Dual video card setup

[UUVGuy]

I just bought an ASUS A8N-E mobo with Athlon 64 3200+ processor and 1G RAM. The thing works great!! The question I have is how would I go about installing dual video cards in it?
It has a 16x PCI-e slot with a PNY nVidia 7600GS card in it, 2 1x PCI-E slots unoccupied and 1 4x PCI-E slot also currently unoccupied. I know that the 4x slot will only perform to 2x because the bus only has 20 channels and the 1x slots take one each even when not used but the 4x slot is only about 1/3 the size of the 16x slot. How does the second card work in that slot or will it? The ASUS website mentions dual video cards but gives no info on setup or how the system would work with dual cards.

TIA

Jim W

 

[kmcferrin]

I didn't see anything on ASUS's web site about this board supporting dual video cards. It only has a single PCI-E 16x slot. Normally on a PCI-E board if it supports multiple cards it will have two 8x or two 16x slots, and be labelled as SLI capable.

Your only option for a second card looks like to add a standard PCI video card (not PCI Express), but since they are so old there's not really much point (unless you just want to use 3 or more monitors).

 

[UUVGuy]

It was mentioned in the FAQ on the website. I don't really plan on using 2 video cards but I was just curious since it was mentioned there.
What would you use the 4x or the 2 1x slots for anyway?

 

[kmcferrin]

Not much at the moment. Eventually there will be hardware designed for the 4x and 1x PCI-E slots, but at the moment there is basically the odd soundcard or disk controller and that's it.