Need help setting up 3 monitors on 1 PC

Hello everyone!

I am in need of a little help running 3 monitors on my PC. My current hardware only allows me to hook up one monitor. So as I understand it this will mean I can go one of two routes: 1. get a new video card that can support 3 monitors, or 2. keep the one I have and get a video card that can support 2 monitors and used one of my available PCI slots.

A little info about my hardware:

P4 2.4 GHz
3.5 GB RAM
750W Power Supply
NVidia Vanta/Vanta LT graphics card
AsRock MoBo P4V88

From the AsRock user manual it reads: 1 AGP slot, supports 1.5V, 8X/4X AGP card
I don't know what the 8X/4X means. Can someone explain this to me?

Also from the manual in regards to the PCI slots it reads: 5 slots with PCI Specification 2.2. Can someone explain what specification 2.2 is?

My concern is buying something my computer cannot support.

In terms of performance I don't need a powerhouse graphics card. I do not do any PC gaming, I am not a graphics developer. I really just need the 3 monitors to display 3 websites at a time. I would also like my new graphics card to be able to handle video better, like Utube videos. My current one seems to struggle.

Thanks in advance for any help, info, advice, and recommendations.

 

Thanks for the reply. The card you described, does it have 3 VGA connections or just one each of VGA, s-video, and dvi?

 

Would this work?



And then I would need one DVI to VGA cord and one HDMI to VGA cord right?

 

Right now I have 2 PCs sharing a 27" monitor with build in speakers. The KVM switch connects to the PCs by VGA. The 27" monitor has VGA, DMI, and HDMI but I would prefer to keep it connected by VGA so that I don't have to change the input on the monitor when I switch between PCs.

I have 2 17" monitors that I would like to add to one of the Pcs. One is VGA only and the other is both VGA and DMI.

I have also been looking at these cards:





Of the 3 cards the HIS seems to have more muscle but I do have 2 concerns about it. The first is that someone wrote in a review of the card that "Most motherboards with AGP do NOT work with this card bcuz its ddr3". Is this true? My other concern is would I need an HDMI to VGA signal converter or could I get by with just an HDMI to VGA cord? A quick search shows signal converters costing around $25-$50. I'd prefer not to spend that as I plan on building a new PC in a year or so.

Thanks again for your help.

 

I'm sorry the review was from the newegg website:



It's the 4th one down written on 2/13/2013 9:33:25 PM.

I have all 3 types of cables. I just didn't want to have to change the input on the monitor as well as pressing the switch button on the KVM when switching PCs on the 27". The other PC is my fathers and he is far from computer savoy. He is fine with the KVM switch but I think finding the right input on the monitor too would frustrate him.

Price wise they're all about the same. Do you think the HIS is much better in terms of performance? If so then I guess I can deal with changing the input on the monitor as well.

 

I'm sorry. I wrote it that way because I'm only interested in having one of the PCs use 3 monitors.....and at the time I was thinking I could get a card with 3 VGA outputs. Only when I started shopping for them did I realize a 3 VGA card is not available and that I'd have to take into consideration the 2nd PC sharing the 27" monitor.

Thanks again for all your help.

 

I am struggling with getting the new graphics card installed properly.

As a refresher and so you don't have to scroll up I went with the HIS Radeon HD 4350 graphics card. Link here.

After removing the drivers of the old card, inserting the new card, and installing the new drivers, I am unable to find the card under Device Manager --> Graphics Adapter

However, under Device Manager --> System Devices, there is a listing for VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller with a yellow exclamation mark. The Device Status reads: This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. (Code 12)

I do get a display using this card but the resolutions are on the low end.
Using the HDMI connection yields a resolution of 1400 X 1050 pixels, VGA is at 1920 X 1440, and DVI is at 1400 X 1050. I have not tried connecting more than one monitor yet.

The rest of my hardware is:
P4 2.4 GHz
3.5 GB RAM
750W Power Supply
AsRock MoBo P4V88

I've tried looking for answers on the web but so far no such luck. I'll keep looking but if anyone can point me in the right direction I would very much appreciate it.

Any chance this could just be a defective card?

 

Initially I got the drivers off the disk. After that I tried the same one you gave a link to.

It installs the AMD Catalyst Installation Manager without any problems but when it goes to install the drivers I get this result:

Ok well I wanted to add a screenshot here but I don't know how.

The message I get is: Installation complete(warnings occured during installation). View Log for details.

When I click on view log it opens a page in internet explorer:

Existing packages

Packages for install
AMD Catalyst Install Manager
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 8.0877.0
Size: 20 Mbytes

Other detected devices

Error messages




And that's all there is to the report.

 

I got it working.

My PC has four modules of RAM in it. 3 X 1GB + 1 X 512MB. I took out one of the 1GB and also the 512MB. Leaving in the remaining 2 modules in dual channel configuration.

After that Windows was able to recognize the new hardware and I was able to install the drivers with the AMD Catalyst Install Manager.

Added back 1 GB of RAM and it was still happy.

Put in the 512 MB module and it was back to not listing the card under Display Adapters. So I took it back out. I can live without it.

 

Yeah?

Before I changed graphics cards my PC showed having 3.5 GB RAM. So is it possible the 512 was never working? How can you tell if it's working or not?

 

It's 32 bit windows