Possible to use onboard graphics plus 8500gt

my dad has been using an old MX4000 PCI video card for a few years now and he's upgrading to an 8500gt but the problem is when the 8500 is in the system it somehow disables his onboard graphics therefore not allowing him to use his dual monitor set up like he was able to before with the MX4000 and the onboard graphics..

does anyone know a way around this?

Hi hatehereyes,

Modern graphics cards are capable of supporting more than one monitor. If the graphics card has 2 DVI-I ports and your monitors are the older VGA standard, you simply need 2 VGA-DVI adapters in order to connect them to the card. Most cards come with a single adapter for this purpose, however you can get the adapters from computer hardware stores. In some cases, you can even get leads with the DVI connector one one end and the VGA connector on the other. The reason why your fathers older video card didn't disable his onboard graphics is because the onboard graphics solution only gets disabled if a video card is inserted into either the AGP slot or the PCIE slot. Your father has been using an older PCI model, and in this case the onboard graphics needs to be exclusively disabled in the BIOS.
Dwarf

ah alright well i'll tell him to just trying using both the VGA and DVI inputs on the 8500gt

thanks.

yes that will sure work this is how i have done it on the past
in fact my current settings are as follows
DVI.1 to DVI on my 32" LCD TV
DVI.2 to VGA on my 17" TFT
HDMI Disabled