Testing Two Graphics Cards at once

Michelle D

Captain
Just putting this info out there:

My original game settings that ran Standoff quite well with just the ATI card currently do not work with two cards installed. Starting the game gives me a black screen.

I also tried it without the lighting effects enabled.

I don't see this as a problem at the moment because I can always uninstall the nvidia drivers and card when I want to play standoff.

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PCI-E ATI RADEON X1650 SE
/ PCI BFG TECH NVIDIA GEFORCE 6200

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Ati_01.gif
Nvidia_01.gif



The install of the Nvidia card went haywire but seems to have sped up my 3D program rendering while causing a number of problems with windows screen flickering and games crashing or not starting at all.

Upon uninstalling the Nvidia Driver, ATI tries to apply it's driver to the nvidia card upon restarting the OS and tells you it can't continue.

I reinstall the Nvidia drivers (From Disk) and things are back to almost normal.

With one card
ATI (Primary Monitor 1)

With two cards
ATI (Secondary Monitors 2 and 3)
Nvidia (Primary Monitor 1)

So the Nvidia card steals the primary desktop or ATI tries to control the primary desktop through the Nvidia card with or without Nvidia drivers installed. I really don't understand this.



Currently:

I updated the Nvidia Drivers. However, as for the Ati driver, ATI is telling me no updates are available for my legacy card even though the Catalyst Control center is now updated to version 9.8. I may not be stuck with 9.3 but I reinstalled the ATI driver for good measure using the 9.3 driver bundle.

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Nvidia_02.gif
 
... I really can't understand why you installed the GeForce that is older and less powerfull than the radeon. All I can tell you from my expierience is that low-end Nvidia cards and 6200 is definetly low-end usually are crap.

Little bit OT - I am really impressed that with all the upgrades to the engine it standoff still works well with these cards. I mean, I know it's Vision engine, but it is very far from original, and fan-upgraded engines really tend to use hardware less-effectiv than newer ones
 
Actually, (x)x2xx series from Nvidia and (x)x3xx series from ATI are usually very nice cards to have in a system, especially if you like older games, and mostly passive cooled, so nice and quiet(and not powerhungry).

Standoff should run ok, but don't expect miracles ofcourse. If have found ATI's latest card to have a problem(I have an AH3450HD AGP from ASUS, that chip on that bus officially does not exist, so the Normal Catalyst drivers do not work). (and standoff halts the system(screen turns black and system locks up on starting) However with the latest version that ASUS herself released(numerous other things crash too), I have yet to install these, then I'll give it another go on this system. Funny detail, CPU-G can not indentify my GPU/Memory frequencys on the current driver but locks the program(I can still end the task tough).
 
I had the old nvidia card laying around and wanted to try it out. i also have an Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT PCI-E but the drivers refuse to install. I tried "driver sweeper" but it doesn't remove all the ATI files because they are locked in with the WINLOGON process.
 
I had the old nvidia card laying around and wanted to try it out. i also have an Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT PCI-E but the drivers refuse to install. I tried "driver sweeper" but it doesn't remove all the ATI files because they are locked in with the WINLOGON process.

You can filter these out easily by calling up "msconfig" from start/run, and disabling them under the services tab.
 
I have two PCIe cards, one Radeon and one GeForce, installed and Standoff runs okay. It may be that the PC gets a little confused with the older GeForce running on the PCI bus? I don't really know, just throwing out ideas.

About the primary display issue, I just use the standard Windows Display Properties dialogue to control that.

As for the drivers, Catalyst 9.8 is indeed the last for non-Radeon HD xxxx releases, but you should still be able to obtain the actual drivers along with the Control Centre module.
 
I have two PCIe cards, one Radeon and one GeForce, installed and Standoff runs okay.

Likely the ATI software in Michelle D's case tries to find a Radeon display adapter to continue and intialize it. Think of it as replacing your swapping your IntelCPU and chipset for an AMD variant, most likely you will need to throw out the entire hardware profile to get it back up, re-detect everything and running in the first place.
 
Actually, (x)x2xx series from Nvidia and (x)x3xx series from ATI are usually very nice cards to have in a system, especially if you like older games, and mostly passive cooled, so nice and quiet(and not powerhungry).

Heh a little OT

I was running for a short time on a shi**y integrated GeForce 6150 and WCVI refused to work despite many tries. When I installed a 9600 GT (my current card) it works almost flawlessly (with all patches from CIC and in win 95 variant). Probably the highest possible upgrade anyone made to run a WC game...
 
I wouldn't say that, I remember laying down a serious amount of money for a new PC to play WCIII....
 
I meant I had to ubgrade to a card thet was released like 13 years after the game. I remember how much money I had to gat out of my father to play WC3 back in the 1995
 
Testing out ATi Radeon 4350, it's passive cooled, but does that mean it's not as good as my other ATi that uses a fan?

The main thing is Standoff works great with all option enabled.

Here are the specs

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EDIT: Apparently ATI control center gives you the option to overclock the card, but with near 60 degree idle temps I don't think it would be a good idea.
 
The HD 4000 series is the previous-to-the-current generation of Radeons, so it will have support for more recent versions of DirectX and OpenGL and have other features that recent generation cards will have. But the model number indicates its a low-end card, hence its passive cooling, because the GPU isn't rated powerful enough to warrant a fan.

Yes, Catalyst allows for over-clocking, but I generally don't do much in that direction either. FYI, my HD 4850 is 55C idle (but it's been a hot day today, 30+C ambient), so I wouldn't be too concerned. But of course, one shouldn't really overclock a passive GPU anyway, I don't think.
 
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