Eyefinity (7950) vs Surround (970)

[brucebrown1a]

I recently purchased three Dell S2415H monitors and bought two mini DisplayPort to HDMI active adapters (that ended up not functioning). The card I use has one DVI, one HDMI and two mini displayport connections. I wanted 3x monitors in eyefinity and one TV connection for movies.

I am now rather annoyed and I am considering selling my 7950 and buying a 970. The 970 would have one DVI-I, one DVI-D, one HDMI and one DisplayPort. I'd buy two DVI to HDMI adapters and use the 3x hdmi connections for my nVidia Surround setup and I'd use the displayport to output to the TV... do I need active adapters like the Eyefinity needed?

I figured the 970 would drive 5760x1080 gaming better and hopefully skip the need to find active adapters that aren't DOA.

Edit: So apparently I misunderstood and still need the damn active adapter?

 

[thesmokingman]

Yea, you still need active adapters.

Your panels hdmi/vga are only, that there just makes life a pain. You can get a display port hub and run all three panels off one DP. You can do that with either the 7950 or 970, or as you said run DVI to HDMI or DP to HDMI, or mix of etc. About active adapters, you need to research which ones are the known good adapters as most of them are junk. I used to use the Accel or gpu branded ones. As for the 970, it is slightly newer and more powerful so it should run trips slightly better. That still is an awfully high load for a single 970 let alone a 7950. Btw... I would return those panels if you can as hdmi and vga only is really limiting and terrible when it comes to triple panels.

 

[Deimos]

nv surround sucks donkey balls compared to eyefinity when comparing usability. After switching to nvidia with three Asus ROG PG279Q monitors I pretty muchg gave up on surround gaming. It takes 5-10 minutes to get it all up and running compared to Eyefinity which is a hotkey and a few screen-blanks away.

 

[Ripskin]

The best way to avoid active adapters is to run DP to DP or HDMI to HDMI.

I switched from a 7970 to 1080 Ti. In desktop mode Surround is virtually the same, a few extra mouse clicks but it was really not difficult to get set up.
Gaming however it is not as seamless and depending on the title may need some more love to get working. Overall what I have been playing recently has not liked surround but TF2 and some other games work just fine.

 

[thesmokingman]

nv surround sucks donkey balls compared to eyefinity when comparing usability. After switching to nvidia with three Asus ROG PG279Q monitors I pretty muchg gave up on surround gaming. It takes 5-10 minutes to get it all up and running compared to Eyefinity which is a hotkey and a few screen-blanks away.

I've no issues with my Titan XP and 144hz triple panels. Surround has been no more difficult to setup and probably is a skosh more reliable than eyefinity. And I've been been running eyefinity for the last 7 years if I counted the years right. And before the Titan I was running quad 290 Lightnings with a massive loop, dual psu, clocking them to over 1300mhz. Now that was a pain in the ass juggling ports and all the BS that comes with it not to mention running 290s at that clock is a fucking serious feat.

Again OP, its all about the ports on your panels.