3 monitors, 1 card?

[kaitanium]

im noticing on the 4 and 5 series nvidias, most of them come with dual dvi and one hdmi port. am i able to support 3 monitors with just one card (extended desktop, surround vision etc)? or is that still reserved for an sli setup?

 

[bystander]

For Nvidia, it is required to have an SLI setup for 3 monitors, but it can be on a single card in some cases. Such as the 590 and 295.

 

[kaitanium]

doh. 590 would break the bank and not fit my case and a 200 series wouldnt do dx11. i guess im back to doing sli haha. thanks

 

[larkspur]

im noticing on the 4 and 5 series nvidias, most of them come with dual dvi and one hdmi port. am i able to support 3 monitors with just one card (extended desktop, surround vision etc)? or is that still reserved for an sli setup?

This is one area NVIDIA will hopefully catchup. Right now you need SLI or a single card with SLI built-in (like the 590) to do more than 2 monitors. If you want to avoid SLI get a radeon 5k or 6k series card (I suggest a 2gb frame buffer) and it'll do it.

 

[kaitanium]

ive thought about that. so all 5x and 6x series radeons can do their eyefinity thing?
thing is my mobo is SLI. and if in the future i want to add another card, there will be no way to do it other than swap for basically an entirely new system....

radeons are cheaper no doubt. AND use less power. two things i love. hehe

 

[bystander]

If you plan to play games across 3 monitors, you will need the power of an SLI setup to have decent performance. If that is what you plan to do with them, you might as well stick with nvidia and get 2 cards.

 

[kaitanium]

well its for work and play basically. im still using 5:4 monitors and not wide screen monitors. basically a total res of 3840x1024. lets image nvidia could do 3 monitors with 1 card, i mean thats not crazy high res to run for one card is it?

im going to assume that with 2x 460s, my processor (athlon64x2 6000) will be the bottleneck.

 

[larkspur]

If you plan to play games across 3 monitors, you will need the power of an SLI setup to have decent performance. If that is what you plan to do with them, you might as well stick with nvidia and get 2 cards.

I play a variety of games at 4800x1200 with a single 6970 without problems. You can't expect ultra settings on all games, but the less-demanding ones (like WoW) are great on ultra. I've also played at the same resolution with 1 x 5870 and 2 x 5870 and prefer this setup due to some games (particularly WoW) having annoying crossfire issues. Radeon cards with 1gb or less RAM struggle at my resolution.

But if you really want to push it with a bunch of eye candy on (and you have the OCed CPU to drive them) either SLI or Xfire is certainly more powerful.

Kait - Just make sure whichever card/cards you get have plenty of ram to drive your resolution.

 

[kaitanium]

I play a variety of games at 4800x1200 with a single 6970 without problems. You can't expect ultra settings on all games, but the less-demanding ones (like WoW) are great on ultra. I've also played at the same resolution with 1 x 5870 and 2 x 5870 and prefer this setup due to some games (particularly WoW) having annoying crossfire issues. Radeon cards with 1gb or less RAM struggle at my resolution.

But if you really want to push it with a bunch of eye candy on (and you have the OCed CPU to drive them) either SLI or Xfire is certainly more powerful.

Kait - Just make sure whichever card/cards you get have plenty of ram to drive your resolution.

well the setup would be either 2x GTX460 1gb each. or 1x 6970 2gb. im leaning to the radeon solely cuz of power requirements. this would be across 3x monitors at 3840x1024 res total so not exactly ultra high res for todays standards. ive never been a fan of widescreen monitors. still like my square stuff hehe.

i dont OC any of my components. as mentioned an amd x2 64 3ghz is currently driving my system until the phenom IIx4 945 drops to $50 hahahaha.

 

[larkspur]

well the setup would be either 2x GTX460 1gb each. or 1x 6970 2gb. im leaning to the radeon solely cuz of power requirements. this would be across 3x monitors at 3840x1024 res total so not exactly ultra high res for todays standards. ive never been a fan of widescreen monitors. still like my square stuff hehe.

I think either option is great. I don't know the monitor hook-up requirements for the NVIDIA cards but if you go with AMD eyefinity make sure either: a) one of your monitors has a "DisplayPort" connector (unlikely) or b) You buy an ACTIVE DisplayPort to DVI (or VGA) adapter (Depending on your monitor's preferred hook-up).

The reason you need an adapter is that the card can only output two DVI/VGA/HDMI at one time. The "DisplayPort" connector must be used to do three monitors. Sapphire supposedly makes a line of "Flex" cards that have a built-in adapter. Make sure you get an ACTIVE adapter like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814999030

Make sure you get the right size of DisplayPort adapter since they make mini-displayport on some cards also.

And yeah, three 1920x1080 widescreens in landscape are a bit wide for my tastes. I use fullscreens (4:3) for my eyefinity setup too.

 

[jojoenglish85]

wouldn't eye be able to connect two monitors to one card with no adapter? and use my second card specifically for the third monitor with no extra adapter?

 

[kaitanium]

yea i have an active displayport to dvi adapter ready to go. got a xfx card for its warranty.

and for jojoenglish85, yes 2 cards no adapter, 2nd card for 3rd (or i suppose 4th) monitor

 

[jojoenglish85]

^thanks