Problem setting up dual graphics cards

[Craig Kenworthy]

I have a pc with the following specs:

ACER P5N-D Motherboard
Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.00GHZ
8 GB Ram
1 TB 7200 HDD
Windows 7 Home Premium

Matrox M912 quad VGA video card running 4 monitors.

at work i work on huge excel sheets and i would like to add a second matrox M912 video card and double the monitor count to 8. i already bought and set up the monitors and tried (unsuccessfully) to install a second matrox m912 video card. i could not figure out how to get the computer to recognize the second video card so i downloaded the user manual for the motherboard and while i am not sure, i think that the second video card wont work because this motherboard will only support dual graphics cards if they are both SLI-ready which i am pretty certain the matrox M912 is not. My question is this:

1) is there a way to get the two video cards i already have to work?
2)if not does anyone have any suggestions about what video cards would work? i dont need to game or anything thic pc is mainly used for excel.
3) i was also thinking that since this is an older PC it might be cheaper (if kind of a pain) to get a different motherboard that would support two matrox m912 video cards and i could just swap over all of the components and sell my current motherboard. does anyone have any suggestions as to a motherboard that would work for this?
thanks in advance for the help

 

[Mousemonkey]

It is highly likely that your graphics cards don't support cross-interfacing over multiple cards. I have not seen any graphics cards in this age which are not produced by AMD or Nvidia, and since SLI is Nvidia Specific your motherboard will not take both of them. My advice would be to buy a pair of new Nvidia cards. Since you are only working with Excel, you won't need to look high up the price range: I would suggest a couple of these - http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-750

They may not be incredibly cheap but those are the lowest end cards which support SLI. Don't be fooled by the fact that they are 'low end' in Nvidia's eyes, because these pack enough punch to even run modern games at full HD! They would be a good investment.

I'm not sure if the Core 2 comes with integrated graphics, but on modern Intel Core series processors you have the ability to use your integrated graphics alongside a dedicated graphics card. If your motherboard and processor support this, it may be the way to go so that you don't have to buy new cards.

Hope this helped!

Liam

What!!

If both cards are PCIe then there shouldn't be a problem running both cards, the OP could even run two AMD cards or one of each. They only need to be Nvidia cards if the OP wanted SLi, which they quite clearly don't.

 

[Limester]

It is highly likely that your graphics cards don't support cross-interfacing over multiple cards. I have not seen any graphics cards in this age which are not produced by AMD or Nvidia, and since SLI is Nvidia Specific your motherboard will not take both of them. My advice would be to buy a pair of new Nvidia cards. Since you are only working with Excel, you won't need to look high up the price range: I would suggest a couple of these - http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-750

They may not be incredibly cheap but those are the lowest end cards which support SLI. Don't be fooled by the fact that they are 'low end' in Nvidia's eyes, because these pack enough punch to even run modern games at full HD! They would be a good investment.

I'm not sure if the Core 2 comes with integrated graphics, but on modern Intel Core series processors you have the ability to use your integrated graphics alongside a dedicated graphics card. If your motherboard and processor support this, it may be the way to go so that you don't have to buy new cards.

Hope this helped!

Liam

What!!

If both cards are PCIe then there shouldn't be a problem running both cards, the OP could even run two AMD cards or one of each. They only need to be Nvidia cards if the OP wanted SLi, which they quite clearly don't.

Ah read it wrong, sorry.