HD 7870 and 9500gt in Multi Monitor Setup?

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YeOldeSkool

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May 18, 2013
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Greetings and salutations, dear denizens of Tom's Hardware! Here's the skinny:

I'd been running the same Pentium Single Core (Prescott) system for about 6 years, and finally decided to upgrade this year. This forum has been absolutely invaluable to that project, and I want to thank everyone right off for that.

I am an American Technical Writer living here in Costa Rica, so my choice of components was limited as NewEgg can't deliver to me. But the system I ended up with is...

i5-3570k
8 gigs RAM (1333, Kingston)
HAF 912
TX3 Cooler
Asrock H77 Motherboard
ASUS HD 7870
New 1080p Monitor
2 Old 19 inch 1280 X 1024 flatscreens

What I want to do is employ three monitors, all of which use VGA inputs (it's Costa Rica) as an extended desktop. I don't want to game with that Eyefinity deal, I will use the 1080p monitor connected to the 7870 for that mess.

Can I connect one 19 inch to the onboard (HD 4000) graphics, and the other to an old 9500gt Nvidia card, and then the new 1080p monitor to the HD7870? It would be a 4 month wait for any kind of adapter, and I'd like to be able to run a triple setup right away. The 21 inch 1080p monitor in the center, flanked on either side by a 19 inch display. Thanks in advance for your help!
 
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avjguy2362

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Jun 21, 2012
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The best way to do it is simply let the 7870 run all three monitors, you will need one active adapter to run the third monitor. Using the three different video cards ( especially an AMD and NVidia ) would be a mess and overload the memory controller in the CPU. When gaming the memory controller would have to manage four sets of memory ( the CPU and each of the 3 video cards ). Technically it could for non-gaming, but once you start playing a game, the other two monitors will likely black out and the game probably won't run smoothly. The other problem is the video driver. There are special MB's and software to run both, but not yours. You would be best off simply installing the newest AMD driver and the 7870 and run the three monitors from it. You don't have to run eyefinity or set it up. The driver will detect your three monitors and all you may have to do is drag and drop them into the correct positions so that you mouse crosses the 3 screens fluidly in the same direction. I run 4 monitors + a TV ( with 2 active adapters and a Sapphire "flex" 6950 card ( runs 3 monitors without an adapter)) and my 6950 is technically less powerful than you 7870. I game on my center 1080p screen only. Save your yourself some grief and do it the way it was made to be set up! Get an Accell active monitor on Amazon for $30ish, avoid the cheaper ones as too many people have problems with them.
 
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