Monitors for eyefinity

sychnant · 7 Jun 2011 at 17:40

I have just ordered this ( MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition) to upgrade from my old 8800GT so as to run 3 monitors. Previously i have been using a single HPw2207 (1680x1050) but would like to upgrade to have a full 1080P as front monitor, if so could i still use 2 1680x1050 monitors at the side? or should they both be the same model?Or do i need 3 monitors all the same for refresh rate/colours etc?
ANY advice please :-)

Thank You
PS I was hoping to keep the price about £180 for centre Monitor and whatever for the side.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz (1066FSB)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775)
Abit IP35 Pro (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
OCZ Platinum Revision (4x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Series
Lian-Li PC-7B PLUS II Aluminium Midi-Tower Case
EVGA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Superclocked GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) -
Corsair HX 620W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply
HP W2207 22" Monitor

Boozebeard · 7 Jun 2011 at 21:23

what do you want to do with the 3 monitors? If you want to run eye finity then you will need them to all be the same resolution or the 1920x1080 will be run at 1680x1050 which will look stretched and blurry.

If you just want to use them as more desktop space without eyefinity then they should be ok.

sychnant · 7 Jun 2011 at 23:41

I want to run eyefinity and unfortunatly whilst waiting for a reply have bought a Benq G240HDBL 24" monitor and picked up another brand new HP w2207 for a good price. Will the stretching be noticeable on the 24" when running at 1680x1050 ?

Surveyor · 7 Jun 2011 at 23:58

sychnant said:
I want to run eyefinity and unfortunatly whilst waiting for a reply have bought a Benq G240HDBL 24" monitor and picked up another brand new HP w2207 for a good price. Will the stretching be noticeable on the 24" when running at 1680x1050 ?

You could have waited more than a few hours for a reply.

It won't look particularly good.

The vertical image will be stretched by 2.85% (1080/1050)

The horizontal image will be stretched by 14.29% (1920/1680)

And because the monitor is not running at its native resolution the image will look "blurry".

Try it. Set your graphics card to output a resolution lower than 1680x1050 on your current monitor.

sychnant · 8 Jun 2011 at 00:03

Thanks, looks like i need to do some backpedalling :-(

(
I will cancel the Benq G24 and order another 1680x1050 monitor. Thanks for the advice Surveyor..
PS. Any recomends?I can get a HannsHZ221 for oly £108.inc shipping . Any good?

Surveyor · 8 Jun 2011 at 02:39

sychnant said:
Thanks, looks like i need to do some backpedalling (
I will cancel the Benq G24 and order another 1680x1050 monitor. Thanks for the advice Surveyor..
PS. Any recomends?I can get a HannsHZ221 for oly £108.inc shipping . Any good?

That's a bit tricky.

As you want to run Eyefinity you really need 3 monitors where you can line up the bezels for the best effect.

Also with Eyefinity at least one of the monitors has to be run from a mini DisplayPort connection on the graphics card you bought.

You need either a monitor with a DisplayPort connection or you need to buy a £20 active mini DisplayPort adapter so you can connect to DVI on the monitor.

Here's a list of AMD validated adapters (dongles):

AMD Eyefinity Validated Dongles