[you_silly_mortals]

I just installed my new 8800GT into my rig. Previously what I've been doing is running my secondary monitor and TV off of another card in the secondary PCI-E slot. Previously, both of these cards were identical, and driver installation went off without a hitch and detected both cards.

But now when I just installed the new card, with the newest (169.02) drivers from nvidia.com, its not detecting both cards anymore. Can I still use my 7950 in the secondary PCI-E slot? Or have I made a major oversight in buying this card?

Please note I have no intention of using SLI with these two cards. I had intended for the 8800GT to drive the primary gaming monitor and the 7950 to drive the secondary monitor and TV.

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Have a look at the user manual of the motherboard. Asus specifies how to install two video cards. What I remember is that if you run two cards each is having half the maximum speed (e.g: 2X8 pci-e instead of 1x16pci-e). You might have to set the BIOS to accept the two cards. You may have to use two identical cards. I am not sure about the details but I remember seeing it lately in an Asus manual.

[The Skeptic]

Have a look at the user manual of the motherboard. Asus specifies how to install two video cards. What I remember is that if you run two cards each is having half the maximum speed (e.g: 2X8 pci-e instead of 1x16pci-e). You might have to set the BIOS to accept the two cards. You may have to use two identical cards. I am not sure about the details but I remember seeing it lately in an Asus manual.

[you_silly_mortals]

I have gotten this working , here's how I went about it:

The first attempt:
I tried installing the drivers for the second card through the device manager but it didn't work, even when I pointed it at the folder for the 169.02 drivers. Then I read through the documentation for those drivers. I'm pretty sure they don't even support series 7 cards, as you can only get them if you select series 8 cards in the download wizard at nvidia.com.

The second attempt:
Anyway, I had a .rared copy of the 163.71 driver folder (already extracted) that I previously had installed just in case I thought I needed them. So I just pasted that into the nvidia folder on my C drive. Then I pointed the device manager and installed the drivers. And bam installation completed and I restarted.

Distaster:
On boot up I enabled the second monitor and dragged over my little OtaClock (widget). Directly after that windows became a slideshow, running at about 1 FPM (frame per minute). This was very bad.

Damage control:
Safe mode.
Uninstall.
Restart.
Safe mode.
Driver Cleaner.
Restart.

Third attempt:
This time I was at a loss of what to do, so on a whim I used the driver CD that came with the card. Installation went just like it always did in the good ol days, both cards were recognized during installation and after a reboot I'm running both monitors just fine. The device manager looks like it should as well:



Epilogue:
Using the driver CD seems to have worked, but I have no idea why. These drivers did not extract themselves to a folder on my C: drive like all the other ones I have done. So I don't even know what drivers I have installed. The only indication of version on the CD is

Version 76.8
Windows Vista/XP