Is it possible to have 2 different video cards in one PC (non SLI)- this is for the far future but I'm contemplating the idea of an iz3d monitor on 1 video card, and using another older video card to hook up 2 more 2d screens.

Afaik it is possible, but one of the cards might be very slow (and low resolution).
Basically you could add a 10-year-old 2 or 4 mb PCI card to every mainboard and run one more monitor with it to have a bigger dektop. You should still be able to play with full power on the IZ3D, but the oter screen has only 2mb video ram and very limited performance - dragging frames or runing flash games might already be a problem...

edit:
if the mainboard does not disable it, you could use a onboard card of the mainboard

well a firend who specializes in this kinda stuff said he could saw off the end of my second video card slot (half the length of a pci express) so that a normal card like my nvidia 8600 fits in -it won't of course be able to use all of its resources and warranty is out the window. that should allow for 1 iz3d + 2 2d monitors right?

I have 2 nvidiacards in my comp since quite some time ago. 7900GT and an 8800gtx. They do work at the same time with same drivers but since i use the 7900 for the beamers and the 8800 for the iz3d it works best for me if i simply deactivate the card i don't use for the moment in the device manager (otherwise i might have to switch on the beamers just to get oriented). The driver remembers which card settings that belongs to which so this is no biggie. A reboot is needed though.

cheers

For Windows XP, you can install different graphics cards and different graphics driver versions and run them at the same time. So you could use two NVIDIA or two ATI, or one of each.

For Windows Vista, the WDDM restricts you from only being able to install a single graphics driver from a single vendor. So you would have to use two ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards and they would need to be supported in the same driver. You can read more here http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/di ... Vista.mspx

The other thing to simply be aware of is that most game try to use the monitor assigned as the primary one for running 3D games on. So if you want to use multiple displays, make sure the iz3D one is marked as "primary" from the windows display properties control panel.