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help needed noob ati5970 eyefinity

P

photoscubaman

n00b
Joined
Jul 23, 2010
Messages
6
Hi There, First Post on this forum so complete Noob!

I have a Alienware Area51 Alx i7 980 with 2x 5970 crossfire.

Have 3 dell sp2309w need them for video edditing well at least 2 third may have had gaming in mind

came with passive min to dport addaptor.

I know now from reading i need the acttive the monitors are dvi 2048 1152 but run on single dvi not dual.

Have been playing around but can only get 2 monitors on at a time unless i use the dvi from the second 5970

it apears that all three monitors have to be run off same card for x fire to work?
in eyefinity

currently can only form a group from 2 of the 3 screen when on same card.

can some one spell out what my config options are for running my 3 sp203w in eyefinity preffrebly with crossfire enabled

thanks

be gentle remeber im a noob
 
For Eyefinity and CF, all monitors must be hooked up to the primary card. Two can be DVI, the third *must* use display port and it *must* be active.

So your only option is to buy a $100 DP->DVI adapter if you want to use Eyefinity.
 
Thank you

I have had a read through but only joined today, I pretty much gathered that information out. But thank you very much for confirming it for me.
 
You could get away with a passive DVI -> DP adapter but you'd have to be running at resolutions no greater than 1920x1080 in order to do so. At least that's what my experiences lead me to conclude.
 
Dan_D said:
You could get away with a passive DVI -> DP adapter but you'd have to be running at resolutions no greater than 1920x1080 in order to do so. At least that's what my experiences lead me to conclude.
Click to expand...

Passive DP->DVI adapters don't work if you already have 2 DVI ports in use. Passive DP->DVI only works if you are only using 1 (or none) of the other DVI/HDMI ports.
 
kllrnohj said:
Passive DP->DVI adapters don't work if you already have 2 DVI ports in use. Passive DP->DVI only works if you are only using 1 (or none) of the other DVI/HDMI ports.
Click to expand...

That doesn't sound right at all. The image should pass over the connection regardless of whether or not the signal is active or passive. I'm not sure how connecting other monitors to the DVI port changes that. The passive one doesn't work on mine even with just one monitor connected to it. Well actually, it does sort of work, but it detects the monitor as being only capable of 1920x1080 and shows the native resolution as 1200x800. Basically the monitor acts as though it were going through a single link DVI port. I'll probably need an active DVI-DP adapter mainly because I need a dual-link DVI signal.
 
Dan_D said:
That doesn't sound right at all. The image should pass over the connection regardless of whether or not the signal is active or passive. I'm not sure how connecting other monitors to the DVI port changes that. The passive one doesn't work on mine even with just one monitor connected to it. Well actually, it does sort of work, but it detects the monitor as being only capable of 1920x1080 and shows the native resolution as 1200x800. Basically the monitor acts as though it were going through a single link DVI port. I'll probably need an active DVI-DP adapter mainly because I need a dual-link DVI signal.
Click to expand...

actually the passive decoder works great at 2048x1152 but as said it will only allow 2 screens to operate at one time . all three plugged in but i have only 2 on. any combination of but not all 3. I have to plug into second card and disable crossfire to currently be using 3 screens at once.

so guess i need the adaptor and looking at forum and feedback the saphire ones the way to go? any good uk stockists?

thanks
 
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A passive adapter just forwards a DVI (TDMS) signal through the DisplayPort port, and the GPU can only output 2 DVI signals at once. An active adapter takes an actual DisplayPort stream (of which the GPU has no limit) and converts it to a DVI signal.

A passive adapter is also limited to single link DVI (~1920x1200 max) because the DisplayPort connector only provides a few pins for transmitting the legacy DVI signal.

The single link throughput is actually capped by pixel count * refresh rate and at 60Hz it's enough to fit the 2048x1152 resolution.
 
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photoscubaman said:
actually the passive decoder works great at 2048x1152 but as said it will only allow 2 screens to operate at one time . all three plugged in but i have only 2 on. any combination of but not all 3. I have to plug into second card and disable crossfire to currently be using 3 screens at once.

so guess i need the adaptor and looking at forum and feedback the saphire ones the way to go? any good uk stockists?

thanks
Click to expand...

On a technical level, that's true but in practice, at least with the Dell 3007WFP and 3007WFP-HC, that's not what it does. With only one panel lugged into the passive adapter, all I get is 1280x800 or 1920x1080. BTW the latter doesn't actually work, it just gives it to me as an option. I believe this is a monitor issue rather than an issue with the video cards or DP adapters. This is the exact behavior that they exhibit when connected via single link DVI cables to any video card.

SeaFoam said:
Get this. It's what you need. Don't bother jerking around with passive - you've spent a ton of money, don't half ass it now.
http://www.amazon.com/Accell-UltraA...1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1280079061&sr=1-1
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I'm going to need for Eyefinity. Though I'm debating switching to GeForce GTX 480 SLI and ditching the need for display port completely.
 
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Dan_D said:
That's exactly what I'm going to need for Eyefinity. Though I'm debating switching to GeForce GTX 480 SLI and ditching the need for display port completely.
Click to expand...

Why are you debating switching? I am also myself - mostly because the games I play have piss poor 5970 performance (which I know is a driver issue - but still).
 
I think we have established that i need the active adaptor, which is the best one and where in the UK can I buy?
 
SeaFoam said:
Why are you debating switching? I am also myself - mostly because the games I play have piss poor 5970 performance (which I know is a driver issue - but still).
Click to expand...

Because CrossfireX scaling with dual 5970's isn't worth a shit. The 5970 is faster than a single GeForce GTX 480, but not two of them. Plus I'd have the option to expand to three of them should I need even more performance. Additionally I wouldn't need a DVI to DP adapter to get my third monitor working. With the 5970, I do.
 
photoscubaman said:
well actually if you search you find out about alot of people complaining about flicker problems with the dell adaptor.

wanted to know if the saphire one worked better and to have some perosnal recomendations!

cheers for the welcome
Click to expand...

Ugh, look at the flickering thread - it was a firmware problem on the adapters. It's fixed now. The Bizlink/Accell/Sapphire adapters are all the same just branded differently. That's the adapter you need though, I had the flickering problem and dell overnighted a new one to me.
 
Dan_D said:
Because CrossfireX scaling with dual 5970's isn't worth a shit. The 5970 is faster than a single GeForce GTX 480, but not two of them. Plus I'd have the option to expand to three of them should I need even more performance. Additionally I wouldn't need a DVI to DP adapter to get my third monitor working. With the 5970, I do.
Click to expand...

You're switching for the exact same reasons as me, lol
 
Dan_D said:
Because CrossfireX scaling with dual 5970's isn't worth a shit. The 5970 is faster than a single GeForce GTX 480, but not two of them. Plus I'd have the option to expand to three of them should I need even more performance. Additionally I wouldn't need a DVI to DP adapter to get my third monitor working. With the 5970, I do.
Click to expand...

From other posts, I've seen people bench dual sli GTX 480s vs. tri sli GTX 480s, and there is zero improvement in 2d surround vision. Don't know if a driver will fix that or not, but it seems like 2d surround vision doesn't scale past 2x sli (but 3d surround *does*)
 
3-Way SLI has had scaling issues in the past regardless of what generation of cards we were talking about. I haven't seen a whole lot of data on the subject but I suspect CPU scaling and other factors come into play as well.
 
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