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Best way to run 3 monitors

ukfastcar

ukfastcar

ukfastcar

Associate
Joined
7 Dec 2011
Posts
4
Hi There,

I have an Asus z97a mainboard which says its capable of running 3 screens on its own but I would like to install a separate graphics card as the mainboard only has 16gb of memory installed and I don't want to take a chunk out of it.

I don't run heavy games but do play some so would like a bit of quality but also taking price in to consideration.

These are the screens I want to use.
Packard Bell Viseo243D
AOC M2870VHE
Samsung 47" TV
Possible add a 24-28 inch monitor later.

I have been advised that it would be best to install 2 g-cards. If I install them will I be running them independently? am I right in thinking if I link them (SLI/Crossfire) then only one set of ports on the cards will be working, all it does is utilise the processing power of both the cards to one set of outputs?

Just to recap basically I am asking what would be the best solution to run these 3 screens and possibly add a 4th 24-28 inch screen at a later date.
 
Jae-So said:
Just use 1 card. I believe most graphics cards these days have the ability to output 4 displays.
Click to expand...

No they don't. Most high end cards do, but lower end cards still use rehashed versions of older chips that don't.

Whilst that motherboard has 4 display outputs, I don't believe it can use all at the same time.

I would just buy a graphics card that had enough performance for whatever games you play, run your 2 main displays off that, and that run the other 1 or 2 displays off the onboard graphics.
 
Jae-So said:
Where is the cutoff? I believe the 1060s and upwards have this ability but was thought 1050s etc would as well.
Click to expand...

On the Nvidia side, Fermi (the GTX5xx) and earlier could support 2 monitors per GPU. To run 3 or 4 screens you needed to run 2 cards.
Kepler (GTX6xx) and later can run up to 4 monitors on a single card provided it has the right outputs.

On the AMD side, things aren't quite as clear-cut.
The HD4xxx and earlier could support 2 monitors.
The HD5xxx introduced the ability to run 3 or 4 monitors, but only 2 can run from VGA/DVI/HDMI and the third or fourth needs to run from a DisplayPort output. Using a Passive DP to VGA/DVI/HDMI adapter counts as one of the former, so cannot be used to run the third or fourth screen. An Active DP adapter can be used for a third or fourth screen.
The R2xx series introduced the ability to run 3 or 4 screens from VGA/DVI/HDMI/Passive DP Adapter provided there are no more than 2 different screen timings present. So you can run 3x 1920x1080@60Hz screens happily from DVI/DVI/HDMI, but you cannot run mismatched screens of 1920x1080, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 from them. This ability was retrospectively added to all GCN cards, so the whole HD7xxx series and above can now do this.
As far as I know, this is still the current position for AMD - as many screens as you have outputs, but you can only have up to 2 different resolutions/timings on the VGA/DVI/HDMI/Passive DP adapter outputs.
 
Armageus said:
No they don't. Most high end cards do, but lower end cards still use rehashed versions of older chips that don't.

Whilst that motherboard has 4 display outputs, I don't believe it can use all at the same time.

I would just buy a graphics card that had enough performance for whatever games you play, run your 2 main displays off that, and that run the other 1 or 2 displays off the onboard graphics.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the replys :)

Armageus, If I go this way I wont have to change the bios of anything each time I want to switch between G-card and motherboard displays, so I would be able to run all 3 displays at the same time correct?
 
As long as onboard graphics isn't set to disabled then it should just work fine - no need to swap between anything.
 
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