3 monitors with 2600k

Get a radeon card, you can run 3 monitors off that. FX5200 is an old card, I did not even think it was supported under Windows 7.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=E... will work well, you will probably need adapters for the monitor connections, but it will run 3 monitors off the one card.

if you want to use quicksync for video encoding with a discrete video card you might want to look at lucidlogix it offers more control over your gpu's.

Any card with Windows 7 drivers should allow me to run 2 monitors off of that and 1 off the mobo right? Looks like I can get one of those for about 30 bucks.

As long as the onboard video does not get disabled when the card is used, you can use that and the onboard video for 3 monitors.

You'd tend to think you could use the integrated video to run 3 monitors if the motherboard had 3 independent outputs, right? Wrong... Unfortunately, 2nd Gen Intel Core CPUs only have two independent video output channels. Even if the motherboard has three different output types, two of them would actually be shared, meaning only one or the other can be used.

Fortunately, these CPUs will work simultaneously with an add-in GPU. So yes, you would have to add a video card in order to have three (or more) fully-independent screens. And yes, any video card capable of dual-output that has Win7 drivers should work.

Here's a link to an Intel 2nd-Gen Core datasheet. Scroll down to page 32 for details on the integrated GPU. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/...

Thanks, ordered a card with Win 7 drivers and should be good to go.