• 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.

Running More than 2 Monitors

Casey03

Casey03

Casey03

Associate
Joined
1 Jul 2010
Posts
15
Hey all,

Im looking to get another 2 monitors running from my system, So the out come would be 4 monitors running, Dont worry its not for FPS gaming.

What i want to know is, Do i need to have 2 of the same graphic cards or could i buy a cheaper one to run these other two monitors?

Any help would be great!
 
Cheaper one would be fine. You can run nvidia and ati together but u may find it less of a headache to choose one side or the other from a drivers point of view.
 
creed said:
Cheaper one would be fine. You can run nvidia and ati together but u may find it less of a headache to choose one side or the other from a drivers point of view.
Click to expand...

I agree if its not for gaming then stick with ATI or NVidia. I have 2 4870's running 3 screens (not in xfire) and they seems to work just fine.
 
I have run 3 monitors for several years and always found it works best to get a high end card for games and run a secondary card that was from the chepest edition of the card in the same range.

For example when the Radeon 2900XT was out I ran that and a 2400 pro, same series, same direct X level and probably more or less the same driver. No problems on that or doing the same thing with later edition cards :)
 
I currently run my main monitor on the 5850 and the other two monitors off a cheap 5450. Works a treat and very happy with the setup.
 
Ah right ok thats great information thanks!

I have the ASUS 5870 installed atm and that costs a lot so i didnt really wanna buy another one of them.

So what other card would say that would be good to use with that? At the end of the day it will only need to run windows media player and Eve Online which dont need great graphic cards to run.
 
I've got an 8800GT driving two 24" monitors (soon to be replaced with GTX 460 1GB), and a passively cooled 8400GS driving some older 17" monitors.
 
Ok i have at last got around to setting this up, I was not able to get hold of the 4350 anywhere local, So i got the 5450,

Now i have plugged it in and the 5450 is working a treat, Trouble is the system is picking this up as the frist graphics card, It is also not showing anything on the 5870 graphics card,

Is there something i need to setup in windows somewhere to enable them both, also how do i go about making the 5870 the main graphics card aswell,

Any help would be great!

Thanks
 
Depends on the OS I think, iirc XP and W7 are fine with 2 different set of drivers (and thus you could have an ATI card, and a Nvidia card), but Vista doesn't like multiple drivers, so you have to stick with a card from the same series (5870 & 5750 for example)
 
Well i am using Windows 7,

I have had the Asus 5870 running for a while now with 2 monitors, I have now got the Asus 5450 plugged in and working with the new monitor but the 5870 graphic card is not showing on the system at all,

Even if i use the control panel to look for the 5870 there is nothing showing only the 5450,

Which leaves me thinking that i have to tell windows or maybe something in the bios that there is 2 graphic cards installed? But im not sure this is the first time i have done anything like this
 
Yeah i gave that try,

When on the desktop everything seems to run fine, Then say i log into Eve Online and only have 1 game open it runs smooth and easy on the eyes, Then if i open a 2nd game they both don't work so smooth, its deffo graphic card lag and not the net, Thing is, Im running these 2 screens on off the 5870, I use to run 4 games at once on only 2 monitors without this problem,

i have justed noticed that its only when both windows of the game are left open, If i minimize 1 game window then the other one runs fine, I have turned down the graphics but this no joy either, Im lost here as like i said i use to have 2 game windows open all the time without any problems

Could there be a lack of power issus here?
 
Last edited:
unlikely to be power issues I would have thought, but just incase, what PSU do you have? What's the rest of your system like?

I think it's probably more likely to be running out of VRAM, what's the resolution of th e3 monitors, and what VRAM do the 2 cards have?
 
Ok this is what im running,

i7 2.67 Ghz
6Gb Ram (2.99 usable -- Not sure what this is)
Windows 7 32 Bit
Jeahtech 600 Watt PSU is installed
5870 - 1GB DDR5
5450 - 1GB DDR3
160GB Sata Drive

Like i said everything seems to have been fine untill i put this new graphic card in,
 
Casey03 said:
Ok this is what im running,

i7 2.67 Ghz
6Gb Ram (2.99 usable -- Not sure what this is)
Windows 7 32 Bit
Jeahtech 600 Watt PSU is installed
5870 - 1GB DDR5
5450 - 1GB DDR3
160GB Sata Drive

Like i said everything seems to have been fine untill i put this new graphic card in,
Click to expand...


Main problem here is 32 bit OS - That can only use 3.25 GB of RAM at most

Best option is to upgrade to 64bit and make use of the 6GB of RAM you have
 
Last edited:
The only reason why i went with the 32 bit is due to the fact at the time drivers for the 64 bit was hard to come by and i wasnt to sure if everything i had would work with the 64 bit O/S
 
So if i upgrade my windows 7 to the 64 bit then i will eble to make use of the 6GB of Ram in this system?

Also can i just upgrade form the 32 bit or do i have to do a full fresh install?

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