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Need some help...

W

wxkid23

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 17, 2006
Messages
131
Hi all,

I had been planning on purchasing either the GTX 260 or 280 and pairing it with my 7900GTX but it seems ATI has a great card in the 4850 so a couple Q's

1. What's a good cheap ATI card that I can pair with the 4850 to run a third monitor? Do all the ATI cards use the same drivers like NVIDIA Geforce? I will be running Vista so I need something that runs the same driver as the 4850

2. Does multi-monitor support work as well NVIDIA with the ATI cards?

3. Should I be concerned about the high temps of the 4850? I would rather just stick with stock cooling if it's not going to be a problem running it with a second cheaper card in the case. I don't have an aftermarket cooler as I don't OC.

Thanks!!
 
Pair it with a 7900GTX?
Is it possible to SLI a GTX 2x0 with a 7900?
 
I don't think he wants to run the 260/280 in SLI with the 7900. Just wants the 7900 there for third monitor.

wxkid23 said:
Hi all,

I had been planning on purchasing either the GTX 260 or 280 and pairing it with my 7900GTX but it seems ATI has a great card in the 4850 so a couple Q's

1. What's a good cheap ATI card that I can pair with the 4850 to run a third monitor? Do all the ATI cards use the same drivers like NVIDIA Geforce? I will be running Vista so I need something that runs the same driver as the 4850

2. Does multi-monitor support work as well NVIDIA with the ATI cards?

3. Should I be concerned about the high temps of the 4850? I would rather just stick with stock cooling if it's not going to be a problem running it with a second cheaper card in the case. I don't have an aftermarket cooler as I don't OC.

Thanks!!
Click to expand...

I got a 4850 for $150 and I thought that was cheap. If you had two of them, you could do up to four monitors I believe, and you could also enable crossfire to get better gaming performance. If you didn't go with the 4850, I would suggest maybe a HD 3 series all in wonder so you have tv capture capabilities, or just an HD 3 series.

Remember if you run crossfire with two different cards, I believe the faster one slows down to the speed of the slower one, so it's better to have two of the same.


Also, as far as heat goes, my Vision Tek 4850 is hot, but it comes with a really good heatsink and fan, and a lifetime warranty. So you should be fine with the temp.
 
1. I'd say that a 4850 is about as cheap a card as you will find. Buy another one. You might also look into the matrox triplehead if you want 3 monitor support. You can probably find a nice cheap vga version on ebay for 100 bucks or so. I use one here and love it. One port on my 4850 goes to my 28" monitor and the other port goes to the triplehead monitors. This gives me 4 monitors total from 1 video card. Works great for triple monitor gaming as well.

2. yes but the method for setting it up is much more convoluted in the ati drivers. its not difficult to do, just requires more steps and isnt as simple to figure out as ntune is.

3. no. there is already an xml fan mod that brings down the temps on these cards dramatically with only an additonal 10% fan speed. Takes 2 seconds to do by creating a profile and editing 2 lines of an xml file. as long as your case has adequate ventilation then i wouldnt worry too much about it anyway. once ati delivers some decent drivers for these cards then it will be sorted out by them anyway.

good luck!
 
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