I mean I'd use my 6950 to run my main monitor and the cheapest card I could find to run the other one(s). I'd get the performance of the 6850 for 3d stuff without the silly issues (hopefully, please don't tell me this is broke as well).
well if you can deal with medium graphics in most games at 1080p then a single 5770 seems to do that fine with multi monitor
Normal idle for dual monitors is 50C.....
I'd be worried, maybe you got a bad card. The RMA dept. is your friend.
I mean I'd use my 6950 to run my main monitor and the cheapest card I could find to run the other one(s). I'd get the performance of the 6850 for 3d stuff without the silly issues (hopefully, please don't tell me this is broke as well).
According to Nvidia, it rectified the out-of-control increases that were being reported in the GeForce 256-series driver released earlier this year. So long as you're using two monitors with the same resolution and timing settings, you're supposedly safe. ...the temperature does increase by five degrees. Swapping over to a display running a different resolution, however, continues to have a profound effect on power and temperatures (Nvidia does not deny this). The jump from 192 W to 255 W and 45 degrees to 56 degrees is significant. The good news is that if you're using the same screen, the latest drivers minimize the impact of utilizing both of the GeForce GTX 580's display outputs.
the only thing i could see is driver issues with that
You have to go forward into the future. Nvidia and AMD are working on it but there will always be higher clocks with a 2nd display.
Consider the improvement that Nvidia made with GTX 580 over GTX 480 from THG link:
i don't agree considering the improvements both companies have made. If you have mis-matched LCDs, then you will have to wait - or put up with higher clocks.That doesn't look like going forward into the future, that looks like "lets half arse this and chuck something out that doesn't work properly" into the future.
Well, it looks like the cards with single monitors are supposed to idle at around 43-46C, so with dual monitors, it should be about 5-7C hotter.I can just send it back for a refund (I'm in the UK) for any (or no reason) within 7 working days.
I think I'll do that and wait till they fix this issue.
I will be whining about it for a while though, nothing gets fixed otherwise. ()
Edit : Have you got a link for dual monitor temps as all the ones I can find are all over the place.
i don't agree considering the improvements both companies have made. If you have mis-matched LCDs, then you will have to wait - or put up with higher clocks.
Well, it looks like the cards with single monitors are supposed to idle at around 43-46C, so with dual monitors, it should be about 5-7C hotter.
You said you were idling at 60 with duals right? Which display ports are you using?
People still didn't know about the dual monitors = higher clocks issue?
If you want, you could manually set it lower. They do it to make sure there are no display issues or something. You can set clocks lower manually if you desire, but like many have said, it's every card.
The reason it didn't used to happen much in the really olden days is because they didn't downclock in the first place. Hard to increase temps and power due to increased clocks over idle when there's only one clockspeed.
What improvements have they made?
Remember, consider my situation, mixed resolution monitors not in a 3d situation.
So where are the improvements? From where I'm sitting all I can see is a big step backwards. This used to work fine and now it doesn't.
To be completely unfair to you (partly because I'm, uncharacteristicly annoyed, partly because youre here and no other reviewers are) why didnt you make more of a fuss about this?. I buy cards partly based on what you say. You didn't mention this, and its not an obscure situation.
If some random game sent the cards temps soaring for no reason you'd report it. Its all very well to say the cards are great under very specific situations but you should point out that they are also pretty crappy under other, probably, more common ones.
]i am talking about the improvements that AMD and Nvidia have made to the drivers for eyefinity and Surround.[/B] It used to be far worse in the days of the GTX 480. They have expanded to 3 (plus in AMD's case) displays that can handle a field of view for gaming over 3 displays. Of course, this has somewhat left their productivity users out of luck (especially if you have mismatched LCDs).
i focus on *gaming performance* in my reviews. i only recently began using eyefinity and Surround myself and the issues do not bother me as much as they do you since i use it only for gaming.
Other sites that specialize in these kinds of things have made these issues known far and wide and AMD and Nvidia has been working to address them.
As far as 'temperatures soaring' .. i haven't found that. Perhaps your card is defective. It seems to run hotter than the usual HD 6950; it happens.
I'm not convinced my card is defective, it idles at a reasonable temp, if it ramps up the power with multimoniter then its going to get hotter or the fan is going to run faster and its going to get louder, both those are unacceptable to me.
Can you clarify your position a bit for me from your previous post?
When you connect another monitor you don't expect the clocks to increase ( in addition to flow on effects from that such as temp, fan spin up and noise? ) or in this particular case you consider the clock increase to be too much, at unacceptable levels?
Thanks!
Welsh, just remember that the TJmax on these cards are 100C.
Thinking about the whole thing here maybe the issue was hidden by a number of factors in the past. Now I never ran multi monitor setups so I'm just speculating here. Maybe cards didn't have such aggressive down clocking profiles in and hooking up another monitor never made a difference since they were running closer to full throttle anyway. (I think someone mentioned this previously as well)
Also in the past the monitors used didn't have that big resolutions to add a lot of workload. Objectively speaking adding another monitor doubles the amount of work in all situations so I'd expect a change, more so a t large resolutions.
Regardless of my conjecture if you don't like the current setup and it's performance you're more than entitled to seek a change I reckon.
People still didn't know about the dual monitors = higher clocks issue?
If you want, you could manually set it lower. They do it to make sure there are no display issues or something. You can set clocks lower manually if you desire, but like many have said, it's every card.
The reason it didn't used to happen much in the really olden days is because they didn't downclock in the first place. Hard to increase temps and power due to increased clocks over idle when there's only one clockspeed.
WelshBloke,
I believe the change from the old (working) generations to the new (busted) behavior with dual screens occurs because GPUs before the ATI x2xxx series used dedicated 2d hardware while everything is done in Shaders now. I may be wrong on the generation of hardware, but that'd be my conjecture for why there is such a massive change in temperature with the extra screen. [This is also partially why 2d acceleration took a step back with the advent of general purpose hardware, iirc]. Using the same monitors alleviates the issue by sharing resources (only need to generate 1 clock signal, probably share same space in memory, etc) if I'd have to guess.
mnewsham, if you upgraded your drivers to something recent you'd probably experience the same issues. I remember (poorly) the hubbub from this issue a couple months back and the fix came via drivers increasing the clock speed when the second monitor was attached. *Some* people had flickering with dual monitors (since the 5xxx series underclocked so aggressively on the desktop), causing them to whine about it, likewise causing AMD management to call in this simple fix.
This is all driver related, so find a utility and try playing with the 2d clocks until you find something suiting your needs. Hardly ideal, but the best I can do. Reminds me of the 'fix' for the bumpgate fiasco -- new drivers just ran the fan harder to minimize temperature fluctuations.
Obviously I'm going off memory here (which is deteriorating as of late), so take everything as 'generally correct, but probably wrong on the details'.