What graphics cards to use with Eyefinity and three 24" monitors

[guskline]

I have three 24" monitors for Eyefinity. I presently use two 5850s in Crossfire. As part of a Christmas gift from my wife I bought a 6970 video card for rig 2. Since the 5850s have Max 1g vram and since the 6970 is a 2g vram card would I get better performance in Eyefinity with the 6970 vs the two 5850s in CF? I would be running resolution at 5760x1080. I already bought an active displayport for the 5850s and can't use it with the 6970 because it uses a Mini displayport. Your thoughts?

 

[larkspur]

I use a single 6970 2gb for three monitor eyefinity @4800x1200. I previously used both a single 5870 1gb and dual 5870 1gb. Both were great obviously dual 5870s were better but even with two cards, you are limited to a single card's frame buffer of 1gb. You will definitely see a difference with the single 6970 when it comes to using medium and especially high-res textures, but your dual 5850s have more graphics horsepower than the single 6970.

So, essentially yes and no. AA and AF do eat more vram but also require more processing. I only broke up my 2 x 5870 because the 1gb limitation (I had to use low-res textures in some games...blasphemy!) but more so because a couple of my family needed graphics cards at the time.

My budget only allowed for the single 6970, but overall I'm very happy with its performance. Obviously it does much better on games that aren't nice with XFire. I still get at least 4xMSAA and 4xAF in any game I play. Settings are generally at high but can be as bad as medium. I haven't tried batman arkham titles or Metro though. It'd be pretty awesome to add another 6970 though!

 

[guskline]

I went ahead and ordered a minidisplayport to displayport adapter ($6.74) so I can try the 6970 card with the 3 monitors. I'll keep you all posted on this.

 

[guskline]

I have a Startech Active powered displayport. The problem was the 6970 uses a mini dispayport adapter, not full size, so I purchased a mini to fullsize adapter to go from the 6970 port to the Startech adapter. The Startech adapter was @$100 and works great with the 5850s. it just wouldn't fit with the 6970. When I get the adapter I'll let you know how it works. Here is the displayport I bought:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158198

 

[alrobichaud]

this is what I used.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812340010

Were you able to output to 3 monitors with a passive dongle? I tried using the two dvi-d ports and a passive dongle that came with my 6990 to activate 3 monitors on one of my 6970's while I was doing some benchmarking and I could not activate any more than 2 monitors at once. While booting up all 3 monitors would turn on and off several times before the gpu finally decided to activate 2 and disable the third while windows gave me a display adapter error message. I did try this with each of my 6970's independantly with no luck. I was also using mini display to dvi-d. Could running 3x digital output be why it did not work for me?

 

[alrobichaud]

I guess it depends on the card. My 6990 works flawlessly also with a passive dongle. I would like to do some benchmarking on the 6970's but I don't want to spend $100 to do that

 

[alrobichaud]

80% of what I use it for is gaming. I only went with the x58 platform because of the price. I paid $400 for the motherboard and cpu together. The board still retails locally for $349.99. Given the choice I would have gone with an i7 2600k strictly for overclocking but i have to admit that triple channel RAM and a much faster QPI is a pretty good arguement for the x58 platform.

 

[alrobichaud]

BTW, that pic of Einstein is awesome. At first glance, it looks like you are getting the finger.

 

[alrobichaud]

It would be nice if active content would work for the profile pic. That little stickman beats the hell out of the computer with the keyboard and then uses his head. It is very bloody.

 

[alrobichaud]

How do you activate it? I provided a link to that little guy after waiting for it's approval, it only shows as a still picture.

 

[alrobichaud]

Thanks. I have seen the animated bug on some profiles. I will ask him. Maybe this one is to violent.