Will this setup work for tri-panel display?

[jamesho]

Hey!

I'm in the process of building my computer and I'm getting a quad-core Q9550 with the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P mobo which has a PCI-e x16 and a PCI-e x8 and is a crossfire friendly board.

What I'm trying to do is get two graphic cards connected to 3 LCD monitors.
Essentially:
1. primary graphic card will be devoted to the middle 24" LCD widescreen monitor
2. secondary graphic card will connect to the two 20" LCD monitors on either side of the 24"
3. I want to be able to play a game on the middle monitor, while watching movies/tv on the side monitor (for instance)
4. I will be using WinXP

So I'm thinking of trying this:
Primary card is Radeon 4850 or Radeon 4830, secondary card is Radeon 3870 in a non-crossfire (can't anyway right?) configuration
or
Primary card is GeForce 260GTX or GeForce 9800GT, secondary card is GeForce 9600GT in a non-SLI configuration

1. Will this work for what I want? ie. games on the main monitor, and movies on the side monitors
2. Will I have issues with WinXP?
3. Will I have issues with the PCI-e slots?
4. Will the secondary cards be sufficient to support two 20" lcd's that have 1600x1200 resolutions
5. Do the primary and secondary cards have to identical or can I go with a lesser one for the secondary? (ie. driver issues?)

Thanks! I need to get over this hurdle so I have a new toy to play with for Christmas. =)

 

[geofelt]

Your plan should work.

I know in Vista, that all the cards need to be controlled by the same driver. They do not have to be identical.

For the GTX260, the latest drivers run 9000 series cards or later.

Almost any modern card can handle two 2540x1600 monitors, so you should be ok there.

 

[jamesho]

I know in Vista, that all the cards need to be controlled by the same driver. They do not have to be identical.

Sorry I'm a bit confused: in WindowsXP, I won't have any problems with having multiple drivers but in Vista, they have to be the same?

Do graphic cards generally require different drivers?

 

[geofelt]

The ati drivers are different from nvidia drivers. I think you have a problem if you install one of each. I can't recall where I read that. It's worth some research if it is an issue. Initially there was a driver for each different vga card. The drivers are now unified so that they support a good list of cards. The newest 180 series nvidia drivers have some good new features that only support 9000 and 200 series cards. Otherwiise, you have to use the older 178 drivers if you want to mix older cards.