Asus A8N-SLI, 2 video cards in non-SLI mode

[apocalypse]

I have put a new system together. The motherboard is an Asus A8N-SLI and the video card is a BFG 7800GT OC. In the past I have had several ATI All In Wonder cards but at this point in time there is not ATI AIW that matches the performance of the 7800GT OC.

With that said, I have tried two TV cards, the ATI Wonder Pro and ATI TV Wonder Elite. Well, the Wonder Pro does what I want, but ATI's Multimedia Center keeps screwing up the volume controls and is just a pain to re-adjust every time I use the TV. There is a program called VolumeLock which would resolve the issue, but it is missing a lock for the "monitor while recording" on the line-in which causes a nasty echo. Other than that this inexpensive product suites my needs.

The ATI TV Wonder Elite is a good piece of hardware, but the software is just awful. You cannot specify the recording codec (mpeg-2 only), or even the location where you want the captured video saved! If you had a 300 GB drive and partitioned it the majority of the drive would be useless!

Well, I know firsthand I like the AIW cards, as I've had the AIW models 8500DV, 9700 Pro, 9800 Pro and the X800XT over the years. Well, the motherboard will support two video cards in a non-SLI configuration and this got me thinking.

What I've done is added into the second PCIe slot a All in Wonder X600 Pro. This gives me the multimedia hardware and software I want, as well as keeping the 7800GT OC for the primary gaming.

Both cards are detected and work fine, and I can now have up to 3 displays running if I so desire. The only issue I'm having is that the ATI Multimedia Center software won't run, which was the whole point of me doing this! I'm going to do some testing tonight, but I think that since the ATI card is in the 2nd PCIe slot the software doesn't see it. I plan to install that card all by its lonesome and get everything working. Once that is done I'll add the 7800GT OC back in and then set that to be the primary display and hopefully I'll be good to go.

I'll post back with the results.

[apocalypse]

Well, it's a no-go.

The ATI AIW worked fine all by itself in either of the two PCIe slots, but as soon as the other card was added, things fell apart.

If I had the Nvidia card in PCIe slot 1 and the ATI in slot 2, everything almost worked correctly. I did get dual monitor support (up to three total) but the ATI Multimedia Center wouldn't work, as it didn't see that I had an ATI capture card installed.

With the ATI card in slot 1, the Nvidia card wouldn't even run the second monitor. The ATI Multimedia Center software worked, but my primary gaming card didn't.

It seems that the hardware does support this type of configuration, but the drivers just aren't up to snuff. I was thinking about trying the Nvidia Quadro drivers as those have native dual monitor support, but that is getting to be to much of a hassle.

The end result is I am using a $40.00 ATI TV Wonder Pro and I just have to adjust my volume settings every time that I capture a TV show.