SLI and multi-monitor madness

[Bluelion]

Hello all,

I'm yet to jump into the world of multi-graphics card, but with the tempting price on the 780 GTXs, I'm pondering it to drive a pair of monitors, one 2560x1600, the other 1920x1200.

The concern I have is what happens when running a game in SLI with a second monitor attached? The nVidia FAQ for the driver states that the second screen will be disabled - is this really the case or is the FAQ out of date?

I should confess that I am looking specifically at the Linux drivers, although I suspect there aren't many Linux folks out there running a SLI configuration at the moment. Is the same limitation present in the Windows drivers - and if so, if you play in windowed mode, is SLI still activated?

Disabling the second monitor is completely unacceptable to me - I like to run the game on the main window and browsers/email/music on the second. I guess a solution would be to add a third graphics card just to drive the second monitor, but this seems a bit extreme!

Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[stephenb]

Can't help under Linux but in Windows if you select the maximise performance option it will disable any other screens bar your primary when running SLI. I run a surround setup and only use that setting when benchmarking on a single screen. For surround you can run your three monitors plus an extra display so I don't see why you couldn't do this in your situation (under windows anyway) - you just won't be getting the most out of your cards.

/waits for someone to come along and prove otherwise/

 

[wunkley]

Can't speak for Linux either, but in windows you can definitely do what you're looking to do. I run gtx 670s in SLI, I have 2 screens (see sig), both connected to one card, and on my second screen it shows my extended desktop during gaming. I have maximum performance set in my nv control panel by the way!

On this second screen I have various little apps/ gadgets running with GPU monitor linked to afterburner, CPU mon, network info and stuff. It's sad, but you can monitor you GPUs and system as you game to make sure everything is running as it should.

Some games, no idea why, make the second screen display nothing (just black). To get round this hitting alt and return sometimes sorts it, if not the ultimate fix is to turn aero off in windows. You can also go into the properties of the games exe and right click then select to disable desktop composition, which effectively turns off aero just for that program. A long winded but more elegant solution I find, for the few games that have this issue.