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Passive card for extra screens

Craig321

Craig321

Craig321

Soldato
Joined
2 May 2004
Posts
19,950
Hi,

Can anyone recommend passively cooled cards for extra screens please? Are there any that are pure HDMI or pure DP so I don't need to mess about with converters? Most seem to have HDMI, DVI and VGA.

Basically looking to get 6 screens going but not spend too much on cards.

My motherboard has:
2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8) *1
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black) *1
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1
2 x PCI

Could I keep my GTX 480 on the main slot, then have 2 passive cards on the other 2 x16 slots? I'd like to keep the full speed of my GTX 480 and have that hooked up to a 'main' single monitor for games etc.

The passive cards need to handle HD video etc. as well please

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Thanks - I was looking at the Nvidia GT610 which has the same output.

Unfortunately I don't have graphics output on the motherboard as I have an older i7.

Could I get two of the card you recommended, or two GT 610s and hook up 5 of the monitors to those and then my 'main' monitor to my current GTX 480?

Will those drive 3 each?
 
Might even be able to get away with Quadro NVS295, which have 2xDP outputs and cost peanuts if it's just to extend your desktop etc/
 
Ok, so these cheaper passive ones with DVI, HDMI and VGA only run two screens?

I suppose I could have two on the GTX 480 and the rest on the slower cards then.

I'd want HD video etc. to work without a problem as well though. Would these cards be ok with that? If I drag a 1080p video to a monitor on a N210 would it use my GTX480 to render and the cheap card literally just as a display?

I'm a complete noob at anything over 3 screens and 1 card, so not sure how Windows handles it! :)

Armageus said:
Might even be able to get away with Quadro NVS295, which have 2xDP outputs and cost peanuts if it's just to extend your desktop etc/
Click to expand...

That one looks good, at least then I don't have to worry about converting as the screens I'm looking at have DP.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Yeah either option is fine. Even a GT210 can render HD video just fine. HD video decoding doesnt require much power from a GPU to be honest.
 
Thanks :)

So how does it work when I drag something onto another screen? Will Windows use my main card to render and the slower cards purely for a display output?
 
Craig321 said:
Thanks :)

So how does it work when I drag something onto another screen? Will Windows use my main card to render and the slower cards purely for a display output?
Click to expand...

I think it just puts the load on the GPU(s) which have to do the work.
 
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