Page 53
877-877-2269 | blackbox.com
Appendix A: Installing the Video Graphics Card
A.3.1 Installing the Display Drivers
1. Once the Video Graphics Card has been installed and the boot messages are appearing on the correct
monitor, you can start Windows.
2. Boot the system into Safe Mode then Log on as a user with administrative access rights.
3. The Found New Hardware Wizard will announce that new hardware has been found.
NOTE: Do not use the Found New Hardware Wizard to install the Video Graphics Card drivers.
4. Install the display drivers from the Software Installation Suite DVD supplied with the Video Graphics Card.
5. If your final configuration has less than four screens, select the number of screens required; otherwise, select
four screens.
6. Restart the machine.
7. When Windows starts up, the desktop should spread over all the screens connected to the Video Graphics
Card.
A.3.2 Installing Additional Video Graphics Cards
As the number of required screens increase, the likelihood of reaching a system limitation or encountering a
problem increases. The system limitations are the amount of address space available and the capacity of the
power supply.
Consult Black Box Technical Support at 877-877-2269 or [email protected] if you have any problems installing
multiple cards.
The amount of current a power supply can deliver on each voltage rail is limited. There may also be a limit on
the total power.
Each Video Graphics Card requires 0.25 A at +3.3 V and 1.2 A at +12 V.
You can calculate the amount of current and the amount of power required for the Video Graphics Cards. For
example, the requirements for a 24-screen system of Video Graphics Cards is calculated as follows:
Current:
• Six Video Graphics Cards (each with four connectors) running on current eq3.3 V each card requires
6 x 0.25 A = 1.5A.
• Six Video Graphics Cards (each with four connectors) running on current eq12 V each card requires
6 x 1.2A = 7.2A.
Power
(3.3 V x 1.5 A ) + (12 V x 7.2 A ) = 91.35 W
These are the requirements for the Video Graphics Card; you must take into account the requirements of all the
other devices in the system.
A.4 Video Graphics Card Video BIOS
The Intel x86 based architecture limits the amount of legacy I/O space available in a system to 64 KB. You can
map hardware that requires I/O access into this 64 KB area. A Video Graphics Card requests 256 Bytes of legacy
I/O. Any PCIe bridge will align this to a 4 KB boundary, so the I/O space allocated to each Video Graphics Card is
actually 4 KB.
64 KB ÷ 4 KB gives an absolute maximum of 16 Video Graphics Cards. Other system devices also require legacy
I/O. Often the Network Devices will request some I/O space, and so might the USB devices and on-board
graphics. It is not unusual for there to be I/O space available for only 8 Video Graphics Cards when installing
them in a complex server-class motherboard.
