window on the computer screen: Overlay surface and Primary surface
Both methods work by transferring the image directly from the TV Tuner to the memory of your PC's graphics board via the PCI or AGP bus

With an overlay surface, the video signal is transferred into an invisible part of the graphics board memory. The graphics board will then take care of the image and make sure that it gets transferred to the right place in the visible part of the memory. Not all graphics boards have this feature and thus may not allow an overlay surface. Occasionally, we have seen cases where the graphics board "tells us" that it can do an overlay surface but then either does not do so or starts to draw incorrect buttons or destroy other desktop elements.

In contrast to the overlay surface, the video signal is transferred directly into a visible part of the graphics board memory - right where you will see it.
The drawback of a primary surface is that your graphics board has to be set to at least 16-bits per pixel color depth. Primary surface also requires more bandwidth on the PCI bus and we have occasionally seen some graphics boards showing distortions of the video display, especially when using 32 bits per pixel color depth. And finally, a menu or other window covering the primary surface video display may get overwritten under certain circumstances.
To help you in troubleshooting and deciding which display mode to use, here are some of the limitations of primary and overlay surface. In general, we recommend to use the overlay surface - if your graphics board supports it.

 

[RustyZip]

If i were you, i'd ditch Windows ME...

 

[acidosmosis]

I was speaking to my uncle once and he was trying to help a friend sell his computer. He had two Voodoo cards installed and hooked together in the back with a small cable. He called it "parallel" something or other. I was pretty much baffled at how you could run two video cards at once and do anything but cause conflicts or other problems.

 

[Strakian]

Originally posted by RustyZip
If i were you, i'd ditch Windows ME...

I do believe that was their buggiest creation ever (apart from 3.1) Go with Win XP, it's stable and given me VERY few problems (most of which my dad implemented btw). If you're hesitant, then go with windows 2000. Windows 2000 is a super stable OS, but may yield some gaming problems. Realistically though i think they've patched 2000 to be more compatible with older games.

Hell, even Win98SE is better than ME! :grinthumb

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Originally posted by acidosmosis
I was speaking to my uncle once and he was trying to help a friend sell his computer. He had two Voodoo cards installed and hooked together in the back with a small cable. He called it "parallel" something or other. I was pretty much baffled at how you could run two video cards at once and do anything but cause conflicts or other problems.

Voodoo cards are an exception, you can use Voodoo2 (and possibly 3/4/5) in SLI mode (scan-line interleave), which increases performance by dividing screen drawing to multiple cards.