4x27" Monitors $400x4 Budget

xukusari

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Feb 20, 2013
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I'm trying to get back into hardcore gaming with newer games like Crysis, Arma 3, and Defiance. I've built my first rig which has a 7970 Ghz Edition an i7 3930k CPU and 16 GB of RAM.

With these specs what would be a good value monitor to buy 4 of(may or may not use Eyefinity).

I'm planning on having them be in sort of a...

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Kind of set up, although if I do this it will mess up the crosshairs... :(

Also if I do this will it be possible to Crossfire and use one GPU for the screens and one specifically for gaming.
On this note on a small ATX board like the Asus Rampage IV will putting two 7970's cause one to overheat since the GPU above it will be fanning hot air onto it?
And if I Crossfire what happens to the display ports? I heard that there's some new setup you have to know when plugging in monitors.
Will I need to get a new soundcard if I Crossfire? Someones advised me that I will need to if I use a second GPU although there is one built into my motherboard.
 
Solution
Generally multi-screen gaming is 3 screens wide, with a main screen like normal and 2 for further vision to the sides. I have never heard of 4 in that arrangement. What I would do with 4 screens is 3 below, with one centered above the middle screen as an auxiliary display for things like voip software, hardware monitors and the like.

As for overheating.. as long as you do not overclock the GPUs you should be fine. I have a friend that ran quad HD 5870s with no heat issues so as long as your case is well ventillated you should be ok. Basically, you connect all the screens to one GPU while the other picks up the extra load. Its the same concept as running multiple displays on a single GPU.

DiaSin

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Feb 7, 2013
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Generally multi-screen gaming is 3 screens wide, with a main screen like normal and 2 for further vision to the sides. I have never heard of 4 in that arrangement. What I would do with 4 screens is 3 below, with one centered above the middle screen as an auxiliary display for things like voip software, hardware monitors and the like.

As for overheating.. as long as you do not overclock the GPUs you should be fine. I have a friend that ran quad HD 5870s with no heat issues so as long as your case is well ventillated you should be ok. Basically, you connect all the screens to one GPU while the other picks up the extra load. Its the same concept as running multiple displays on a single GPU.
 
Solution
Yes you can add a second video card to that Asus Rampage IV Gene motheroard. Because the cards are closer together, the temps will be a little higher, but nothing drastic or unacceptable; 2C-5C. When they're next to each other like that, one will be a little hotter than the other, too. This is not an issue.

Using any even number of screens (aside from 2 rows of 3 monitors in a 6-screen config) splits the crosshairs across bezels and would make targeting difficult as the center of your focus is split across 2 screens or 4 screens. You know this already.

This is why none of the video card producers advertise this type of setup. Go with a 3-screen setup and you can game across 3 screens.

I don't recommend the 2x2 screen setup unless you just want an extended desktop setup with one screen used for gaming?

You will need to use on-board sound (Supreme FX III audio chipset) with a second video card on that motherboard as both the 4x and 3rd 16x PCIe slots will be covered by the two video cards and unusable at that point.