One System Two ATI video cards- AGP AIW and PCI

[nobody]

I just got off the phone with ATI Tech support. One of my questions
was that I was planning on buying a ATI AIW 9600 Pro and using it with
my PCI ATI 7000 to support 3 monitors.

He told me that you could not use more then one ATI display adaptor at
a time. The drivers wouldn't support it. He said I could do it with a
third party PCI card but not with an ATI card.

The more I think about this, the more this does not make sense. Is
anybody running a ATI AIW AGP with a ATI PCI card multi monitor?

Thanks

 

[stu]

The more I think about this, the more this does not make sense. Is

anybody running a ATI AIW AGP with a ATI PCI card multi monitor?

AGP and PCI heads run fine together, you'll have no probs.

 

[Kev]

I just got off the phone with ATI Tech support. One of my questions
was that I was planning on buying a ATI AIW 9600 Pro and using it with
my PCI ATI 7000 to support 3 monitors.

He told me that you could not use more then one ATI display adaptor at
a time. The drivers wouldn't support it. He said I could do it with a
third party PCI card but not with an ATI card.

The more I think about this, the more this does not make sense. Is
anybody running a ATI AIW AGP with a ATI PCI card multi monitor?

Thanks

Tech guy maybe misunderstood you. Two ATI cards yes, two ATI AIW cards
probably not.

 

[bob cox]

I run two ati cards, but they are not both radeons. One is an old AIW
rage 128 pro agp, other is rage pro turbo pci I think (other machine,
not this one). Seems ok to me.

 

[Lloyd]

I run two ati cards, but they are not both radeons. One is an old AIW
rage 128 pro agp, other is rage pro turbo pci I think (other machine,
not this one). Seems ok to me.

I tried to get an AIW 7500 AGP and a Radeon 7000 PCI to coexist. After a
week of frustration, I gave up. The problem as I understand it is the cards
require differrent drivers but the file names of the driver files are the
same, so when you install your second Radeon card you clobber the driver of
the first. I finally got a Nvidia PCI card and was up and running right
away.

 

[zzipper]

we tried a similar setup at work....unsuccessfully. We had a Radeon 7000 and
3 RageIIC PCI cards, didn't work. Then we tried one Radeon and several old
Matrox Millenium PCI cards (yes...3 of them..we needed to support 4 monitors
and didn't want to buy a $900 video card). On a VIA KT333 board, didn't
work. On an Intel 845E board it did and still does. No problems since and
it's been about 6 months now. We were told it wasn't supposed to work on any
P4 board? But it does in fact work.

 

[bob cox]

I tried to get an AIW 7500 AGP and a Radeon 7000 PCI to coexist. After a
week of frustration, I gave up. The problem as I understand it is the cards
require differrent drivers but the file names of the driver files are the
same, so when you install your second Radeon card you clobber the driver of
the first. I finally got a Nvidia PCI card and was up and running right
away.

with the unified driver in place, that makes the most sense..my cards
would have required different drivers for sure..kinda weak on ATI's
part but I suspect the same is true for Geforce since they also use
the UDA....

 

[pjp]

I run a Radeon 64 DDR VIVO (agp) as primary and a Xpert98 (pci) as
secondary.

I had to first get the Radeon up and going without the Xpert even in the
system. The install would "quit" if the Xpert was in the system as it
appeared to be too stupid to look at "all" the cards in the system. My quess
is the driver was checking pci first, saw the Xpert so stops looking for
anything else, says 'Not a Radeon' and terminates ... stupid ... argh!

After the Radeon was working right, I then installed the Xpert and installed
only the driver. Installing anything else it wanted to resulted in all the
MM features of the Radeon being turned-off/disabled/disappear. Again, it
appears to be installation stupidity with it not looking past the Xpert and
"seeing" there's also a Radeon on the agp bus

As it stands now, the Xpert's driver still interferes with the TV-Out
property sheet control (disables/removes it) so that requires a reboot
without the Xpert enabled (pain in the ass).

Other than that, the system is stable running 98SE.

The biggest problem is the difficulty in updating drivers. I fear a horror
story coming along as it's looking like I can't stay with DX 8.1 forever

 

[Stephen Land]

I am running an AIW 8500 Radeon AGP and an ATI Rage128 Pro PCI card on a
Abit motherboard. I got the system to work but you do have to futz around
with it because of the driver conflicts.
After much trial-and-error I found the following procedure usually works for
driver and MMC software installation:

1 Use the ATI driver registry clean-up utility from ATI's website.
2 Delete the ATI folder on your hard drive.
3 Shut down your system and remove the PCI card from your PC.
4 Reboot and then install the Radeon drivers for your AGP card,
5 Install the MMC software for your AIW card.
6 Get the system working properly (including channel scan, et. al. with the
one video card).
7 Shut down the system and install the PCI card.
8 Install the drivers for the PCI card after boot up.
9 Reboot and then reinstall the AIW drivers (to write over any drivers
installed for the PCI card).

You now should be able to setup multi-monitor support and use the MMC
functionality of the AIW card.

As ATI releases new drivers, you should be able to install them over the top
of the existing ones with no problems.

Have fun,
Stephen

 

[pjp]

Radeon 7200 & Xpert98 here.

Sounds similar to my difficulties getting things up and going and the steps
you outline seem more or less identical to my experience. Glad to hear one
can simply overinstall later drivers. I've been afraid to do that.

Am i also fairly safe in going to DX9.0b over DX8.1?

 

[pjp]

You can get it to work but it's really a pain in the arse to get it setup.
Using a Radeon 64 DDR VIVO (agp) as primary and a Xpert98 (pci) secondary
here.

The Radeon's install just plain won't if the Xpert is even installed in the
system. MMC will not install the TV-IN app if the Xpert's in the system.
Other basic problems getting it to "go".

Basically I have to setup the Radeon physically installed in system by
itself first and insure all is working as it should, including deciding what
driver(s) I'm going to be more or less "stuck with" (you'll understand in a
moment). Then after the Xpert's installed and while Windows still has it
disabled, I install only the driver for the Xpert (anything else and it
starts "turning off" Radeon features as Xpert doesn't have them).

The biggest problem is what I'm currently experiencing. I just updated to
DX9.0b from DX8.1. All went well except the TV-IN app started hanging when
terminating. A forced termination left the "video in" ability non-functional
until a reboot. When I decided to try to correct issue by updating MMC, it
installed fine but doesn't seem to "see" past the Xpert's lack of a Rage
Theatre chip (some models have one), finding the Radeon has one, and instead
simply doesn't install TV-IN (I'd assume AIW would be same problem).

The bottom line is that to simply update to DX9.0b, I'm going to have to
strip hardware out (e.g. temporarily remove Xpert98), clean out all ATI
software, hopefully get a working re-install (undoubtably things have
changed) knowing that I'm again basically locking down the system and can't
easily even update drivers.

I'm still considering just restoring my Ghost image. Not sure one game (so
far is worth it.