2 vid cards in both PCIe x16 lanes?

[froggy_newb]

Lets say your comp has 2 PCI-e x16 lanes for sli or crossfire. and you already have 2 monitors running off of one card, could you put in another card in the open x16 lane to run 4 monitors? Or will that just mess up your comp having 2 different video drivers...

can you do the same thing but use PCI slots instead?

[rond36]

I know it will work with an AGP and a PCI card but don't know about 2 PCI-E cards but I'm sure it would if Crossfire or SLI were turned off.

[odannyboy000]

I have read an article on tomshardware.com where they ran 8 monitors (8 or 10 I can't remember for sure) using 2 cards in the PCIe lanes, and 2 cards in the PCI slots. You can read about it at the sight, but theoretically you can run 4 monitors with 2 cards if they are both set up to do 2 each. Of course, 4 monitors would cost a lot of money, and probably would not be needed.

[saphalline]

As long as SLI/CrossFire is turned off, you'll have no problems running 4 monitors with two PCIe x16 vid cards. However, it would be preferable from a compatibility standpoint to pick out either 2 ATI vid cards or 2 NVidia vid cards. Makes things less messy.