Triple monitor setup + SLI

[ehanger]

I have system with 2 GTX 275's in sli and a core i7 and am wondering if it would be possible to have 3 monitors with on it. Each graphics card has 2 DVI ports but I know that you can't plug a monitor into the second card in an SLI configuration. I saw an adapter on newegg that can do 3 outputs but that thing costs $300 so I was wondering if I could just get a cheap card for <$50 to add the 3rd display to? This would be for gaming so I wouldn't want there to be any sacrifice in performance with a cheap 3rd card but am just wondering if it would matter or not if I already have 2 GTX 275's.

 

[mindless728]

what you saw was probably the Matrox TripleHeadtoGo

adding another card will not allow another display for gaming (since the game would be using the crappy $50 card for the output not the GTX275)

right now your bets to do this are
1) get the Matrox TripleHeadtoGo (it can't do 3 x 1080P, only up to 3 x 1680x1050)
2) get an ATI 58xx series and have 3 monitors off of one card
3) get 2 x GTX4xx and hope they release the drivers soon for surround view (basically eyefinity with a different name)

 

[ehanger]

Well for the first solution you gave I would be getting triple 1680 x 1050 monitors for 5040 x 1050 res but at that cost I might as well just get a new video card like a 5870. Also I heard with the triple head you lose visual quality.

If I was to get a 5870 to run 3 monitors off of wouldn't I need to get that special edition one with 6 displays and how much would that cost? (also with a single 5870 wouldn't that give worse framerate than 2 275's?)

2 GTX 480's would be $1000 plus I would probably have to upgrade my PSU to like a 1kW which would be another $200+ so I don't think I would be able to afford that.


What I was thinking of doing was just disabling SLI which would give me 4 display ports? How good would the performance of 2 non sli 275's spread across 3 monitors be compared to sli 275 + tripleheadtogo?

EDIT: also I saw a vid of this guy with a radeon 4870 + a 4350 running triple monitors playing L4D and he didn't seem to be having any performance issues with that?

 

[mindless728]

Well for the first solution you gave I would be getting triple 1680 x 1050 monitors for 5040 x 1050 res but at that cost I might as well just get a new video card like a 5870. Also I heard with the triple head you lose visual quality.

i'm not sure, it be awesome if someone could post here about this

If I was to get a 5870 to run 3 monitors off of wouldn't I need to get that special edition one with 6 displays and how much would that cost? (also with a single 5870 wouldn't that give worse framerate than 2 275's?)

yeah, 2 x GTX275's would be better than a single 5870, and you wouldn't need the the eyefinity-6 edition, just an active DisplayPort to DVI adapter

2 GTX 480's would be $1000 plus I would probably have to upgrade my PSU to like a 1kW which would be another $200+ so I don't think I would be able to afford that.

a good 850w should be able to handle SLI GTX480's, though a 950 would be better since it would have more headroom, so it would depend what PSU you have now

What I was thinking of doing was just disabling SLI which would give me 4 display ports? How good would the performance of 2 non sli 275's spread across 3 monitors be compared to sli 275 + tripleheadtogo?

EDIT: also I saw a vid of this guy with a radeon 4870 + a 4350 running triple monitors playing L4D and he didn't seem to be having any performance issues with that?

i was under the assumption that you couldn't do this (maybe in windowed mode but not full, and in windowed there is bad performance

do you have a link to the Youtube vid?

 

[ehanger]

yeah here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzOAFXadRpE

in the desc. he says that he has a 4870 and a 4350

 

[ehanger]

Just found this site that says I can have more than 2 monitors in a 2-way SLI setup with a 3rd gpu as long as its a not the same as the SLI'd gpus (i.e. 2 GTX 275's in sli + a 3rd 9600GT).

"With GeForce R180 drivers (or later), standard SLI configurations for 2-way, 3-Way, and quad SLI support a maximum of two monitors. Additional monitors (up to 6 monitors total enabled) may be enabled by using either a motherboard GPU and/or a PhysX capable graphics card (GeForce 8 series or higher with at least 256MB of memory) that does not have the same GPU as those that are SLI enabled. More information regarding multi-monitor in SLI can be found here."


http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_faq.html#s1

 

[mindless728]

as for the 3 monitors 4870 + 4350, he is using a software solution that probably only works with source engine games

and i thin the same issue is there with the sli+extra, it won't allow you to fullscreen across multi-monitors

the easiest ways are either the triplehead2go or an ATI 5xxx series

EDIT: working games for the software solution

    *  Live for Speed S2
    * Operation Flashpoint
    * Lock On Modern Air Combat
    * Richard Burns Rally
      * Needs forceHorizontalFOV set to 1
    * Elder Scrolls 4 - Oblivion
    * rFactor
    * X3 Reunion
    * GTR 2
    * GT Legends
    * Test Drive Unlimited
      * Enable hooks and doScaleMouseCoordinates to fix cursor clipping
    * Armed Assault
    * Trackmania series
    * BMW M3 Challenge
    * Nascar Racing 2003
    * The Witcher
    * Company of Heroes
    * Call of Duty 2
    * Call of Duty 4
    * GTR Evolution
    * Team Fortress 2
    * Fallout 3

and it only supports dx8 and 9 (not 10 or 11), and i'm assuming that since it works in TF2 you can probably get it working in most of the Source Engine games