Multiple Monitors

[Ejac]

I recently started a new job and they supplied multiple monitors. Well, now when I come home and game I feel sad! I need to spoil myself to game with multiple monitors. The question I have is how would I go about hooking up 3 monitors?

PC Specs:

HIS ATI HD 3870 512MB 256-bit PCI-E 2.0 x16 - Video Card
AMD Phenom 9600 - CPU
4 gigs of 1066 - RAM
M3A78 Asus - Mobo

I'm currently using a 17" LCD that I've had for like 7-8 years and it runs great! I'm wanting to order 2 more LCD's. Maybe 19" or 22", I'm really not sure yet. My video card only has 2 DVI ports on it as well as 1 S-Video port. Would I need another video card and crossfire them to run 3 monitors? I've never done it so I'm kind of clueless on adapters or what all I would need.

[The_OG_Nelta]

Depends on your graphics card, I don't know, but my Nvidia 8600 only has 2 monitor ports on the back, you would have to dual graphics card to get 3-4, etc not sure.

[Ejac]

My motherboard only has 1 PCI Express slot, so if I had to crossfire and buy another card, I'd have to get another board as well.

[Kryssan]

Video Card.

Dunno if it actually supports that many monitors or not... but it does have 4 ports. I'd assume so, but I really don't have much experience with the multi monitor/desktop thingy. I prefer big screens myself.

[The_OG_Nelta]

My motherboard only has 1 PCI Express slot, so if I had to crossfire and buy another card, I'd have to get another board as well.

Depending on your graphics card, most high+ graphic cards come with 2 VGA Plugs for 2 monitors, so if you are just looking for 2 monitors, one graphics card should be fine

[Ratatapa]

can try this, didn't tried it myself tho

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u..._multimon.mspx

[Ejac]

Yea, my current video card is a ATI 3870 and it has two DVI ports. I read up and it looks like to run 3 monitors I need to have another video card. So, I guess I'll be running just two for now!

[Spekkio]

Matrox Graphics - Products - Graphics eXpansion Module - TripleHead2Go
something like this might work to give you a multi-monitor, but remember that windows will treat it as 1 big monitor instead of 3 small ones, so if you maximize something, it will cross all 3 monitors. there are happy, easy little apps to handle that issue, but it's something to keep in mind.

[mootsfox]

Matrox Graphics - Products - Graphics eXpansion Module - TripleHead2Go
something like this might work to give you a multi-monitor, but remember that windows will treat it as 1 big monitor instead of 3 small ones, so if you maximize something, it will cross all 3 monitors. there are happy, easy little apps to handle that issue, but it's something to keep in mind.

This was the only way to game across multiple monitors until a few months ago when nvidia added SLI support to multiple monitors.

If you want to game with multiple monitors, I'd do three, two makes for an ugly center screen.

[Avanarius]

This was the only way to game across multiple monitors until a few months ago when nvidia added SLI support to multiple monitors.

That's not true....you could do horizontal span with a single card...granted you'd be limited depending on how many monitors the single card could support. It WAS the only way it could support SLI and multiple monitors however.

[mootsfox]

That's not true....you could do horizontal span with a single card...granted you'd be limited depending on how many monitors the single card could support. It WAS the only way it could support SLI and multiple monitors however.

Really? I thought multiple monitors were disabled when SLI was turned on (not multi-GPU mode)

[levish]

Matrox Graphics - Products - Graphics eXpansion Module - TripleHead2Go
something like this might work to give you a multi-monitor, but remember that windows will treat it as 1 big monitor instead of 3 small ones, so if you maximize something, it will cross all 3 monitors. there are happy, easy little apps to handle that issue, but it's something to keep in mind.

^ thats the way to game on 3 monitors

unfortunately it's limited to:
3 x 1680 x 1050
3 x 1280 x 1024
2 x 1920 x 1200

[Avanarius]

Really? I thought multiple monitors were disabled when SLI was turned on (not multi-GPU mode)

Err....must be a misunderstanding because I thought said you needed matrox or SLI to do multimonitor support.

SLI did originally disable multiple monitors due to a driver issue, but it is corrected now, however you could use multiple monitors in games with SLI turned off, and without matrox.

This was the original purpose of Matrox; to be able to use SLI and multiple monitors at the same time...now it's kind of pointless unless you want a shit load of monitors for general usage.


*EDIT* to resolve the OP: you essentially need to either buy another video card (for 3-4 monitors) which you can't really do since you only have one PCI-E slot, or buy the matrox (for 3-4 monitors).

[Spekkio]

they do still make PCI video cards i believe. would that not work to add more monitors to the box if he has free plain jane PCI slots?

[Avanarius]

they do still make PCI video cards i believe. would that not work to add more monitors to the box if he has free plain jane PCI slots?

They are pretty hard to come by....especially ones that support a higher widescreen resolution.

*edit* this would probably do it for PCI: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814103160

[Spekkio]

yeah. they're not great, they have low memory, etc, but they'll gimp along if all you want to do is slap a 1024x768 on it for 45 bucks or whatever they run for.

[mootsfox]

Err....must be a misunderstanding because I thought said you needed matrox or SLI to do multimonitor support.

SLI did originally disable multiple monitors due to a driver issue, but it is corrected now, however you could use multiple monitors in games with SLI turned off, and without matrox.

This was the original purpose of Matrox; to be able to use SLI and multiple monitors at the same time...now it's kind of pointless unless you want a shit load of monitors for general usage.


*EDIT* to resolve the OP: you essentially need to either buy another video card (for 3-4 monitors) which you can't really do since you only have one PCI-E slot, or buy the matrox (for 3-4 monitors).

We're on the same page I think. When I mentioned SLI way back, it was because I have it in my mind that people only game with 3+ monitors, relying on SLI/Crossfire.