Karaoke Forums

I just got a new tower last week.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 6008217498

This is actually a very nice tower in every respect except it doesn't have capability for external monitor or tv.  Does anyone know if I can add a secondary video card with a integrated video card & have the second card display the tv graphics?  Or bypass the internal completely & go with my old 512 ATI card.  Just not sure if it's Vista compatible & don't want to screw anything up.  So far I am pretty happy with Vista, haven't rant into any major problems yet so this may be the first.

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[shadow=deepskyblue]I'm impressed, I've never met such a small mind inside such a big head before.[/shadow]

Never mind, I opened it up & it's not the proper card slot so I will need to get a video card with PCI express.

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[shadow=deepskyblue]I'm impressed, I've never met such a small mind inside such a big head before.[/shadow]

Most new motherboards have a PCI slot. AGP is kinda dead. PCI is much faster and the only people still messing with AGP are folks like me who have an older PC that won't give up on their trusty old machine. My old ATi card has 2 connectors on it, 1 analog RGB and 1 digital DVI. You can use both at the same time. Windows manages the 2 displays. You just need the right cables. I don't know if any of this helps...

you can have a COUPLE of video cards! One of the Dells I work with at work has four extra video outs! amazing!

Choose a video card that you can get vista drivers for. The advantage of having onboard video (usually AGP) is you can use a dual head (pci)
and have triple display (see img). Even a single head with s-video or comp video out will give you dual display. Like Matt says you can even have more but at a certain point it detracts from the audio..
img

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Yeah mine is an AGP as well.  Crappy thing about it was I just bought the thing less than 4 months ago.  Oh well!  I erred as well, it's only a 256.  Was a nice card though, worked beautifully with Hoster. VGA, S-Video & DVI-I connetions.

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[shadow=deepskyblue]I'm impressed, I've never met such a small mind inside such a big head before.[/shadow]

I know this is possible, just not sure with Vista, I have heard that it isn't, but can't believe that to be true.

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[shadow=deepskyblue]I'm impressed, I've never met such a small mind inside such a big head before.[/shadow]

This one is built into the mother board.  Then it has a secondary card in a PCI express 1 slot with the cable/tv tuner, FM tuner & composite video inputs.  The only output it has is for the monitor only...which seems kind of weird why if it's a multimedia machine, it wouldn't be able to connect to an external video source.  I went into video properties & only see 1 display option with no extended desktop capability built in.

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[shadow=deepskyblue]I'm impressed, I've never met such a small mind inside such a big head before.[/shadow]

That is strange but those tuner cards always confused the hell out of this old mind....

I did find an ATI that will work with Vista but it's more than I could afford

ati

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If you want to get rid of that AGP card I may be interested. What is it and how much do you want for it? If you don't want to do this on your thread you can PM me. Either way is fine with me.

well, just for simplicity sakes, I'd get a pci card because every single motherboard that came with onboard video... died! And I needed the s-video or rca connection anyway for the 2nd monitor.

Everytime you buy a new computer you should consider everything else needs upgraded too.  

They keep changing the connectors so your old stuff won't work.  They are making themselves job security.

As my guru told me when i just learned how to use Windows 3.1 and 95 came out.  I told him i didn't want to upgrade and learn something else.  He said, They are never going to go backwards.

Just assume everytime you need a new computer that nothing you have now will fit inside it.

Remember...bigger..faster..better??? well maybe not better.

ULTIMA HD15M to DUAL HD15F SXGA MONITOR Y-CABLE
HD15 male to HD15 female x2 monitor y-cable; gold plated (google this)


Or look for one configured the other way.  I don't know what you need.

Well i'm not looking to split the video signal, I need to have an extended desktop to a second monitor for a completely different video signal, which is why I am probably going to have to purcahse a new video card.

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[shadow=deepskyblue]I'm impressed, I've never met such a small mind inside such a big head before.[/shadow]