SLI and tripple monitor extended desktop

Confidenze

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Nov 20, 2013
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10,510
Hello everyone.

I have recently set up my 3rd monitor and wanted to extend my desktop to it, but the Nvidia controllpanel says that only 2 monitors are supported in SLI. (2 x 580)
Is there anyway to correct this?
I am not looking for a "3D" solution. Simply an extended desktop.

My motherboard has no video-out.

//Confidenze
 
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dovah-chan

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That is very strange. Usually its the opposite with SLI and that people sometimes purchase a second card for more monitors. If thats the case then have you ever considered getting a cheap card such as a GT 610 for extra monitors?
 

Confidenze

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Nov 20, 2013
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10,510


Sadly I have no more PCIe ports on my MB, so thats not an option.
On a sidenote I'd like to add that i have the newest drivers installed.

Here is a dump of the message error:
TinyPic_ScreenDump

Basically what is says is:
Up to 2 monitors are supported by GPU's in SLI mode.
 

dovah-chan

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Are you plugging in all three monitors into one GPU or 2 monitors into one GPU and the other into the second GPU? I don't remember much about the 500 series' specifications and stuff. Mostly since Fermi was plauged with problems that I ignored it and went to Cayman. (which most famously did support (more than) 3 monitors; referring to the 5870 Eyefinity Edition) If the control panel says you can't use more than 2 monitors in SLI with those cards, I can think of 3 things:

- try taking off the SLI bridge which will recoginze them as seperate card as see if all three monitors will be supported then (I wouldn't recommend that myself for obvious reasons)

- upgrade your CPU to an intel one (preferably the i5 4690K but an AMD APU such as the 7850K would work okay but not as recommended) with a motherboard with video inputs (since you're using an SLI config with 2 hot GPUs I would go with a higher end Z97/FM2+ board)

- sell your GPUs and purchase a single card that is equal to them in power and hook up all three monitors to it (I guess a 780 would do and be sure to purchase an active display port adapter if you do that)

I would most recommend the third solution as I would assume that a 580 SLI would be pretty loud under load (and hot o_o)

It would be worth a shot to take a look at techpowerup's VGA BIOS repositories and see if your vendor released a BIOS update for your card(s) which would possibly enable it to support more than 2 monitors in SLI.
 

Confidenze

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Nov 20, 2013
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Trying to upgrade the BIOS for the graphics card sounds like something i'd like to try..... But I have no clue how.
Is it risky?
 

dovah-chan

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It used to be somewhat risky a long time ago but it's been minimized greatly due to many manufacturers making it standard to include dual BIOSes on their cards. This is so if a flash goes wrong the user can fall back on the second one.

Go here and use the filters to find your card. Then use this BIOS flashing tool to do it. Then after you do it restart your computer and see if it works then.
 
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