ATI Radeon Newbie Quick Question

[jj]

Only had my Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB for 1 week now. My first ATI card in
many years. With my WinXP PC, in Device Manager, the card shows up
twice....once as Radeon 9800 Pro, and once as Radeon 9800 Pro
(Secondary). ATI Tech Support said this was normal. OK, no problem.

But, when configuring all my 3D games, you have to select a video card.
Both the Radeon options show up in the lists. In all the games, the
game itself defaulted to the 2nd card, which was Radeon Pro (Secondary).
Not sure if there was any "intelligence" at work, in these automatic
selections.

Does it matter which one you select in your 3D games, i.e., Primary or
Secondary? Should you always select the first Radeon? Appreciate any
advice. I don't know why this question isn't answered in the
documentation provided with the card, or on ATI's web site. Thanks.

jj

 

[Lithurge]

Only had my Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB for 1 week now. My first
ATI card in many years. With my WinXP PC, in Device
Manager, the card shows up twice....once as Radeon 9800
Pro, and once as Radeon 9800 Pro (Secondary). ATI Tech
Support said this was normal. OK, no problem.

But, when configuring all my 3D games, you have to select a
video card.
Both the Radeon options show up in the lists. In all
the games, the
game itself defaulted to the 2nd card, which was Radeon Pro
(Secondary).
Not sure if there was any "intelligence" at work, in
these automatic
selections.

Does it matter which one you select in your 3D games, i.e.,
Primary or Secondary? Should you always select the first
Radeon? Appreciate any advice. I don't know why this
question isn't answered in the documentation provided with
the card, or on ATI's web site. Thanks.

jj

What games are we talking about here? Can't say I've noticed
anything asking me to select primary or secondary. Which is
possibly why it's not addressed.

I believe the point of having 2 devices is for dual monitor
support, I would've assumed selecting 2ndry without a second
monitor would have left you with a blank screen, obviously
not the case, but if it's working why bother fiddling with
it?

 

[JAD]

i believe this was addressed in another Post here....it has do with the Second display port OR the TV out. It seems to duplicate the
adapter.

 

[jj]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like everyone tends to choose the first one
(if choice is there). The games I'm referring to are MidTown Madness,
Midtown Madness 2, Star Trek Bridge Commander, and one of my demos (I
think the Unreal 2 Demo). In most games I've played, when you set video
options, one of them is to select a video card. The choices are
normally the name of the actual card, or "default video card", which are
usually one-in-the-same.

But wasn't sure on the Radeon, since it's listed twice, because Device
Manager shows 2 cards...1 primary and 2 secondary.

Anyway, the main reason I ask, is because I tried ST Bridge Commander
for the first time using the Radeon 9800 yesterday. It had chosen the
2nd Radeon for the graphics card. I didn't think it mattered, so I left it.

After 5 minutes into the game, I got an error "STBC.EXE...yada-yada",
with option to send error to Microsoft. Never happened before with
previous GeForce4 Ti-4600. I'll reset the graphics card to the primary,
and see if I can get this game to run without any errors. Hope so, cuz
this is one of my fav games. Thx again.

jj

p.s. FWIW, just ran first AquaMark benchmark, score of 44,027 with
default settings. I guess that's somewhere in the middle. I think the
higher scores were oc'ers, cuz their CPU scores were way high.
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