Uh Oh, I went and did it.....

rockitman

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So I have my new rig and am enjoying life with crossfired 6950's. So I'm sitting there, looking at my single Hanns G 27.5" inch monitor and saying to myself, man , wouldn't it be nice to add 2 more of these and go Eyefinity? I definitely have the graphics horsepower.
So I mosied over to NewEgg and sure enough, they have my Hanns-G on sale, (ends today), for $270 each.

I just pulled the trigger. Yowsa!!!!!!!

I also researched Eyefinity a bit and found out that one of the monitors has to plug into the Display Port of the graphics card. Well, none of these Hanns-G's has a native display port so I jumped over to Amazon and coughed up $90 for the Accell UltraAV B087B-002B Display to DVI adaptor.

Eyefinity, here I come!!!!!!!!!!!

 

borisof007

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Um, you don't need a displayport adapter if you have crossfire in your situation.

DP adapters are only needed if you have more than 2 monitors connected to any single AMD/ATI Card. In your case, you have 3 monitors connected to 2 cards.

Return your DP adapter(s) if you want.
 
Are you sure about being able to plug the 3rd monitor into the second card? I thought all 3 needed to be from the first card.
In any case definitely cancel that $90 adapter and get the one jay linked. Eyefinity adapters haven't been that expensive in a long while.
 

borisof007

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Whaaat the gay, I just got some information that alludes to you still needing an ACTIVE DP adapter, regardless of whether you have crossfire or not.

That's stupid!!!

I hope AMD can change that with future drivers.

Source:

http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2045415.html
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-669392.html

**NOTE** If you do not plan on gaming, but just having multiple displays, you can disable crossfire and support 3 monitors w/out needing a DP adapter. Otherwise you will.
 

borisof007

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Unfortunately you're right.

Now that I think about it, it does make sense in why this is needed. Crossfire is just taking two cards and making them act as one big GPU. Because of that, one GPU supports 2 monitors w/out the need for a DP adapter. Any more than that, regardless of the CF setup, and you need a DP adapter.

Ugh.
 
^Nvidia's stance was, if you are doing surround gaming 1 card is not going to cut it. You need 2 for the necessary power for a good experience so we aren't going to bother with more than 2 outputs on our cards. If you want more than 2 displays for productivity get a workstation card.

 
Nice of them to decide that for us :p I also think even a single GTX 570 or 580 at least might do alright gaming on 3 monitors, especially if they are lower res.
 
^but why use 3 lowres displays for surround gaming? You aren't getting a good experience! I honestly just stick with one nice size display. I don't like looking around all that much and I play FPS's. I can see if you played a RTS that might help, but then i'd get a 30"er and see it ALL one one big one. Racing and flight games would be cool with 3 displays.
 
Well if someone happens to already have, let's say, two 1280x1024 monitors then getting a third may make more sense than going to a larger screen if the option is there and it isn't with a single card Nvidia setup. What's a "good experience" is really a personal preference. 3 monitors can help a lot in FPSes by adding a level of peripheral vision lacking on a single monitor.
 

rockitman

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I'm sitting here at work and didn't realize I had ordered the wrong adaptor. My xfx6950 has mini display jacks not regular. I promptly cancelled my order on Amazon and was about to pull the trigger on the Accell adaptor for miniDisplay, but came upon my thread here and glad I did.

Jay, your link for the Sapphire product does not come up here at my work computer, it gets blocked. Can you give me a part number or something?

 

borisof007

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Dual Link DVI would be using two DVI ports to power one monitor.

Example:

I have a 2560x1680 monitor, and I have two GTX 285's. I can use 2 DVI ports to power the one monitor, which would help get that resolution up to snuff.

You most likely don't need a dual link DVI DP converter. A single is fine.