Tri-screen problems

[TheCube88]

I'm a multi-display user and I have been using two 22" monitors for quite some time.
I recently bought a third screen, a 24" and was hoping to run a tri-screen setup.

With my dual-screen setup I was running off a 9800GTX+ and everything was fine. But now that I want to run a tri-screen setup I had to downgrade to my two 3850s. However the device manager doesn't seem to pick up my second 3850. I have a feeling it could be my motherboard, it's a XFX nVidia 780i 3-Way SLI.

Anyone have any ideas on how to solve me problem, short of buying a second 9800?

 

[kamel5547]

Um... when you say 3850 you mean an ATI 3850 right? That would require XFIRE support. SLI and XFIRE are not the same thing so you would either need a new mobo supporting XFIRE or another 9800.

 

[jnjkele]

Two things - first, your board is SLI being Nvidia, which won't support Crossfire (required for two ATI/AMD cards). Second, even with two cards, i'm not certain you can do three displays. I do know, from setting up a three-screen display that you can do it with a little box from Matrox called the 'Triple head to-go'. You can even drive all three screens with your single 9800GTX+ as long as you don't want crazy high resolutions and detail level.

Additionally, you will have to run your center 24" display at lower than native resolution in order to match the 22" side displays. Ideally a three-monitor setup will have all three the same size. It wasn't as big a deal with CRT's because they don't have a 'native' resolution at which they perform/look the best, but with LCD, you will have this issue.

 

[TheCube88]

First off, I don't want to run SLI or Crossfire. I merely want the PC to detect the other 3850. Unless of course, because my board is SLI and it just won't work with my ATI cards.

Before my SLI board I was using the MSI 975x PowerUp Platinum Edition motherboard with my 3850s, and it detected both cards and gave me the option of running 4 screens (so long as they weren't running Crossfire.)

 

[TheCube88]

Well, I just cleaned up all my cabling, where I unhooked everything and powered everything down. When I turned my computer back on it detected the second graphics card, so my problem has been solved.