Triple Monitor

[Deleted]

I currently have a GeForce GTX 480 and because I want triple monitor so I thought it would be a good idea to run it in SLi. Seeing as it would be the cheapest option to just buy another one.

I was looking for information about how to connect the triple monitor etc, and Nvidia site only talks about 2 monitors. Basicaly just hook up 2 monitors to the DVI connectors.

Anyway my question is, would I be able to plugin the third monitor into the Mini HDMI connector without any problems?

EDIT: My Motherboard can handle 2-way SLi and there is enough cooling and power.

[ispano]

In SLI you can only use two monitors in the traditional multi monitor mode. With 3 you have to use Surround to create one large monitor out of them, to use them with SLI.

[lordmatthias]

I know there are DVI splitters you can get (monitors only basically use half the pins on the dvi port). I use these at work all the time. Admittedly I have never tried this for gaming, I am not sure if you would see a greater performance hit.

[Cyanotical]

with nvidia, you need two GPU's to run 3 monitors, in order to have a single spanned display you need SLI, if you just want 3 desktops you disable SLI mode in the nvidia control panel, but with the 480, you do need a second card, it wont work without it

[nixcookies]

just curious, why does anyone need 3 monitors?

[Cyanotical]

just curious, why does anyone need 3 monitors?

makes for an awesome gaming experience, and with the way its going, more then likely in a few years, spanned displays will be standard for gaming computers

[Deleted]

Just a heads up, as far as I know WoW (and many other MMO's) don't work particularly well with SLI (So when you look at benchmarks for Crysis 2 with SLI cards don't expect near the same performance with SLI)

[Cyanotical]

wow runs fine with SLI, its' crossfire thats a pain, but after some fiddling, crossfire runs fine with wow as well

[xxf2dxx]

just curious, why does anyone need 3 monitors?

Same reason people have 2500 dollar computers and only play WoW. BECAUSE THEY CAN, YO!

[Ripture]

Yeah, as people have said, SLI is not supported in Surround mode, which is what takes advantage of three monitors. So you'll take a little performance hit for the screen space. You also need two GPUs (two cards) to run SLI (which is what SLI refers to, so it's not like some option that you enable on your single card, which is what it sounds like you might think from OP).

Second, WoW doesn't support Surround, or even stretched. One monitor (to I guess 1920x1080, whatever the top is nowadays) is all it will fill. I spent some time trying to get WoW to stretch, even with viewport modification and nothing seemed to work. I don't think anyone's said this yet, but it's pretty important to OP's question.

[Deleted]

wow runs fine with SLI, its' crossfire thats a pain, but after some fiddling, crossfire runs fine with wow as well

I wasn't referring to issues with WoW itself while SLI is running, I was talking about FPS performance increase. Where in some games you may see an increase in (For example 30 fps) you would see less of an fps increase in WoW

Seeing as it would be the cheapest option to just buy another one

So this may not be the case for performance increase in WoW as buying a new card may be better then SLI

Never the less you'll need to SLI to run triple monitors ^^

[Zkeya]

Depending on the price of the 480 (and of course, if performance is not an issue) you could go with an ATI card for eyefinity.

[Cyanotical]

Yeah, as people have said, SLI is not supported in Surround mode, which is what takes advantage of three monitors. So you'll take a little performance hit for the screen space. You also need two GPUs (two cards) to run SLI (which is what SLI refers to, so it's not like some option that you enable on your single card, which is what it sounds like you might think from OP).

Second, WoW doesn't support Surround, or even stretched. One monitor (to I guess 1920x1080, whatever the top is nowadays) is all it will fill. I spent some time trying to get WoW to stretch, even with viewport modification and nothing seemed to work. I don't think anyone's said this yet, but it's pretty important to OP's question.

this whole post is a load of crap, SLI is REQUIRED for surround mode, and WoW takes full advantage of surround, spanning across three displays at full resulotion


wow running on eyefinity on my 1090t with a hd6870:

[Deleted]

Ok so to get it right, I would need SLi to enable Surround, which allows to game across three screens.

Anyway this doesn't answer my initial question:

When I have 3 screens and 2x GeForce GTX 480 running do I hook up the 3 screens, to the 2x DVI and mini HDMI connector(s). Or do I need a special cable to split the DVI or anything like that?

[ispano]

That's the thing, you can only hook two up to the first card. And normally in SLI mode the ports on the second card do not work. But in Surround mode, they do. That's where you put the third one. However, Surround mode makes it one giant screen, so it's different than normal multiple monitors. Might be ok for you, might not. As an example the Start menu will be on the far left screen, with the system tray on the far right screen.

[Docphil]

You could easily manage this and just have your taskbar and all your normal desktop icons on the left or right screen in surround mode. By all means hook it up and let us know what you think!

[Deleted]

3 Monitors, for three heads.

[Deleted]

this whole post is a load of crap, SLI is REQUIRED for surround mode, and WoW takes full advantage of surround, spanning across three displays at full resulotion


wow running on eyefinity on my 1090t with a hd6870:

do want

[Kardezar]

makes for an awesome gaming experience, and with the way its going, more then likely in a few years, spanned displays will be standard for gaming computers

This.

Same reason people have 2500 dollar computers and only play WoW. BECAUSE THEY CAN, YO!

And this. So true.

[Ripture]

this whole post is a load of crap, SLI is REQUIRED for surround mode, and WoW takes full advantage of surround, spanning across three displays at full resulotion


wow running on eyefinity on my 1090t with a hd6870:

"eyefinity on my 1090t with a hd6870". It was my understanding that we were discussing Surround and when I say Surround does not support SLI, I mean that you cannot have SLI enabled with Surround enabled. You need two video cards hooked up in an SLI configuration, but the actual effect of splitting the screen rendering work to both video cards no longer works, as both cards are being used to drive more than one or two monitors. I'm confused that you chose to ignore the part where I said you would need two GPUs to support Surround. Generally, when people are talking about multi-gpu solutions (read: Surround), the term SLI would refer to the processing technique, it's given that multiple GPUs are required.

I was mistaken in saying that it doesn't work; I was recalling when I attempted to get WoW working on TWO monitors but did not want the screen split. I couldn't seem to get it running with the viewport restricted to one monitor while the actual game would run on two. Surround does look like it works.

---------- Post added 2011-08-08 at 07:38 AM ----------

Ok so to get it right, I would need SLi to enable Surround, which allows to game across three screens.

Anyway this doesn't answer my initial question:

When I have 3 screens and 2x GeForce GTX 480 running do I hook up the 3 screens, to the 2x DVI and mini HDMI connector(s). Or do I need a special cable to split the DVI or anything like that?

Each GTX 480 has two Dual Link DVI connectors and one Mini HDMI, giving four total DVI connectors and two HDMI. I'm not sure if using the HDMI is just interchangeable with the DVI, but you plug two monitors into your primary card and one into the secondary.