• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Eyefinity 3+1 setup question

locrieth

locrieth

locrieth

Associate
Joined
22 Jan 2005
Posts
405
Location
Moon
Hi All,

So I've got the spec in sig 3 x 22" iiyama monitors (5760x1080) running in eyefinity off a 290. At present they are running off the 2 DVI ports and the HDMI port, so I have a full displayport left over. I'm wondering how easy it is to stick a 4th smaller monitor on just to display stats while gaming (i.e. cpu usage, gpu vram usage, temps etc), the monitor I'm thinking of using (1280x1024) has both VGA and DVI ports. So my question is how easy would this be to implement (cheaply) looked on OCUK and saw:

StarTech.com DisplayPort to DVI Video Adapter Converter (DP2DVI2)

or am i gonna have to get an active adapter:

StarTech.com DisplayPort to DVI Video Adapter Converter (DP2DVI2)

Cheers
 
Last edited:
You will be fine with that, I have (well had) a Gigabyte 7950 with 3 monitors in eyefinity and a forth on the side using the mini display port, I had to use the active adapter though or it wouldn't display at all.
 
Not tried that mate, I don't see why not but not sure whether the active/active or active/passive cables will play well together.
 
hmmm might nip to 'clockers on Friday and have a see what they think, dont wanna spend much cause it was only an idea I was playing with.
 
You will need to use an Active adapter to run the last screen from your Displayport output, and that was how I was running four screens for a few months.

However, I would advise you don't do this and use the motherboard's onboard GPU for your fourth screen. I changed over to this setup about 2 months ago, and it's MUCH better.

If you connect your fourth screen to your GPU, you will end up with raised idle memory clock speeds on your GPU due to mismatch in resolutions between your current screens and your new one. This will lead to higher idle GPU temperatures. Not ideal, but not a showstopper either.

The reason I changed was that several games had issues with recognising my resolution correctly when I was running 5760x1080 + 1920x1080. Alien Isolation would start up but only to a black screen with grey film grain and the music. No options, nothing. Disabled the extra monitor and the game opens perfectly on 5760x1080. Put the secondary monitor onto the onboard, and the game now happily opens as normal on the three screens with monitoring on the fourth. Same with LA Noire - horribly Vert- with the fourth screen on the GPU and enabled, beautifully Hor+ with the fourth screen disabled or on the onboard.

I did have an issue where every time my background changed on the fourth screen while in game (DisplayFusion controls that) my game would minimise or, in Grid Autosport, crash. I changed DisplayFusion's settings so it doesn't change background if a full screen app is running and the system has been good as gold and stable since then.

I really would advise hooking your extra screen up to the motherboard's output and trying it out. If you do want it connected to your GPU then an Active connector will do it, but my personal experience was it caused a few issues that I then needed to work around or accept. Definitely worth setting up another screen though - you can never have enough of them! :D
 
Funnily enough I did see a thread somewhere since my last post saying about using the onboard gpu as well might give that a try then. Thanks very much for your advice and experience Stu.

Do you remember which settings in bios you had to change to use both discrete and igpu?
 
On my Gigabyte board it was under Peripherals/Processor Graphics and simply required switching from Disabled to Enabled (obviously, I then had to install drivers in Windows afterwards). Had a quick flick through the Z87 Pro's manual but nothing jumped out - hopefully it'll be as easily labelled in your BIOS and I've just missed it.

By the way, go on - you know a 4th screen for monitoring makes sense! :D
CUppYCD.jpg
(Just taken on my camera phone in the dark, so apologies for quality!)
 
Weird, that was exactly how I was gonna set mine up too, with 4th monitor above the middle one. I've got a vesa wall mount that I was gonna put up if all was successfull! Thanks for having a look at the manual mate, I'll have a search in a bit when I've finished watching the Following :)
 
Also what keyboard is that? Got my birthday coming up next week and I want a keyboard with illuminating keys. got a knackered old Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and didn't know whether to take the plunge and splash out on a mechanical keyboard like K70, or just get a cheap illuminating rubber cap keyboard....
 
locrieth said:
Also what keyboard is that? Got my birthday coming up next week and I want a keyboard with illuminating keys. got a knackered old Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and didn't know whether to take the plunge and splash out on a mechanical keyboard like K70, or just get a cheap illuminating rubber cap keyboard....
Click to expand...

locrieth said:
is it:
Gigabyte Osmium Mechanical Gaming Keyboard - Red Switch
Click to expand...

