EP35C-DS3R and two video graphic cards

[nouserr]

Hi guys.

I was wondering if there is a chance to make it working. I wish to have 3 or even 4 monitors, I'm a graphic designer so its really helpfull to have few apps working on the same time, super multitasking making my work a bit quicker. Is there a chance to put another graphic card (at the moment I have Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT) Im not playing on this pc so it dont have to be some 2GB card or something, 128 mb should be enough i think. I dont want to spend a loads of money on it neither. what kind of graphic card can i buy to make it work?
will this one work?
nVIDIA GeForce GF FX5500 256 MB PCI

thanks for help!

[profJim]

Re: EP35C-DS3R and two video graphic cards

You pose an interesting question.
Even though you won't be running an SLI video card setup, I think that both video cards would need to "share" the same Nvidia drivers and software. I don't know how many monitors an FX5500 PCI card can drive and what screen resolutions it could support in a multi-monitor setup. My best guess is that you could run a 3 or 4 monitor setup using 2 PCI video cards where you would expand your desktop across all monitors.

I still have several PCI FX video cards, but I don't have 3 or 4 monitors to test with. I think that my FX video cards are one or two steps lower than an FX5500 video card. My P35-DS4 and P35-DS3L systems "share" my 1920 x 1080 monitor and each system easily handled this monitor with my ancient 7600GT video cards.

As I recall, my 7600GT could power my 21" Apple Studio Display monitor and a 17" CRT monitor at the same time, but I wasn't doing any heavy multi-tasking. FWIW, according to Graphics Card Performance Hierarchy Chart - Best Graphics Cards For The Money: January 2014, my 7600GT is 8 levels higher than an FX5500 and your 9800 GT is 8 levels higher than my 7600 GT. Your 9800 GT is 13 levels lower than GTX 690 and Radeon HD 7990 video cards.

[nouserr]

Re: EP35C-DS3R and two video graphic cards

Hi profJim

Thanks very much for Your reply. ye i know that my pc is kinda old but it works well since i bought it so no need to upgrade to new system.
As I said before i dont want to spend much money on it so buying a new graphic card with 4 slots isnt possible, those cards are expensive.

I've read somewhere that: "The GigaByte GA-EP35C-DS3R supports up to 4 Nvidia SLI connected graphics cards or up to 4 AMD Crossfire connected graphics cards for improved overall graphical performance at the cost of multiplied graphics-based power consumption as well as the price of the cards themselves." (how is it possible if there is only 1 PCI-e x16 slot)

Anyway that gaves me an idea about pci-e x1 cards...there is a loads of not so expensive cards like this one:
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 285 PCIe x1 128MB (they're saying that You can connect 2 monitors on it and have separated screens, not the clone)

( http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw...7386&_from=R40 )

But will it work? with 1 card GeForce 9800GT on Pci-e x16 with 2 monitors connected and one card (lets say this Quadro NVS) on Pci-e x1 with 1 or 2 if its possible to have them as a separated screens?


I remember ages ago i had connected 2 crt monitors on 2 cards but im not really sure if 1 of them were integrated with mobo.

[profJim]

Re: EP35C-DS3R and two video graphic cards

I'm not familiar with pci-e x1 video cards or their performance.
My P35-DS4 has two physical x16 pci-e slots where one runs with x16 bandwidth and the other runs with x4 bandwidth.
I'm able to run an SLI setup with my TX 460 video cards after I installed HyperSLI on my win7 system.

With an SLI system and two or more monitors, you can configure clone mode where all monitors have identical output or you can use extend mode where your desktop size expands to fill all monitors so that you have a much larger desktop. In my previous post I was able to run two monitors with one 7600GT video card with my P35-DS3L system where my expanded desktop size was about 30 inches wide. My P35-DS3L motherboard could not run a second pci-e video card and SLI was not an option.

With a single video card that can drive two monitors at the same time, you could use windows Display Options so that the total screen area of both monitors will be used for one desktop that is twice as large as a single monitor. I think that there was also an option where you can "force" specific programs to only open in any of the monitor screens. There was an option where the larger single desktop area could be set for two monitors, side by side or the desktop area could be with two stacked monitors where the new desktop height could be twice as tall as a single monitor.

Now that I think about it, I used the expanded desktop size with win2K pro, and never tried it with win7.

Your multi-monitor 4 screen setup might work with only two PCI video cards as long as you are not running graphically intensive programs. I just don't know if a multi-monitor setup would work with one pci-e and one pci video card. Maybe it will work with one or more x1 pci-e video cards.

[nouserr]

Re: EP35C-DS3R and two video graphic cards

Hi again...

im familiar with all those settings with clone screen, expanded etc as I said before Im using 2 screens at the moment on my GeForce 9800 GT but i want to add another one or maybe 2 in the future.
Unfortunately this mainboard doesnt have 2 PCI-e x16 slots so SLI isnt possible.
Slots on the board:
1 x PCI Express x16 slots
3 x PCI Express x1 slots
3 x PCI slots

So i was wondering to get a card on PCI-e x1 or PCI but its kinda hard to get PCI so PCI-e x1. I attached ebay search of PCI-e x1 cards and there is a loads to pick.

My main question is if there is possibility to have this Nvidia 9800GT on PCI-e x16 and another Nvidia card on PCI-E x1 (this mini slot), i think of having the same company card, i assume that ATi wont work properly with Nvidia...??

thanks!

[profJim]

Re: EP35C-DS3R and two video graphic cards

I'm familiar with your motherboard; your setup is similar to my P35-DS3L DDR2 motherboard, but your system can use DDR3 memory and your system has some additional features. Both systems have virtually the same motherboard layout.

Running with Nvidia and AMD/Radeon cards in the same system is asking for trouble.
Many users have trouble when they switch from (for example Nvidia to AMD or the other way around) and they haven't properly removed all of the drivers and software from the original video card.

Even with the same name brand video card, I don't know if you can successfully run your 9800 GT video card along with the same brand of pci-e x1 video card. If both cards can "share" the same Nvidia drivers and software, it might work. Hopefully the worst that will happen with both cards installed is that your system won't be stable or your system won't boot.

To save yourself a lot of possible grief, you should create a system image of your boot partition in case you need to restore your operating partition. Keep in mind that you might corrupt data in any other partitions or your drive might become so badly damaged that you loose some or all of the disk data in your system.

If I was going to try your test, I would restore a working copy of my operating system onto an unused drive and then remove all of my current drives. This way if things go badly, I won't loose valuable, irreplaceable data or drives.

I'm not willing to risk loosing important data and/or programs while testing unusual hardware setups!!

Why do I have a backup computer? Just in case something goes terribly wrong with my everyday system.
This happened to me in 2008 when my N650SLI-DS4 motherboard suddenly "ate" the bios and it wouldn't post any more.

[nouserr]

Re: EP35C-DS3R and two video graphic cards

Thanks a loads for Your reply. Ill try to contact nvidia maybe they will have some solution. Backuping the data is really good thing to do.

It sounds that with 2 pci-e x1 it should work ok but I prefere to keep my 9800 gt on board. Unfortunately we dont have a proper solution for it at the moment so I dont want to spend money just for test right now but ill do it some day and post what happened.

Thanks again for Your help. :)