Is Eyefinity necessary to run a third monitor on ATI Radeon HD 5700?

[AirCola]

Hi,

I wanted to attach a third monitor to my ATI Radeon HD 5700 card, but often have trouble running CCC/Vision Engine Control Center, and thus worry about getting Eyefinity to work.

If I attach a third monitor via an active HDMI/DVI to DisplayPort adapter, will I be able to have Windows 7 recognize the third monitor without running Eyefinity?

Don't want to play games, or run widescreen across the three monitors -- just want to be able to "extend desktops" to a third monitor via the normal Windows "Screen Resolution" feature.

Basically: can I get basic third monitor functionality without Eyefinity?

Thanks!

 

[drums101]

yes you sure can....as long as your card has a displayport and you have the right adapter (sounds like you do) windows will pick up the third monitor and you can extend the desktop across all three without having to do eyefinity.

 

[AirCola]

Great! Before, I attached a third into the second DVI port and Windows wouldn't allow it to be extended -- but that's because the second DVI port is disabled when you already have one HDMI and one DVI?

 

[drums101]

sort of....due to the architecture of the card you cannot have all three monitors hooked up to HDMI/DVI you can only have two (it only has two pipelines for that)...the third monitor has to be hooked up to the displayport....I could go alot more into detail but I dont want to bore you lol.

 

[dudewitbow]

for all amd cards except sapphire flex cards, the 3rd monitor must use a display port in some way(display to display or display to dvi). UNLESS your using a 2nd card to power the next screen.

 

[photonboy]

If there's any hardware costs for Displayport that you have to incur, you may wish to investigate just adding a second card.

You can buy something like this for $30 at NCIX or Newegg:
HD6450 1GB fanless

 

[JCB75]

Here's a helpful video on this series of gfx card explaining the design.

http://youtu.be/Jf0X0lNFmgw?list=PL6CFEA6C71BB14979