Running 3 Monitors

[The Explanation]

Would it be possible to run 3 monitors with a Radeon 4850 and the integrated card on my motherboard? It would be a 19" widescreen, a 17," and a 37" LCD TV.

[Broke]

i would like to say no.

why? because i dont THINK your integrated motherboard graphics and the radeon 4850 can run simultaneously.

but if you had 2 radeon 4850s in crossfire then you should be able to run 4 monitors.

[hazmat]

I think windows 7 can do this (multiple graphics drivers), provided that your motherboard can properly run both at the same time. Quite often when the BIOS detects a graphics card it will automatically disable the onboard, so take a look at your settings.

[The Explanation]

According to this I can:
http://www.overclock.net/graphics-ca...same-time.html
But I tried enabling the internal graphics in the BIOS, but it still doesn't show up when I boot into Windows.

[hazmat]

Anything show up in the device manager? Perhaps like "unknown VGA controller" or something? If you find it there you should be able to install drivers for it, and then configure it from the display settings.

In that thread you linked to they were talking about the "hybrid graphics" feature of onboard ATI chipsets, so if your mobo its ATI/AMD then it should work once the drivers get installed. But if your mobo is an Intel or something else then it might be up to their driver to allow this functionality.

[The Explanation]

My mobo is ATI and has the Hybrid Crossfire thing, but I still don't see anything in device manager. I think BIOS is disabling it automatically because it only lists two options for the onboard graphics; disabled or "ums" or something like that. This makes me think it's some sort of auto mode where it shuts it off when an external card is detected. But, I am running Vista. Maybe if I upgraded to 7 (something I was planning on doing anyway), then it would show up?

[hazmat]

Set the BIOS option for the onboard to "UMA."

On the wiki article for hybrid graphics they say its supported under Vista and XP as well, but they list the supported chipsets: "Hybrid CrossFire X is only available on 790GX, 780G, 760G, 785G, and 880G and 890GX chipsets."

Assuming these criteria are met, and as long as your chipset and Catalyst drivers are recent, it should work. Check out the catalyst control panel to see if theres anything that needs to be enabled there.

EDIT: I'm finding some stuff saying that hybrid crossfire is only supported on the low end cards like the 3470.... Maybe thats why you are having trouble.

[Dfg]

Post system specs.

[theinvader]

I don't think you can do this.
Just go get another card. It's the easiest to do and you won't be worrying about burning your onboard out.
I've got a few spare video cards and one of them I picked up at geeks.com for like fifteen bucks. It's just shy of a step up from an onboard, lol. Nvidia 6200 with 128mb of vram, i think. The GPU runs quite frosty at 32c/49c (idle/game) and the stock cooler with a fan on top. I can run STALKER on it on low settings.

[jwh018free]

Originally Posted by The Explanation

Would it be possible to run 3 monitors with a Radeon 4850 and the integrated card on my motherboard? It would be a 19" widescreen, a 17," and a 37" LCD TV.

Nope, you cant. Just buy a cheap second card.

[The Explanation]

I'd really rather not use up a PCI slot if I don't have to. Dfg, I'll post specs in a bit.

I'll be running in a dorm room, so I may find that I don't have room for the 17" as well as the 19".

[The Explanation]

Ok, here are my specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 940
Biostar TA790GXB Mobo with 790GX chipset
4 GB 1600MHz DDR2 OCZ RAM
ASUS ATI Radeon 4850
300 GB POS hard drive out of an old hp machine
600W OCZ modular PSU
2 DVD burners, one ASUS, one HP