As part of my new build, i'll be using 3 monitors.

Currently i'm using an 8800GT and then a 6600GT for the third screen. The cooler on the 6600GT is dead so I just bought another 6600GT which is next to me.

On the motherboard i'm moving over to, it already has onboard graphics - after much hassle i've got this to output to a 3rd monitor, so if I wanted to I could use this solution instead.

Advantage wise, i'd have one less card making noise in my PC and taking up space, however the onboard graphics will use RAM (not an issue) and also CPU time (might be an issue).

This only problem I can think of is SoftTH running worse because the ATi 3300 isn't as good.

Opinions please?

GeForce 8800GT and onboard Ati 4200 works fine for me with SoftTH. I see no problem in your setup. Except you need to be running Windows 7 (or XP) to use two different brands of GPU at the same time.

Oooooo - How did you set that up? Any disadvantages?

Oh wow, I am interested too, got Win7.

I have onboard HD3200 and 9800GT (same as 8800GT in terms of setting up I think).

Quote from Jakg :

Oooooo - How did you set that up? Any disadvantages?

Nothing special really.
Only thing that took me a while to figure out was that the onboard GPU needed to be primary in the BIOS, otherwise it wouldn't show up in Windows. That just means the stuff on post shows up on the monitor connected to it, starting from the Windows login screen everything is on the primary monitor set in Windows.

After that it was just installing the both nvidia and ati drivers and setting up multiple monitors using the Windows' built-in monitor configuration.

Setting up SoftTH worked the same as it did when I had 8800GT and 6200LE cards. So no problems there.

I haven't noticed any disadvantages really. Only small bug is with the nvidia and ati control panels, the other manufacturers card/monitors don't show up on the others control panels properly. But that doesn't really effect the use at all.

I'm geussing the easiest option is to use one monitor on the onboard graphics, install the drivers for that, then plug in the graphics card in and install the drivers for that?

I don't know if that makes a difference. I installed the 8800GT drivers first because I didn't know that the onboard GPU needed to be primary to make it show up in Windows and I naturally set the PCI-E card as primary at first in BIOS.

So I am not sure if it causes problems if you try to install them both at once. I would guess modern hardware/software could handle that, but you could install them one by one just to be on the safe side.

having an onboard nvidia card for physx and then an ati card would be sweet. Is there any benefit to having an onboard ati and then a seperate card. or an onboard nvidia and then a plug in nvidia card? why not just disable onboard video and use the better card?

maybe i missed something and need to read the thread i am busy cooking and just running around like a chicken w/ its head cut off.

You miss-understood

I have a mobo with an onboard ATi 3300 chip, I have a 6600GT, an 8800GT and a 4830 - I wanted to know what combination you guys would use.

I settled for the ATi 3300 chip as while I lose 256 MB of RAM (oh t3h noes only 7.75Gb left) it means theres no extra cards, heat or fans...

I'd just use the 4830. its abot the same as the 8800gt w/ more features, right? dx10.1 and i'd disable onboard.

I need 3 monitors, though - all of those cards only have 2 outputs.