Using 4 monitors with dual-pci-e

H

HardD99

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 20, 2000
Messages
1,260
Im sure this has been asked before but search didnt come up with an answer...

i currently have 2 - 24" Dell FPW 2405's, and i find i need atleast one more lcd if not 2. Question is, if i uprgade my system and get dual 7800GT's can i run 4 lcd's running 7680x1200 resolution?

thx guyz...
 
As long as you don't have SLI enabled in the drivers. With it you can only use one monitor, the others will be disabled. You can enable SLI on the fly now though (stability is questionable). So you can game with it on and then turn it off and get your other monitors back when you're done playing.

If SLI does not interest you, you're better off buying one gaming video card and a cheaper dual dvi port card (assuming you play games in the first place), in which case you have 4 monitors all the time.

edit: also keep an eye on DVI resolution limits on lower end cards. Those I've encountered are the Radeon 7000 and 9250 at 1600x1200, and Matrox PCI and PCIe 1x cards at 1280x1024. They go higher on analog though. Regardless, 2x7800GTs will give you your 7680x1200 on DVI resolution with SLI off.
 
kewl thx alot for the info! so if i get say a 7800GTX to run games with and a 7800GT, i can run 2 monitors with the GTX and 2 monitors with the GT? This would be helpful because i like to go back and forth between gaming an work, so i want to be able to leave a game open on one LCD, and have the work space on the other 2-3 LCD's, but i dont want to have to lower the detail on my game to do so. so if i understand what u are saying, i think this will work perfectly!
 
HardD99 said:
kewl thx alot for the info! so if i get say a 7800GTX to run games with and a 7800GT, i can run 2 monitors with the GTX and 2 monitors with the GT? This would be helpful because i like to go back and forth between gaming an work, so i want to be able to leave a game open on one LCD, and have the work space on the other 2-3 LCD's, but i dont want to have to lower the detail on my game to do so. so if i understand what u are saying, i think this will work perfectly!
Click to expand...

You should be able to run a GTX and GT together, the problem is that the GT will be underutilized since you'll be gaming on the GTX and be a waste of money (unless your work requires the power of a GT but I'm not too knowledgeable of how rendering works on secondary monitors and with the programs you will be using). Shop carefully for a cheaper dual port dvi card that supports high resolutions and you can save money.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by lowering detail on your game. Are you talking about how a computer can be sluggish with a game running at the same time? I believe most of that depends on your CPU. Personally when I was running with one CPU and two monitors, BF2 would hog the entire CPU and left my other programs (bittorrent and such) frozen (not crashed, more like paused) on my other monitor until I exited the game. This is with one video card (6800 Ultra). I no longer have this issue with a dual cpu setup and one video card. This of course depends on whether your work programs are CPU intensive (bittorrent is only like a few percent of my CPU but still suffered).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top