Spot on that man! Although, to be fair, it's in my sig so wasn't too taxing! :)

Bought the Osmium about December 2013 as I kept hearing about how great mechanical keyboards are, and so relegated my G15 to the LAN PC I was cobbling together. I miss the G15's screen (hence adding a fourth monitor to keep an eye on temperatures and stuff) but the USB3+USB2 ports are much better than the G15's 2xUSB1.1 and the Osmium feels built to handle a bomb blast! One of my kids has got into Osu! in a big way over the past year and so spends hours daily literally hammering away at two keys on the keyboard, and it still feels as solid as the day I opened it - seriously impressed on that side of it. Also love the volume wheel and illumination wheel, and the headphone pass through ports work brilliantly with my SoundBlaster Z - I have them plugged in all the time, change between them and speakers in software, and have loads of free cable on the headphones now they don't have to loop round the back of my desk. The illumination is also a lot brighter than the G15, and I prefer the blue to the red of the G15.

The only downside is an issue where a key repeats until it's pressed again - happens to me about once a month, but I've seen other people having it happen more frequently. Obviously the other issue is the cost - for me, I wouldn't feel I'd got money's worth paying £100+ just to get a mech keyboard if I already had a decent non-mech one, but if I was looking to buy a decent keyboard anyway and spent an extra £20-£30 to get a mech one over another, I'd be happy with that for the solid feeling alone.

As the wall behind most of my desk is actually a glass door, a wall-mount was out for me. In the end, I got a six monitor stand cheaply from a competitor, and simply didn't attach the two side mounts on the top - so I use the three mounts at the bottom and the single central one at the top. I also tried various combinations using whatever monitors I had to hand before settling on my current 4x24":
24"-26"-24" - 1920x1080 on the sides, 1920x1200 in the middle - nice, but meant objects in the screen were stretched 10% when playing at 5760x1080, which bugged me.
24"x3 with 26" alongside - had to turn too far to see 26" screen in game, so didn't use, and kept losing my mouse on desktop.
24"x3 with 26" on top - too imposing, felt like the 26" was going to fall on me!
24"x3 with 20" on top - mismatched resolutions (1600x1200) meant high idle temps, but worked nicely. Would've kept it this way if a cheap 24" hadn't come my way - which it did and I ended up with my current 3xIiyama and 1xPackard Bell Viseo setup.

Anyway, I'm rambling, so I'll shut up and go to bed now! :D
 
Oh yeah so it does lol! that took me a good 2-3 mins to find which one it was :P

So I had a quick crack at it last night / this morning before work and got the screens all set up in the correct places, after some faffing. Just need to give it a whirl gaming and see how it plays and if theres much impact. Saved me a few quid so thanks for the suggestion mate!

still undecided about mechanical keyboards tho... I hear lots of good things about them but they just seem really expensive and at the back of my mind I keep thinking thats £150 i could spend on something else in my pc, its enough to get a 1000W PSU so I'd be set if/when i get a second 290, or a good chunk towards the 290 if i wanted to try and risk it with a 750W PSU.... Dunno...
 
One thing I have never been able to resolve with Eyefinity is the full screen issue, so if I try to full screen VLC the video is stretched across the 3 monitors, I understand Windows sees it as a single monitor and as such is really doing as it's told but anyone found a way around this?

I guess Nvidia surround works the same way?
 
If you're happy with your current keyboard, I would stick with it. If you're looking to change keyboard anyway and looking to spend over £50 on one, I would definitely say it's worth getting a mechanical, but peripherals are such a personal preference thing that everyone will have their own, often different, views. Ultimately, it's entirely your call. :)

I ran an overclocked 2600k and 2 x 290's on an XFX 750W (Bronze rated). It coped fine but the air coming off the PSU was pretty warm during taxing games. Your system should be slightly easier on the PSU as your CPU will pull less power than my old one did. The problem I found was when I tried to overclock and add a little voltage to the GPUs for a Sleeping Dogs bench run - I ended up pulling about 920W from the wall (£10 plug-in wattage meter) when the PC froze. Fortunately, a 1200W Silverstone PSU appeared in an OcUK clearance sale a few weeks later so I was able to upgrade and the air coming off that is stone cold even when running something demanding.

If you're happy to run your GPUs at stock speeds (and I always do now, nothing I run needs the overclock to take it from unplayable to playable), then you should be fine with a quality 750W PSU unless you're chasing silly clocks on your CPU.
 
