Dedicated graphics card for additional monitors?

[Hohlraum]

Now that the GPU is more utilized by the desktop had anyone with a 2 or 3 monitor setup noticed how using applications like Chrome (or others that utilize the GPU) on a secondary monitor sometimes causes things to get a bit hairy either with Chrome itself or with a game running on the primary display?

I'm wondering if using inexpensive dedicated graphics cards for the additional displays would eliminate any resource draw on the primary card/display and make the additional displays handle any/all GPU acceleration needed by said display?

 

[MCID47]

What cards do you have atm ?

 

[Hohlraum]

What cards do you have atm ?

I've just got a single GTX 1080 in there right now. I was thinking about adding a single GTX 950 to drive monitors 2 and 3. I don't use monitors 2 and 3 for gaming at all.

 

[MCID47]

Using a different card in sli mode or in a single motherboard is not supported. So why not just plug your 2nd and 3rd monitor at the same gpu card ? Using your GTX 1080.

 

[Golcsae13]

If u have integrated graphics, i think u can plug your extra monitors on those.

 

[MCID47]

If u have integrated graphics, i think u can plug your extra monitors on those.

No, the onboard or integrated gpu won't work if you plug a dedicated gpu on your system except your bios settings prefer to chose "IGP First".

 

[Hohlraum]

Using a different card in sli mode or in a single motherboard is not supported. So why not just plug your 2nd and 3rd monitor at the same gpu card ? Using your GTX 1080.

No intention of using the secondary video cards or displays for gaming purposes. Idea is to dedicate the primary video entirely to the primary display.

 

[Hohlraum]

I actually spoke to a friend who is an engineer at nvidia. He said every single person he knows at work has multiple video cards in there systems for use specifically for driving additional monitors (not for gaming). Maybe I'm on to something.

 

[MCID47]

If you wanna go for multiple vide cards, you have to get the same series of your current video card, not a different card in a single system

 

[Hohlraum]

If you wanna go for multiple vide cards, you have to get the same series of your current video card, not a different card in a single system

That's not true. For SLI, yes.

 

[MCID47]

yes, by multiple gpu means SLi mode, never saw combined GTX 1080 with another card such as GTX 950 or GTX 980 .. etc ..

 

[Viking2121]

You can run the GTX 950 along side the 1080 with no issus at all, you wont be able to use SLI, you would have to get another 1080 for that, but driving your other monitors it will work just fine. Although the 1080 should have no issues at all running all 3 monitors.

On some boards it will disable the intergraded graphics if a dedicated graphics card is present, but most of the time you can enable it in bios or simply plug a monitor into it and see if it works.

I run 2x GTX 780ti's in SLI, I added a GT730 in my 3rd PCI-E slot, it was running at 1x speeds, It drove my other 2 monitors just fine, and I also dedicated it to physx, even though it didn;t really help much, I just needed the RAW VGA input the GT730 had, Didn't have issues with drivers either.

MCID47, he is not talking about SLI, hes simply asking if youc an run a dedicated card for additinal moniotors, which you can do without an issue, yeah you wont be able to run SLI, but thats not what hes tring to do.

I also did this with AMD back when I had 2x HD5850, Ran a HD6450 to power up my other monitors beause my HD 5850's had a dual monitor flicker bug, Worked flawless, I even seen the HD6450 take the load off the HD5850's with high def youtube videos.