3 monitors with 2600k

dest13

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Mar 24, 2011
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I'm currently using the 2600k onboard video for one monitor, but I have 2 more that I used to have hooked up via an GeForce FX 5200 pci card. This card doesn't seem to work on this new PC, makes it blue screen all over the place and generally unstable. Will a newer basic video card with 2 outputs play nice with the 2600k onboard video? I'm not looking for any type of graphics performance, just want the screen real estate.
 


if you want to use quicksync for video encoding with a discrete video card you might want to look at lucidlogix it offers more control over your gpu's.
 
Any card with Windows 7 drivers should allow me to run 2 monitors off of that and 1 off the mobo right? Looks like I can get one of those for about 30 bucks.
 
You'd tend to think you could use the integrated video to run 3 monitors if the motherboard had 3 independent outputs, right? Wrong... Unfortunately, 2nd Gen Intel Core CPUs only have two independent video output channels. Even if the motherboard has three different output types, two of them would actually be shared, meaning only one or the other can be used.

Fortunately, these CPUs will work simultaneously with an add-in GPU. So yes, you would have to add a video card in order to have three (or more) fully-independent screens. And yes, any video card capable of dual-output that has Win7 drivers should work.

Here's a link to an Intel 2nd-Gen Core datasheet. Scroll down to page 32 for details on the integrated GPU. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/2nd-gen-core-desktop-vol-1-datasheet.html