3 monitor grahics card budget

[jmag4]

Hello, I'm having trouble getting 3 monitors going on my PC. It is an old PC (~7-8 years old) but was a great PC back in the day. I originally had a 8800 GTS in it, but that only has two DVI ports on it so I tried to put my MSI N520GT thinking I could use the DVI, VGA and HDMI slot, but for whatever reason the HDMI slot doesn't recognize the third monitor. I was wondering if there were any suggestions on how I should approach this problem. I'm mainly going to be trading on these monitors, so no heavy gaming. Should I just go out and upgrade my whole PC? The graphics card? Graphics card and motherboard?

Motherboard is currently the P5B-E so only one graphics card slot.

Thanks for the help!

 

[InvalidError]

Many old GPUs only support two outputs at a time out of the 3-4 they had. Some (very) low end modern GPUs also have restrictions on the output mix they support. For example, AMD's R7-250X can support up to four displays but two of them must be DisplayPort.

 

[jmag4]

So basically I need to get a new GPU. Any you could recommend for a fairly decent price? (Not looking to cheap out but don't want to be spending tons of bucks for top of the line stuff. Would you even go as far as buying a completely new PC simply because mine is 7-8 years outdated? Its amazing how fast computers age

Thanks for your reply!

 

[InvalidError]

Well, no need for expensive GPUs since just about any except the lowest-end current GPUs support at least three displays as long as at least one of them is DisplayPort.

The R7-250X can do 2xDVI + 1xHDMI + 1xDP if the card manufacturer decides to put that port configuration on it.

 

[jmag4]

And just to confirm, I would be able to use 3x monitors with only DVI capability? I'd need to purchase a DVI to DP adaptor?

 

[Rich Barrett]

You mentioned that "the HDMI slot doesn't recognize the third monitor" in your original post. So use the 2 DVI and the HDMI. By the sounds of it you have the cable set up for that config already

 

[jmag4]

Sorry I'm not all that tech savvy and still a tad confused. You're saying that if I were to get a newer graphics card that the HDMI port would work?

 

[InvalidError]

And just to confirm, I would be able to use 3x monitors with only DVI capability? I'd need to purchase a DVI to DP adaptor?

Modern GPUs only have up to two native DVI ports so you would need at least one adapter from DP or HDMI to DVI if your display's HDMI port is busted.

As I said earlier though, the 520GT only supports dual outputs so this is probably the reason why adding a third monitor on HDMI did not work - your two outputs were already in use by DVI.