Dual screen gaming setup £600

okay I get it now. I thought all ATi cards would work as they already have 2 DVi's and a HDMI.
So i take it that's not the case.

Regardless, I am swaying towards the ATi's because i would need one card. Just get a flex model now. Do only sapphire do them?
 
The active adapter is only around £25, OcUK don't seem to stock them anymore so if you want a non-FLEX AMD card then you have to search around the web for one.
 
I would be against the idea of specing a mobo that cannot do 8:8 sli/CF for someone who is doing dual screen gaming. With regards to the MSI P67A-C45.

Good mobo though.
 
stulid said:
You only need a single ATI card:p
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I used to multibox WoW myself. If your friend is using IsBoxer as his multiboxing app, then I'd suggest you buy a very good GPU. It might be different with Eve, but with WoW, my 5 clients would all render at 1920x1080 pixels to make the most out of multiboxing, which requires a beefy GPU. Generally speaking, a single graphics card would be best for multiboxing. SLI/Xfire doesn't work for most games when you multibox (though this may have changed, idk). If you had two cards, you'd be running them seperately, without SLI/Xfire, and using one monitor for each. That way you would get to use the second card properly.

If it wasn't for the fact that you said he already has 2 monitors, I would have suggested a single, large monitor. It won't make a difference to your GPU if you use 1 or 2 monitors if you're rendering all clients at the same res, but it is much easier to work with (unless you have a nice pair of large monitors, or 3 Dell Ultrasharps etc). Definitely go for the i5 2500k for boxing, no matter what the game is. Idk about Eve, but each WoW client I had running used at least 1gb of RAM, so 8GB is advised. Tbh, I'd say the budget is a little too low.
 
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8igdave said:
Yeah but I'm talking about pumping graphics up at a large resolution, you will want CF or SLI.
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As said above, depending on what boxing program he is using (I assume that Eve requires an external program like other MMO's?), he might be much better served by a single, more powerful card. You have the usual dilema, that if you buy a single card, you can add in another if it starts to fall short in the future, whereas with two cards, you don't have that luxery.

I haven't played Eve before, and don't know how graphically/CPU intensive the game is. I also don't know what size the monitors your friend is using. If he's using two 24" monitors for example, then a single card will definitely be much better. Because of the CF/SLI problems that multiboxing, in general, encounters, then he'd probably have to run the cards seperately, one for each monitor. If his main monitor only has one client, then that leaves his other monitor with the rest of the clients. I suppose you could limit the background fps for the slaves to sort out that problem. Still, a single GPU is a no-brainer to me for the upgrade path.

OP: What monitors does your friend use?
 
I'd get a 6950 2GB reference model and flash it to a 2GB. Should be able to multiscreen fine on that, and a second one further down the line would easily cope with triple screen eyefinity.
 
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