Can you confirm that to me?
I have a hd6950 and i have 3 vga only monitors, i need 2 miniDP-> VGA adaters. Doesnt matter which kind/brand, whatever? Even from dealextreme.com? Since all dp to vga are active, do you think its going to work, my eyefinity?
It will be like this, dvi-i to vga adater, + 2x miniDP to vga adapter.
Will it work?
thanks!
Yes that arrangement would work. Any kind/brand DP->VGA adapter will do the job. I believe most the brands are just rebrands from a single supplier or two so I don't think there's a quality difference between them for the most part. These adapters are inherently a bit flaky though so there's a chance you'll get a dud, so it's better if you can use a 2nd DVI->VGA adapter and only one monitor on DP->VGA if you can arrange that. Plus DVI->VGA adapters are pretty cheap.
If you are curious to the technical reason all DP->VGA adapters are active, DP does not have pass through pins to send an analog signal (VGA) through the connector like DVI does (the 4 pins on their own island in a DVI plug are analog VGA pass through pins). That means to get an analog VGA signal out of a DisplayPort jack, you must take the digital DisplayPort signal and actively convert it into an analog VGA signal.
This differs from DVI because DisplayPort *can* send a DVI signal through the DP jack. This gives you the option of using a passive DP->DVI adapter (which asks the video card to send a DVI signal through the DP jack and just rearranges the pins) or an active DP->DVI adapter (which asks the video card for a DisplayPort signal, then actively converts it to DVI).
Now, current GPUs are only capable of sending a total of 2 VGA/DVI/HDMI signals at once since there are only 2 clock generators on the GPU, but unlimited DP signals. If you are using passive DP->DVI adapters the GPU runs out of DVI signals to send at 2.
If you are using DP->VGA or active DP->DVI converters, which take a native DisplayPort signal and convert it itself, there is no limit - so you need one of these for each monitor past the first 2.