Dell Vostro... 4-Monitor... Quad or 2 Dualheads... Anybody Using?
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No. OldTrader (or was it The_End?) just set up a T3400 with 2X 290x16s... says "working great".
I have a D9200 with 285x16 + 280 PCI. I tried the 285x16 + 285x1... and the video display was perfect, but my TV tuner card had a problem with that.... had to replace the 285x1 with 280 PCI to keep the TV Tuner happy.
I called Dell and finally got to the bottom of this in regards to multi monitor support on the Vostro 400.
My Vostro 400 has the nvidia geforce 8600gts card with dual dvi slots. I was told that if I wanted to run 4 monitors to buy two dvi splitters and attach one to each dvi slot.
This will run 4 monitors and will give 4 "desktops".
John
Edit. I just called NVIDIA and they said the 8600gts will only drive two monitors and the splitters are not recommended. This guy was in India and I had to get him to repeat everything twice so not sure if he was telling me it wouldn't work or if it is just not recommended, i.e better to buy the quatro cards to get more money out of you.
Over and out.
John
My Vostro 400 has the nvidia geforce 8600gts card with dual dvi slots. I was told that if I wanted to run 4 monitors to buy two dvi splitters and attach one to each dvi slot.
This will run 4 monitors and will give 4 "desktops".
John
Edit. I just called NVIDIA and they said the 8600gts will only drive two monitors and the splitters are not recommended. This guy was in India and I had to get him to repeat everything twice so not sure if he was telling me it wouldn't work or if it is just not recommended, i.e better to buy the quatro cards to get more money out of you.
Over and out.
John
Been there, done that.
It is obvious to me that the GeForce cards (PCIe and PCI) are not compatible with each other on the Ell Vostro-400 motherboard, which by the way is made by Foxconn of China, even though nVidia will tell you that they should be compatible because they use the same drivers.
It's best to simply buy the Dell Precision 3400T and put another nVidia Quadro NVS PCI-Express card in the 2nd PCIe slot.
The mobo on the T3400 is probably made by Foxconn, too... as are in all (?) of Dell's desktop units.... as has been the case for probably 5 years, minimum. (Recently read where Foxconn has become the #1 mobo maker in the world.)
The problem is not "made by Foxconn" but rather the parameters of the mobo/chipset, by design.
i've run into the same problem trying to run more then 2 monitors on the dell vostro.
it got a blue screen of death just trying to boot the comp after putting in another nvidia card
sucked.
anyone personally installed (did it with your own hands) an additional card of any kind and made it work?
it got a blue screen of death just trying to boot the comp after putting in another nvidia card
sucked.
anyone personally installed (did it with your own hands) an additional card of any kind and made it work?
I have not found anyone here at ET that has had any (personal) success with installing a second PCI slot graphics card in order to support a 3rd or 4th monitor. There was someone who claims to have done so, but he obviously was not experienced enough to know what kind of configuration was done by the "tech" that he paid to do it. At least that was my understanding from some pretty basic conversations that I had with the poster via e-mail.
I spent countless hours myself trying to make this "work" back in February and finally gave up. I trouble-shooted this issue to death with techs from NVidia, eVGA, Dell, etc., and could not ever get my unit to even power "on" when I had a GeForce 6200 PCI card in one of the PCI slots to accompany the GeForce 8300 that was in the PCI-Express slot.
I went through an entire process of "deduction" to the point at which I confidently concluded that the Foxconn motherboard on the Vostro-400 was just not "supportive" of an additional graphics card device. There was a permanent CONFLICT and not any way around this issue, even though the 6,7, and 8 Series GeForce cards all share the same drivers.
I wound-up sending the Vostro-400 back ( it was a sweet deal to at only $529 on the refurbished site with a Duo-Core 3.00 processor too ), and ordered a Dell T3400 Precision Workstation that comes with (2) NVS-290 PCI-Express 16x cards.
Now I'm happy.
There are some ETers who have other Dell budget models with Foxconn mobos (like Inspiron 530) with 2 dualhead cards running, so it's not only an issue of "Foxconn mobos".
Apparently the BIOS in the Vostro was not configured to allow running video cards from more than one slot... or so it seems.
Dell mostly eliminated the mid-grade PC. Their Inspiron and Vostro lines have budget mobos with G31/33 chipsets.
High end XPS have 650/680i SLI chipsets.
Precision T3400 has X38... big difference over a G31/33 mobo.
Apparently the BIOS in the Vostro was not configured to allow running video cards from more than one slot... or so it seems.
Dell mostly eliminated the mid-grade PC. Their Inspiron and Vostro lines have budget mobos with G31/33 chipsets.
High end XPS have 650/680i SLI chipsets.
Precision T3400 has X38... big difference over a G31/33 mobo.