Voicon said:
One thing I have never been able to resolve with Eyefinity is the full screen issue, so if I try to full screen VLC the video is stretched across the 3 monitors, I understand Windows sees it as a single monitor and as such is really doing as it's told but anyone found a way around this?

I guess Nvidia surround works the same way?
Click to expand...

You're absolutely right - Windows sees one big screen so will run things across all if told to run something full screen. Ways around this basically involve finding quick ways to switch between separate screens and Eyefinity (one big screen):

- In CCC, set each screen as a separate entity, create profile, enable Eyefinity, create profile. You can now switch between profiles with a couple of clicks in CCC, or even right clicking CCC in the taskbar if you pin it to there. Sometimes you'll need to select the profile twice to get the screens set up the right way round.
- In CCC, set Eyefinity as you want it, then Disable Eyefinity and set your screens as separate ones. Now disabling and re-enabling Eyefinity in CCC should set your screens up each time as you want it (this is the method I'm currently using).
- Press Windows+P, select "Extended", set your screens up as separate ones. Press Windows+P, select "Duplicate", set your Eyefinity up. Now you can simply move between the two setups by pressing Windows+P and selecting which one you want. This only works if ALL your screens are in an Eyefinity group, so is fine for 3 screens, doesn't work for 3+1.

I've never tried Nvidia Surround, but I presume there are similar workarounds for that too.
 
I use MPC-HC to play videos and there is a setting in there to keep aspect ratio and with a couple of settings (I forget which ones, I'm at work atm), so it runs on the centre screen and just shows black on the side screens while in eyefinity mode. I'll have a look when i get home. I prefer MPC-HC to VLC cause you can just click on the video to pause/play or press space, which i find really usefull if im sitting on the other side of the room with an wireless mouse so i dont have to move it around to the pause button, I'm short sighted and a bit lazy :)
 
Confused Stu said:
If you're happy with your current keyboard, I would stick with it. If you're looking to change keyboard anyway and looking to spend over £50 on one, I would definitely say it's worth getting a mechanical, but peripherals are such a personal preference thing that everyone will have their own, often different, views. Ultimately, it's entirely your call. :)

I ran an overclocked 2600k and 2 x 290's on an XFX 750W (Bronze rated). It coped fine but the air coming off the PSU was pretty warm during taxing games. Your system should be slightly easier on the PSU as your CPU will pull less power than my old one did. The problem I found was when I tried to overclock and add a little voltage to the GPUs for a Sleeping Dogs bench run - I ended up pulling about 920W from the wall (£10 plug-in wattage meter) when the PC froze. Fortunately, a 1200W Silverstone PSU appeared in an OcUK clearance sale a few weeks later so I was able to upgrade and the air coming off that is stone cold even when running something demanding.

If you're happy to run your GPUs at stock speeds (and I always do now, nothing I run needs the overclock to take it from unplayable to playable), then you should be fine with a quality 750W PSU unless you're chasing silly clocks on your CPU.
Click to expand...

I've also got one of them in wall power meters which I bought for the sole purpose of seeing how much Wattage my pc used when playing games. I'm pretty sure it didnt go much over 450-480W (ish, I'll have to recheck as it was a few months back) when playing some taxing games, so I was thinking I'd probably be ok. Not got anything overclocked atm and was thinking about reducing the amount of HDDs in my pc as I've got 3 smallish HDDs, I'm gonna copy all my stuff onto a 1TB HDD I've got so that will cut the power a small amount too.
 
Confused Stu said:
You're absolutely right - Windows sees one big screen so will run things across all if told to run something full screen. Ways around this basically involve finding quick ways to switch between separate screens and Eyefinity (one big screen):

- In CCC, set each screen as a separate entity, create profile, enable Eyefinity, create profile. You can now switch between profiles with a couple of clicks in CCC, or even right clicking CCC in the taskbar if you pin it to there. Sometimes you'll need to select the profile twice to get the screens set up the right way round.
- In CCC, set Eyefinity as you want it, then Disable Eyefinity and set your screens as separate ones. Now disabling and re-enabling Eyefinity in CCC should set your screens up each time as you want it (this is the method I'm currently using).
- Press Windows+P, select "Extended", set your screens up as separate ones. Press Windows+P, select "Duplicate", set your Eyefinity up. Now you can simply move between the two setups by pressing Windows+P and selecting which one you want. This only works if ALL your screens are in an Eyefinity group, so is fine for 3 screens, doesn't work for 3+1.

I've never tried Nvidia Surround, but I presume there are similar workarounds for that too.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom