Three screens with Nvidia 550, Intel Ivy Bridge, and Lucid Virtu MVP

[MIDIman]

I haven't tried this yet, but thought I'd pose the question before going further.

At the moment I have 2x Dell U2410s (1920x1200) and a TV (1920x1080). I have Ivy Bridge (Gigabyte Z77) and an MSI Nvidia 550 OC. I'm using Lucid's MVP for the obvious benefits that it provides (less heat/noise when in i-mode, intel's super fast video encoding, but still get d-mode for gaming).

The problem is when I want to switch my computer to my TV, I have to unplug/replug an HDMI cable into a splitter. If its hooked up to the splitter all of the time, the second monitor is forced to always be 1920x1080 (not acceptable). Even worse, Windows doesn't detect my HDMI swapping as an audio device without a complete restart.

What I'd like to do now is just make the TV as a permanent third monitor. Is that possible with this configuration without forcing Ivy Bridge into d-mode? The MSI graphics card has 2xDVI and 1x mini-HDMI, so my first test will be to just plug in the mini-HDMI to my TV once I find my adapter. Will that work?

(EDIT: OK, understanding the problem now...i-mode only works when using connectors from the motherboard, and d-mode/no Lucid MVP only works when using connectors from the dedicated graphics.)

 

[Ken g6]

Well, the nVidia card is only designed to send out two different signals. As is the Intel graphics, I believe. So I think they'll have to be two separate devices.

When not gaming, your discrete card shouldn't use that much power or put out that much heat even in d-mode.

 

[MIDIman]

Well, the nVidia card is only designed to send out two different signals. As is the Intel graphics, I believe. So I think they'll have to be two separate devices.

OK - edited my original post. Just so I understand, even if I disable all of Lucid and move entirely to the dedicated graphics card, I can not hook up three monitors (2x DVI, 1xmini-HDMI)? i.e. without adding a third device, its impossible to have three monitors. Is that correct?

 

[MIDIman]

So an interesting development on this. Last night I finally picked up a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable and hooked it up to my dedicated card and to my surprise, it worked. I have three monitors (two from the motherboard, third from the graphics card). They also show appropriately in their respective graphics panels (i.e. up until now, the Nvidia panel didn't have any monitors discovered).

What I haven't tested yet is a game, but when I open the Lucid Logix panel, it still says i-mode, so I don't see why it wouldn't work. I did encode some videos last night with Media Espresso, and it seemed that the hardware acceleration was still detected and working.

In fact, I bet if disable the Lucid Logix panel (there's an on/off button), I might be able to technically choose d-mode without rebooting the system.

Will test some more tonight. Going to be really happy if this all works out.