Which video port

[lazduc]

Folks,

I just installed my second evga 580. Now I have 4 ports to choose from. Which port do I plug my video cable into? The top card left or right? The lower card..left or right port? Also I have obviously installed one driver for the existing card... do I install another driver for the second card or will the operating system figure it out and install the correct drivers coping the existing driver to the new card....???

Thanks,
Lazduc

 

[purple stain]

When running a Crossfire or SLI setup you always plug the monitor into the top card.It gets tricky with Nvidia if you want to run Nvidia 3D Surround,on that you have to look it up because you have to plug them into certain parts.With Eyefinity from AMD you plug all 3 monitors into the top card.

I'm guessing for your use your using a single monitor so just plug it into the top card.You only need to download/install 1 driver for both of the cards.I reccomend you download the latest drivers from Nvidia's website.It's always good to erase a previous driver to avoid any hiccups but most of the time it overwrites it anyway.

 

[lazduc]

Purple,

Thanks for getting back. I am running 3 monitors from a matrox triple headtogo. One cable so its like one monitor and the digital box splits the signal to the 3 monitors. I will try and plug in the top card first. Hopefully when I fire it up the existing driver will work with both cards. When I setup my last computer with two video cards I installed both drivers after first boot...as windows just did its initial vga setup. I havn't set up one after an existing card was installed then adding another. Any other thoughts ???....I originally thought about getting two 6970's but read that a lot of those cards are experiencing a capacitor squeal and whine...and also read two 580's will run just as fast if not faster in frame rates...course in certain games....I had one 580 already installed when I first built this machine two months ago.

Thanks
Lazduc

 

[purple stain]

Well if your using a splitter you should be fine then.

If the previous drivers on there are for the GTX580 then their shouldn't be any problems.Although I would try reinstalling the lastest ones just to avoid any problems.

I would have gone with the 6970's personally.A GTX580 is about $200 more than a 6970 but while in crossfire/sli they both perform right about the same.

 

[lazduc]

The triplehead togo is a splitter but a rather sophisticated one. I wonder sometimes if I am really getting the extra processing power of two cards running through the triptogo device. If I do then all that crunched data has to be passed through the sli bridge to the, should I say primary card and then on to the triphead togo finally to the monitors. If you are interested I can post my results a little later.... :lol: barring any smoke.

As I mentioned I already had one 580 and buying one more was actually less than buying two 6970's. Paid 449.00 vs 369.00 each for the 6970's. The 6970 were the MSI lightning which are more than the stock 6970's. What really put me off on the 6970 was all the bad press on the capacitors and noise and rf some have mentioned. What have you heard about this problem with the 6970's?

Lazduc

 

[purple stain]

Well it actually makes sense if you have a 2nd card to use it and ditch the splitter.I've got a funny feeling that splitters rob you of some sort of graphic data.I think I heard somewhere that when you have 2 cards in SLI if you go into the Nvidia control panel somewhere in there it tells you how to set up your monitors properly.I think it's like 1 monitor on the top card and 2 monitors on the bottom card.

I actually haven't heard anything bad about the 6970's other than their loud and hot.But so is every card at that level of performance.The MSI Twin Frozr or the Lightening actually do very well with heat and noise.Those cards from MSI have some of the best aftermarket coolers on them.