Three monitors with Vista 64-bit?

S

shadowjin

n00b
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Apr 27, 2006
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Just wanted to see if this would work for Vista 64:

Primary slot --> Radeon 4870X2 --> single 27 inch LCD
Secondary slot --> Radeon 4850 --> 2 19 inch LCDs

Obviously, the 27 incher will be my primary. I intend to have winamp, firefox, teamspeak, and ventrilo on the other screens so I don't really need a ton of GPU power on those.

I have a Zalman 850W PSU btw so I don't think I'll be starving for power.

EDIT: I am NOT planning to use Crossfire. I just wanted a 2nd card so I can game on my main screen while using separate programs on the other 2 screens at the same time.
 
I'd lean towards no, since Crossfire (from what I've heard) only supports two screens at a time. In order for your 4870X2 to work properly, Crossfire will effectively be in the permanent-on setting. You'd need a Crossfire-disabled profile for non-gaming when you want to use all three screens.
 
Oops, I forgot to add that I am NOT intending to use Crossfire. I simply wanted to add another card in order to utilize 3 displays.
 
I have a question. Would it not have been possible to purchase 1 4870 and 1 4850 to do the exact same thing with the plus of having a higher clocked and faster single core 4870 for your single gaming screen? It just seems to me that purchasing a X2 to not use xfire doesn't make sense when your 4850 is more than capable of displaying "winamp, firefox, teamspeak, and ventrilo," on 2 19" monitors running at 1280 x 1024. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I was just wondering if what I stated above is possible.
 
Totally possible. I'm going to get an 4870x2 to power my 30 inch soon....(read when i'm not broke xD). Currently running 2x4850's in non CF. However, the upside with CF is that if you have two monitors plugged into the same card, you can use CF and have two monitors. However, with 3 you're out of luck, which is currently my situation, hence, I don't use CF yet, though I might start seeing as I want to get into some TF2 action on max settings until i get a 4870x2 xD
 
S3th13 said:
I have a question. Would it not have been possible to purchase 1 4870 and 1 4850 to do the exact same thing with the plus of having a higher clocked and faster single core 4870 for your single gaming screen? It just seems to me that purchasing a X2 to not use xfire doesn't make sense when your 4850 is more than capable of displaying "winamp, firefox, teamspeak, and ventrilo," on 2 19" monitors running at 1280 x 1024. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I was just wondering if what I stated above is possible.
Click to expand...

I'm running games at 1920x1200 with full AA and all options maxed. I'm not sure if a regular 4870 can hang since the X2 also has more memory for texture heavy games. Crossfire/SLI is also not worth it IMO since you're paying double the price for maybe a 30-40% increase in performance AT BEST.
 
It seems unnecessary to me to have a 4850 for such simple things on your other monitors...I'd probably grab a 3450 or something along those lines.

On a related note, does anyone know if you can switch to a program on the secondary screen(s) without minimizing a fullscreen game on the primary monitor with this configuration?
 
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