Adding a third (cintiq) monitor to my setup.

[Joe Diaz]

Ok, I need some help. I consider myself somewhat of a computer geek, but most likely a low ranking one. So I just got a new 12" cintiq. I have dual ATI Radeon HD 4800 Graphics cards. So that means I have 4 DVI Ports.

My Primary display is a dell 22", before I got the cintiq the secondary display was an identical dell 22" display. Both were plugged into the top graphics card giving me a dual monitor display, leaving 2 DVI ports open on the bottom card.

I attempted to install the cintiq to one of those open ports. No Go. So I swapped the 2nd monitor and the Cintiq. and now the Cintiq works great! I love it. However now I need to find out why I can't install that third Monitor. Both Cards are working. Ideally I would love it if they acted as three displays, however I would be happy if the Cintiq mirrored the primary display.

I also have a 5th DVI port built into the motherboard. That doesn't work either. I'm running Windows Vista. I have Windows 7 but haven't installed it yet.

Can anyone help out a fellow geek?

 

[SignManiac]

Joe wish I could help. There was a time I might have had the answer, but finally had to give up my geekdom. I have no doubt that you will find your answer on the board though, this place is swarming with super geeks! Let me know how you like the Cintiq, I'm on the fence about buying the larger one.

 

[Gino]

Well, are you left handed or right ?? That would be my first concern.

 

[signmeup]

Can't wait to see what you do with that cintiq!

 

[ddarlak]

has the bottom video card ever worked?

 

[omgsideburns]

Nice!

 

[Custom_Grafx]

If both slots in both cards are working fine, it sounds like it could be a driver issue? Do you have all the latest drivers installed for your vid cards? I was running into a few bugs with mine - a dual DVI ATI 5700 Radeon, and turned out I had some updates available which fixed them up.

The way I did that, was to go into device manager (while you're there, check that both cards are listed without warnings), right click on each, and "update driver".

I'm on Windows 7, but imagine the procedure should be the same.

What happens when you plug in the 3rd/4th monitors? Any errors? or when you go to monitor setup, they just don't show up there and you only see monitor 1/2?

 

[Joe Diaz]

Darlak. You're the freaking man. Your post reminded me that I needed to turn off CrossFireX in my Graphics Card settings. To answer your question: Yeah it has always worked but was supporting the primary card with CrossFireX. I don't do any gaming on this computer, so I don't really need it turned on. Works now. Thanks!

 

[signage]

Kewl! Now lets see some more of your eye candy!hehehe

 

[slipperyfrog]

One more thing. Get off the awfulness called Vista and move to Win 7.

 

[Joe Diaz]

One more thing. Get off the awfulness called Vista and move to Win 7.

It's in the works. Right now we don't have much of a network. A lot of files are on my system. To avoid as much down time as I can, I'm buying parts to build a new computer. It won't be real powerful but will have a bunch of hard drive space to hold our files. It won't be used for anything but storage. No internet other than backing up our files online. It will be connected to our network and have bare bones software installed on it..

Once I get that going, I'll move all my files over to that, reformat this beast and put 7 on it. I have 7 at home, and everyone else here has it. I've just been postponing this because I know I'll be down for a bit.

 

[slipperyfrog]

I know the feeling of procrastinating an OS move or reinstall. I tend to force myself into the downtime. I keep files backed up and had a hard drive crash. Great time to build a new machine I figured. Loving my new SSD drives and more memory than I could ever imagine using.

Looking forward to what you will produce with your new toy.

 

[signswi]

It's in the works. Right now we don't have much of a network. A lot of files are on my system. To avoid as much down time as I can, I'm buying parts to build a new computer. It won't be real powerful but will have a bunch of hard drive space to hold our files. It won't be used for anything but storage. No internet other than backing up our files online. It will be connected to our network and have bare bones software installed on it..

Once I get that going, I'll move all my files over to that, reformat this beast and put 7 on it. I have 7 at home, and everyone else here has it. I've just been postponing this because I know I'll be down for a bit.

