Tri-Monitor Support

[Armageddon415]

Are the old Matrox cards the only ones that have support for 3 monitors or do the new nvidia or ATI support that now?

 

[dunno99]

I'm not sure, but can't you run four monitors if you have dual outputs on each of the two video cards in a SLI setup? But if you're referring to 3 outputs on a single card, then I don't think any of the ATi and nVidia cards are capable of doing that.

 

[phaxmohdem]

AFAIK You can run four monitors with TWO PCIe cards, but they can NOT be in SLI at the time. If they are running as seperate cards, then you can use all four outputs. I think SLI focuses all available power to ONE monitor only.

Also you can run 3-4 monitors with 1 AGP card (with dual outputs) and 1 PCI card with single or dual outputs also. I set up a system in an old computer shop I used to work for where I had a crappy PII300 system with one AGP dual head video card, and 4 PCI Video cards, all hooked up to 6 monitors side by side, with a screen saver scrolling text across all of them. IT impressed customers at least. Make sure that you get vid cards of the same brand if you plan to do something like that. If you mix and match, you will run into driver conficts galore. ITs not pretty.

 

[Gamingphreek]

FAIK You can run four monitors with TWO PCIe cards, but they can NOT be in SLI at the time.

Yes, it is called Dual Video.

Additionally, i believe you may want to look at this OP, Link

Other than that, as phax said you would need to get a seperate PCI card.

-Kevin

 

[Armageddon415]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Will a PCIe card work with a PCI card to set up 3 or 4 monitors?

 

[phaxmohdem]

yep it should.

 

[bdoople]

Not too OT, but does that mean in SLI you cannot run 2 monitors?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: bdoople
Not too OT, but does that mean in SLI you cannot run 2 monitors?

No, you can run 2 but not 4. In other words you must have the DVI-D connectors on the same card, you cannot connect one on one card and one on another.

-Kevin

 

[cpacini]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Originally posted by: bdoople
Not too OT, but does that mean in SLI you cannot run 2 monitors?

No, you can run 2 but not 4. In other words you must have the DVI-D connectors on the same card, you cannot connect one on one card and one on another.

-Kevin

Are you sure? I was almost positive that SLI limited you to 1 monitor. Has this changed in a recent driver update? I thought the newer drivers supported switching between SLI and non-SLI mode without a reboot, but I haven't heard anything about multi-monitor support.

 

[Gamingphreek]

From what i understand you can still use the Dual DVI ports in SLI. I dont see any reason why you wouldn't be able to as long as you are connecting them both on the same card.

Perhaps we should ask someone who has done this

-Kevin

 

[imported_Cript]

Yes you are limited to one monitor when SLI is enabled. You can use more monitors if you install PCI or PCIE video cards that are non-nvidia (nvidia drivers disable other nvidia cards that are not involved in SLI).

Also keep an eye on Matrox's DVI resolution limits. Some of their cards can only go up to 1280 x 1024 max digital (higher on analog though).

 

[TSS]

if you'd use SLI, so 2 cards to double the framerate, then use 2 monitors so each gets half the frames... kinda negates the effect of SLI doesnt it?

best would still be to get a cheap PCI card for the extra monitor or 2..

 

[bdoople]

Originally posted by: TSS
if you'd use SLI, so 2 cards to double the framerate, then use 2 monitors so each gets half the frames... kinda negates the effect of SLI doesnt it?

best would still be to get a cheap PCI card for the extra monitor or 2..

One monitor with a picture and some icons normall doesn't chop your frames in half. Some of us have grown accustomed to using 2 monitors for everything.

 

[Steelski]

From what i understand. If you have a X200 motherboard with the internal graphics then the rig supports 3 monitors easily.
This was a while ago and i dont know which companies are releasing ATI motherboards with builtin graphics. Also i am not sure if this is possible with the nvidia motherboards with builtin processors (because i havent looked into it but it might be worth investigating).

 

[Steelski]

http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/forum/messages.asp?Topic=2812
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/ati-xpress-200/

I have not looked for the nvidia point of view but i will leave that to someone else.