Problem with dual VGA monitors

[Val.J]

I just bought an HD5450 (passively cooled, i don`t do gaming, just musical stuff) and wanted to hook up my two vga monitors to it. The D-SUB connection is working fine, but the DVI-I would not detect the second VGA monitor using an adapter. I tried switched monitors and both are working fine when connected to the D-SUB. (This is the card http://www.powercolor.com/Global/products_features.asp?id=375 )

In the past I used the D-sub from my old GPU and the D-sub from my onboard Intel HD4000 graphics GPU, but i had a strange problem - when moving a picture from one display to the other, the window freezes for a second when it exits one screen, then when it is in both screens it is moving fine and again, when it exits the first screen completely and moves to the second, it freezes again for a moment, which is way too irritating (which is why I bought this hd5450 = passively cooled and has D-sub + DVI-I which should be able to be converted to VGA with an adapter). However, the DVI-I output with the VGA adapter is not detecting the monitor...

I ended up hooking the second monitor to the intel onboard hd graphics and the same freezing issue appears again which kind of defeats the whole purpose of getting the new card, which is just freaking me out!!! I tried searching the web, but I guess no one is using dual vga monitors anymore and nobody`s reporting the same issue.
This is the best forum ever and you`re my last hope guys, any comments would be greatly appreciated!!!

[Dim]

Looking at this image:

Which one of those is the connection on the graphics card? If it's either DVI-I dual or single link, it should work perfectly fine.

If it's not working, the only thing I can think of is that either the port is dead or the adapter is faulty. There may be another reason I'm overlooking, though.

 

If you have DVI-D and not DVI-I, I think you need an active analog to digital DVI-D to VGA adapter. But the card you're using says DVI-I, so this may not be the case.

 

You can try testing it with any DVI monitors you have lying around or a friend's to see if the DVI port is functional, which it should be, and if not then the only thing I can think of is that your adapter is faulty... sorry I can't be of more help  :unsure:

[Val.J]

Thanks so much for the response. The connector is definitely the second one - DVI-I (dual link) - that is also what is says in the specifications. HOWEVER when I looked at the IO of the card I saw "DVI-D" in the metal next to the port. Is that possible - to advertise something as DVI-I dual link when in fact it is a DVI-D dual link??   After all - it looks exactly as the DVI-I dual link...

[Dim]

Thanks so much for the response. The connector is definitely the second one - DVI-I (dual link) - that is also what is says in the specifications. HOWEVER when I looked at the IO of the card I saw "DVI-D" in the metal next to the port. Is that possible - to advertise something as DVI-I dual link when in fact it is a DVI-D dual link??   After all - it looks exactly as the DVI-I dual link...

That's very confusing then. There's no reason they would write DVI-D next to a DVI-I port (maybe they were trying to say it's compatible)?

The only thing I can think of then is to get a DVI-A to VGA adapter, which would force an otherwise digital signal into an analog signal. Personally I haven't had this issue with my monitor, but it is possible your graphics card can't distinguish between digital and analog solutions.

 

Long story short, if you purchase a cheap DVI-A to VGA adapter from eBay or something, it should work perfectly.

[Val.J]

Hmmm, never heard of this DVI-A to VGA, I`ll have to do some research

[Val.J]

If this is DVI-A to VGA (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Adapter_DVI_to_VGA.jpg)  then I have one, i tried it and it didn`t work :( :(