You really need to get a NAS and additionally back it up fully to the cloud, your art is way too valuable to be half-assing it. A QNAP or Synology NAS in RAID 5 (or 6) and a service like Crashplan or Backblaze or even Amazon S3.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

You may not need to have the crossfire enabled if you have an active DVI adaptor. I know when I added my 3rd monitor, which was a 21UX, I needed an active adaptor in order for my video card to read that 3rd monitor. It didn't matter which monitor, just for the mere fact of having a 3rd monitor. However, I also just have one video card that supports 3 inputs.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

You really need to get a NAS and back it up fully to the cloud, your art is way too valuable to be half-assing it.

I wouldn't say you're half-assing it but I do agree, just get a network-attached drive with multiple HDDs in it set up for RAID 5 and you're good and safe and it'll be a lot easier (and probably faster) than sharing files from a computer.

We've been running a 2tb NAS (set up for RAID 1 so we have 1tb of storage mirrored to the second drive for backup) for about 5 years, paid $499 for it and it's never failed us once. It is almost full, so we're upgrading to a new NAS with 4 drives. Way easier than setting up a server if all you're doing is storing files on it.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

With regard to the NAS device, see if you can get one that allows for stacking of future backup drives as well, so you don't have to get the entire thing all at one. You can "grow into it" in other words.

 

[MatthewTimothy]

congrats on the new Cintiq, business must be good for that, lol Now is this station a custom build or a bought system and what type of motherboard are you running? I assume you are saying that you have a separate GPU and an onboard GPU?? Also is your motherboard Intel and your GPU ATI? That can cause some slight errors, but you have stated you arent running crossfire so it really shouldnt be an issue.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

I would like to hear your review of this smaller Cintiq. If I got one, I would prefer the 21 or 24 inch model. When I use my wacom tablet with my laptop I hate the smaller 15 inch screen of the laptop as I am used to always working with Illustrator on my 23" desktop and allows me to see more at once

I never considered the 12 inch Cintiq because I thought the small screen would seem too confining

 

[Joe Diaz]

congrats on the new Cintiq, business must be good for that, lol Now is this station a custom build or a bought system and what type of motherboard are you running? I assume you are saying that you have a separate GPU and an onboard GPU?? Also is your motherboard Intel and your GPU ATI? That can cause some slight errors, but you have stated you arent running crossfire so it really shouldnt be an issue.

Hey Matthew. It's a custom built PC. Our local computer guy made it for me. I don't recall what the motherboard is.

It's a few years old now. The CPU is a AMD Phenom 9950 Quad-Core (Black Edition). and like I said, I have dual ATI Radeon HD 4800 Graphics cards. and yes the motherboard also has an on board GPU (That one I would think should have worked even with crossfire on)

But yeah the problem was the ports on the second graphics card weren't working because with crossfire on it was doubling up with the first card.

Darlaks post reminded me that at one time those ports worked. When I first turned on crossfire a year or so ago, I had one monitor plugged into one card and the other plugged into a different one. As soon as I turned the crossfire on the second monitor stopped working until I plugged it into the first card. I had forgotten about that. So that was the issue. Now it works great.

I would like to hear your review of this smaller Cintiq. If I got one, I would prefer the 21 or 24 inch model. When I use my wacom tablet with my laptop I hate the smaller 15 inch screen of the laptop as I am used to always working with Illustrator on my 23" desktop and allows me to see more at once

I never considered the 12 inch Cintiq because I thought the small screen would seem too confining

It's a bit early to tell for sure but so far I like it. the 21 would have been nice but I think the 24 is too large for me. We went with the 12 for a few reasons.

One, it was a grand less in price... and two, it looked like it would be a bit more portable. However, now that I have it, with all the cords that comes with it, I don't picture myself moving around with it all that much. Although it is light enough that I can pick it up and set it in my lap here at my desk.

I think it's a good size. the drawing area is about the size of a sheet of paper. The resolution is great, although the viewing angle isn't as good as my other monitors. If drawing area is a concern and you have a second monitor. You can place all of your tool bars and dockers on the second monitor then program one of the programmable buttons to toggle between displays. So your cintiq will then act like a tablet for the other monitor. And you can change tools then switch back to the cintiq itself.

 

[MatthewTimothy]

have you thought of transferring to all workstation cards?? Im doing this now, saves on power and is a guaranteed card for 3D modeling. Cheaper too