Second video card (PCI) under Windows 7

I'm trying to get an old PCI video card (Diamond Stealth 2500) along with a normal PCI-E video card.

In BIOS, there is a setting to switch between PEG/PCI or PCI/PEG on startup (PEG is PCI-E Graphics). When I use PCI/PEG only the old PCI card works, when I use the other one, only the new PEG card works.

In PEG/PCI mode, Windows 7 recognizes the card and shows it in Device Manager as Standard VGA adapter, but it shows a warning for the device ("This device cannot start. (Code 10)").

Solution 1:

As of Vista and WDDM 1.0, the Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) doesn't support heterogenous multi-adapter configurations. If your primary video card uses the WDDM 1.0 model, then you will not be able to use the Diamond Stealth as a second display even if you can find Windows 7 compatible drivers for it. If your primary video card uses the older XPDM model, then you may be able to get your multi-adapter configuration working, but you won't be able to use Aero Glass. As @prestomation pointed out in the comments, WDDM 1.1 adds support for heterogenous multi-adapter configurations. I doubt that there are any WDDM drivers for a video card of this vintage anyway.

If your primary video card doesn't support two displays, you might want to upgrade to one that does. If it does support two displays and you're trying to add a third, you might be able to add an identical/compatible video card, given a free PCIe slot. There are also a few models of video card that support four displays on one card.

Solution 2:

Have the same problem here. Worst thing is - the PCI vid card works very well when alone. I was very surprised how 2meg ATI Rage IIC handled graphics under win7. Windows, flash, youtube, movies - all worked without problems (didn't even tried games lol :) no aero too). Unfortunately this thing won't fly with PCIE radeon X800 installed as primary.

Just to rephrase - it's not a problem of a missing driver.