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6 Screens 1 Pci-e, possible?

accod

accod

accod

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Joined
16 Nov 2006
Posts
365
A friend of mine wants to connect up 6 screens to their PC for trading. The problem is their motherboard only has one pci-e slot (Asus P5E-VM HDMI). Apparently the onboard gpu supports dual screens so assuming I can get this to work with a 5xxx ati card, I'm got him up to 5 screens.

Would a pci card be ok for the last screen? Am I likely to run into problems getting onboard, pci-e, and a pci gpu working together each with their own drivers? He's using XP.

The case is a Lian Li PC-V350B which has currently got an e2180 in (fine for what he does). I suppose I could upgrade the motherboard but I'm trying to avoid this.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

EDIT:
I'm trying to avoid using 6x display ports as the monitors with these are a lot more expensive.
 
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your only option if you want 6 screens in that system (as it is)would be using the onboard GPU plus a Pci-e card and a PCI one (if the motherboard) allows it. but a SINGLE card with 6 displayports outputs i think you can only get in 5870 Form, but PowerColor do a 5770 with 5 of them.
 
Bare in mind a cheap passive DP->VGA works fine, so getting a cheap monitor with with a VGA port will help save money. If he's not gaming, then the 5770 KillBoY mentioned will be perfect for it.
 
I saw the eyefinity 6 5870 (too costly) but I didn't know about the 5770 eyefinity 5. I also didn't know that the displayport adapters could be bought for £10ish each - I thought they were about £100 each. Thanks for the info.

If the 5770 will work along with the onboard gpu then I've got 6 screens going. At the moment he's got a 24" 1920x1200 monitor which we were going to replace with 6x 1920x1080 monitors (due to these being a lot cheaper than the slightly higher res models). Afaik the matrox triplehead doesn't support resolutions this high - I'd love it to because I'd get one myself for my laptop :-)

Thanks for the suggestions.
 
also becareful about relying on the onboard, some motherboards disable the onboard when theres another GPU, so it might be worth checking that first

most cheap PCI cards will do 2 outputs thou, so if u have a few pci slots, then that might be an option as well
 
also worth a mention if he ever upgrades the OS in the future.....Vista only supports more than 1 graphics card if the 2nd (or 3rd) card are of the same brand and use the same driver. It won't load multiple graphics drivers.

XP and Win 7 both let you use any brand/model of cards and will load multiple graphics drivers

a PCI graphics card should be more than enough to handle basic desktop things (web pages/word etc)
 
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Great, thanks guys. He's actually decided to go for 3 screens with a 5750 powering them (one with dp adapter). At a later date he's going to buy a new PC to power an additional 3 screens. That way he has a spare PC so if one dies he can at least carry on working.
 
accod said:
I also didn't know that the displayport adapters could be bought for £10ish each - I thought they were about £100 each.
Click to expand...

Thought I'd update this in case someone else read the above and didn't look into it further...

A passive displayport to vga/dvi adapter works fine but you're still limited to a total of two screens from a single card. An active adapter is required when you want 3 or more screens. See http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx
 
accod said:
Thought I'd update this in case someone else read the above and didn't look into it further...

A passive displayport to vga/dvi adapter works fine but you're still limited to a total of two screens from a single card. An active adapter is required when you want 3 or more screens. See http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx
Click to expand...

Wrong, I'm running 2 screens with DVI, and a 3rd screen with a passive DP->VGA on my 5770. The adapter only needs to be active if it's DP->DVI.
 
Orcvader said:
Wrong, I'm running 2 screens with DVI, and a 3rd screen with a passive DP->VGA on my 5770. The adapter only needs to be active if it's DP->DVI.
Click to expand...

Don't want to hijack the thread - but theres so much confusion over this.

So if I had a 5850 (trying to get one second hand atm). I could connect my TV via HDMI, my monitor 1 via DVI and my third monitor via DP->VGA?

But, each screen has different res. Don't want to game on 3 - just use 2x Monitors for work and 1 for outputting films to the Tv.

TV is 1920x1080. Monitor 1 is 1280x1024. Monitor 2 is 1440x900 (soon to be replaced with a 22" 1080p)?

Can you use different res?
 
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I use 2 screens on my 5870 at different resolutions (dell 2407@1920x1200 over dvi and hdtv@1080p over hdmi), not sure if it'll be the same for 3 though.
 
Orcvader said:
Wrong, I'm running 2 screens with DVI, and a 3rd screen with a passive DP->VGA on my 5770. The adapter only needs to be active if it's DP->DVI.
Click to expand...

Blimey it's confusing isn't it. Glad to hear that but it does go against what AMD state:

• A maximum of 2 legacy monitors (VGA, DVI or HDMI) can be enabled simultaneously, provided that each monitor is connected either directly or via a “passive” DisplayPort™ adapter/dongle. “Passive” adapters/dongles will NOT support more than 2 legacy monitors.
• To enable support for more than 2 monitors, “active” DisplayPort™ adapters/dongles are required (or monitors with direct DisplayPort™ connectivity must be used).

I've read it elsewhere too. As you say though, you have it working to vga. Maybe AMD didn't want to mention the limitation only applies to dp to dvi adapters.
 
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They don't need to be the same resolutions, only need to be the same if you want to use eyefinity (which combines them all into a single resolution).
And yes accod, it is confusing :p There was a thread back somewhere about passive DP->VGA working, I guess it's because VGA is analogue so the electrical signals don't need to be that strong.
 
Well active display port adapters using a single DVI link are to be released soon as well (only upto 1920x1200) so this will make it even more confusing (but cheaper).
 
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