Triple monitor setup nvidia 680 single card

[That Outlaw]

Apologies if this is confusing as I am confused myself.

I'm in the market for a new graphics card, and I think I want a GTX 680. Now this is where I get confused. What I want to do is have a setup for gaming on one monitor, and use the other two as auxiliaries for watching the chat on my stream (I stream on twitch.tv quite a bit) or just doing whatever. I also want the three screens for a desktop so I can have a wide interface for video editing.

Is the 680 able to do this? Without SLI as well?

All I can find is the setup for NVIDIA Surround (cant say I really want that), I just want to game on one monitor and have a multi monitor desktop, but I cant find anything to clarify on my question.

So is Nvidia the way to go? or should I opt for an AMD card, as I know what I want is possible (have a radeon 7770) I just want more graphics horsepower.

 

[wanderer11]

The 680 or 670 would be fine for this. You don't need sli if you are only gaming on 1 monitor. Basically all you have to do is plug the displays into the card, go to display settings and drag the monitors to the orientation you want. A 7770 would be capable of this, assuming it has the ports you need. Keep in mind that maximizing will make a window fit the current screen. You'll have to manually drag the window to size across all screens. If you want maximize to fit all screens you need nvidia surround/eyefinity.

 

[ubercake]

The 680 can do this without SLI. Games that support borderless windowed or windowed mode will get you exactly what you want with being able to perform other tasks on the two other screens while gaming on the third.

Some games still take over the whole darn setup, but there are fewer and fewer of these out there as people look to have the flexibility you're looking for. This is independent of what type of video card you choose.

Setting up Nvidia surround is easy. They have a "wizard" on the geforce website that shows you possible monitor configurations:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/3dvision-surround/system-requirements

 

[That Outlaw]

Thanks guys! I don't know whose answer to pick as the best, but both of you answered what I have been trying to figure out for 3 days.

 

[wanderer11]

You may need to disable desktop composition on some games or your side monitors will go black or the game won't launch (I'm looking at you Dead Island). Right click on .exe>properties>compatibility>disable desktop composition. There now you have reason to pick me.

 

[That Outlaw]

Best answer selected by That Outlaw.

 

[That Outlaw]

Best answer selected by That Outlaw.

 

[ubercake]

You may need to disable desktop composition on some games or your side monitors will go black or the game won't launch (I'm looking at you Dead Island). Right click on .exe>properties>compatibility>disable desktop composition. There now you have reason to pick me.

This is a good tip. I never knew this. I pick you too. You still can't mouse over to the other screens when you do this, correct?

 

[wanderer11]

Some games let me simply move the mouse over and some don't. Civ V, for example, lets me just move the mouse over to my secondary monitor any time I feel like. Valve games always let me when in a menu, but sometimes freeze if the game loses focus. It really depends on the game.