Need to get six monitors running in Win7. Best options?

taboo_ · May 29, 2014

Hey all,

Got a client that needs six monitors running on his Win7 machine. This is a work machine and wont be used for gaming so base model items are fine. His motherboard does however support SLI/xfire.

I live in Australia so I don't have access to a huge variety of items. I was hoping to just put in two standard GFX cards in xfire that will support a minimum of three monitors each. The only trouble I'm having is spec sheets really don't make it clear how many monitors each card can support and whether that number will change when run in SLI/xfire.

Can anyone suggest two commonly available graphics cards that are able to run six monitors when in SLI/xfire?

Ta.

InvalidError · May 29, 2014

If all you need is the ability to hook up six monitors and do not care about being able to combine GPUs for higher performance, you do not need SLI or Crossfire. You could have one Nvidia and one AMD GPU running three displays each and it would still work fine for non-3D stuff.

AFAIK, even the lowest-end current GPU models from both companies support triple simultaneous outputs.

ChrisLouie · May 29, 2014

My suggestion get two R9 270s and run them in crossfire. Or you could get two 750tis and run those in SLI. This will be the only way to output 6 monitors continuously. I would not suggest too low end cards as they will not output to three displays each.

i7Baby · May 29, 2014

Maybe this will help - http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/154

These days we're using the R9 series graphics cards eg -http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1575&products_id=26373

which can connect to monitors via HGMI, DisplayPort and DVI-D

You could also use nVidia cards eg http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1483&products_id=24153

which can connect to monitors via HFMI, DisplayPort, DVI-I (digital/analogue) and DVI-D (digital)

You have to look at what moniotrs are being used and what inputs they have - DVI, HDMI, etc.

If possible, join the monitors to the cards without adapters. But if need be, there's a multitude of adapters available eg
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=15260&cPath=625
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=22822&cPath=624

etc etc

Either of those cards would be OK to run 3 or 4 1080p monitors, but not 6.

Even - http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1636&products_id=27446 only runs 5.

Some special cards were put out - see: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/eyefinity_six_monitor_gaming_setup
but I don't know if you can find them now. Google it.

InvalidError · May 29, 2014

ChrisLouie :

AMD's R7-250 supports triple outputs, just need to pick a model that does have at least three ports, which often means a dual-slot version. It may not have crossfire but that does not matter for mostly desktop/non-3D applications - you can run a secondary card just for the extra outputs.

With a R7-250X or higher, you can use a DisplayPort hub or displays that support DP chaining and drive all six displays off a single GPU.

The R7-270 is completely overkill for non-gaming and presumably non-3D stuff.

The ability to drive a massive multi-display desktop setups is pretty low-end:
http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/desktop/r7#4

i7Baby · May 30, 2014

Only the primary card can run the monitors. The secondary card, in sli, assists the primary card

InvalidError · May 30, 2014

i7Baby :

Windows is perfectly capable of running two independent video cards without SLI or crossfire each driving their own displays. You just won't be able to drag video/3D overlays created for one GPU across displays connected to the other GPU unless Windows has implemented a work-around for that since the last time I used multi-GPUs to drive more outputs, use any of the fancy screen-merging modes between displays on different GPUs or use one GPU to help with 3D stuff on the other. If the primary application is something like data display, none of those limitations matter.

That said, it would be nice if AMD and Nvidia did implement the ability to use ports on any card of a multi-GPU setup. It hardly adds any complexity to drivers and hardware (depending on how flexible the SLI/CF DMA engine is, it might even be possible by tweaking the configuration of existing hardware) but it would increase idle/low-load power draw due to more active glue-logic between the GPU(s) updating the frame-buffer and the GPUs actually driving displays.

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