Twin Graphics cards and dual monitors?

[haydox]

I am building a new computer with two Radeon 3870 XT 512Mbs in and in. In my current computer i have an AGP Winfast 7600 GT 256Mb and i run two monitors off it. My 22" widescreen as my main and a smaller 17" for MSN, IE, WMP, etc.

With one card its easy, that card handles both and i plug both monitors into it, but how will i do it with two graphics cards? Will i plug both monitors into one card or a monitor in each card (with the primary monitor being in the primary card)?

And with crossfire running two monitors, will it still use both cards, as it would with only one monitor, if i was playing a game?

Basically, how do i use two monitors with Crossfire and what effects will it have?

Thanks

Rich

 

[super45]

how dose two monitors work ???

 

[haydox]

Anyone know how to get dual monitors to work on a crossfire system? And what effects that will have?

I am buying the computer later tonight when i get home from work (£773 in total).

 

[z_dori]

i'm currently working with dual monitor, single card.
if you want to play one monitor & the sec. monitor is for other stuff like you said, use an "extended desktop" configuration.
this way the desktop will continue from the 22" to the 17".
you can adjust the position of every monitor so you can drag easlly stuff from one to another.

if you're using CF,
i think you should connect them both to the "main" card & enable CF in the settings.

this way,
in windows desktop you'll have 2 monitors & double the desktop, like i do.
when gaming, the sec. monitor will still be on (i use it for Temp & Pref monitoring while gaming) & the main monitor will run the game & the game will use the CF options.


p.s.
i'm sure that working with CF with multiple monitor is a section on the Guide of the cards.

what model did you buy? i'll download the guide & try to see for my self.

 

[aevm]

Send an e-mail to their support. You are entitled to a little help, if you're giving them $500+.

My guess is that the primary card will have both monitors connected to it, and you'll use either Crossfire or two monitors, but not at the same time. Just a guess though... Maybe ATI has done better than that, I hope so

@super45: it's simple, for a single card. For example my 8800GTX has two DVI outputs. I connected each of them to a monitor, ran some wizard provided by nVidia, selected DualView in one of the steps, etc. I get to watch movies on a monitor and surf on the other. There's also a mode called Clone where the monitors would have the same image, but that's only useful for presentations, I guess, if the audience can't all fit in front of one monitor. I can also save "nVidia profiles" and switch between them, i.e. between DualView and single monitor. It's useful in some games because if I'm in Dual View I can click outside the game area and have annoying side effects like seeing the desktop instead of the game.

 

[haydox]

Thanks, i was considering just not using my second monitor but now its been explained i can keep them both!

I bought two Overclockers Radeon HD 3870s (512Mb GDDR4). Currently my Winfast 7600 GT 256Mb struggles when i have a film playing on one monitor the other monitor lags! Hopefully with those 2 graphics cards, 4gb RAM and quad core it wont do that!

 

[pauldh]

AFAIK you can not use crossfire to accelerate video on both monitors, but you can disable crossfire and then power multi monitors. SLi is that way...with SLI enabled you power one monito using both GPU's, with it disabled both cards can each power two monitors. My guess is you will have to disable crossfire to run the second monitor. Or you could throw in a cheap PCI card to power the small web surfing monitor.

 

[haydox]

Oh ok, thanks paul. Ill try and plug both into the main card and enable both crossfire and multi-display just to check...if it doesnt work its not a big deal, ill just stick with my 22" widescreen!

 

[BustedSony]

AFAIK you can not use crossfire to accelerate video on both monitors, but you can disable crossfire and then power multi monitors. SLi is that way...with SLI enabled you power one monito using both GPU's, with it disabled both cards can each power two monitors. My guess is you will have to disable crossfire to run the second monitor. Or you could throw in a cheap PCI card to power the small web surfing monitor.

To simplify, SLI and Crossfire are the same. With two CF-capable cards running in Crossfire you can only ever run one monitor in total, an HDMI/DVI connected primary monitor can go on either card, vga is best on the "master" card (1st slot.) With the same two cards NOT in Crossfire you can run up to four monitors of either connection type in any combination from Span, through Clone, to independant.

 

[haydox]

Ah well, so i can only use my 22" widescreen! I'm happy sacraficing a 17" monitor for Crossfire!

 

[mrbondj007]

what video cards do you recomend to put in CR or SLI to run 2 monitors and play BF3