3 monitors - 2 video cards

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Niculae Ionescu

Niculae Ionescu

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Dec 22, 2013
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I have a sistem I only use for photoshop, with 3 monitors. 2 connected on my main video (gtx 470) and one to another card. my question is how powerfull this second card must be and how is it used ? I now have borrowed a gts 250 (512mb/256bit) but in GPU-Z it only shows 90mb used on it even if I open 5-6 tabs with flickr groups on that monitor, but the first video shows increased load to 400-500mb. So even if the broser is displayed on the monitor connected to the gts 250, it loads on the memory of the first gtx 470 card. So, how is a second card actually used ? Am i correct i could get away with buying this gts 250 or I need something more powerfull.
 
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dragotx

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Sep 15, 2013
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The second card is used for hooking up the third monitor. Nvidia cards couldn't handle more than 2 monitors until the 600 series hit, ATI did it about the same time. Most programs will not assign themselves to the secondary card, and browsers should never be running off VRAM on the video card anyway. There are a few games that will let you tell them which card to run on, but most don't bother, they just hit the primary one.
 
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Niculae Ionescu

Niculae Ionescu

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Dec 22, 2013
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So it makes no difference what I use as the second video card ? The main card actually does all the work and only displays thru the second card ? So general performance will only increase if I buy a better newer main card, not upgrading the second ?
 
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dragotx

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Sep 15, 2013
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Yeah, with the exceptions of using the secondary card as a dedicated Physx card or using a program that will let you dump it to the second card, it won't make any noticeable difference in performance. It's essentially just an extra couple of video ports.
 
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Niculae Ionescu

Niculae Ionescu

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Dec 22, 2013
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So my second card was a Asus gts 250 (512mb / 256 bit) and because it needed a 6 pin power rail, it made noise and it took two slots in my pc I exchanged to a Gigabite 8600 Silent (256mb ram on 128 bit) which only has a big heatsink, needs no power and takes one slot. I plugged the second and third monitor on it and on some instances I get a lag on it: if I drag a window from the middles monitor to the sides it comes on the side monitor with a little delay. So I assume the second card is not just two more DVI ports and its memory speed and possibly bandwith (the second was only 128 bit versus 256 on the Asus) do matter to some extent. Need more help from you guys because I dont want to buy 5 video cards just to try them all out to find an adequate solution.
 
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