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Tri-Screen with Crossfire setup

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I've been out of the hardware scene for a bit now, but I've been asked to build a very high spec machine with three screens. Now I myself run dual screens on a single X850 which is very easy to do. Is it really as simple as running two cards in crossfire mode, thus giving you four outputs?

Cant help think its not all going to be that simple???

Oh, and the cards being used are:

ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X ***Crossfire/Master Edition 512MB
Connect3D ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X SILENT Heatpipe 512MB
 
You dont have to have Crossfire/SLI to use multiple screens. You just need a card or several cards with more than 2 outputs.

Regardless though, IIRC, Crossfire does support multiple monitor outputs. So yes, it should work with a Crossfire setup. :).
 
BoomAM said:
Regardless though, IIRC, Crossfire does support multiple monitor outputs. So yes, it should work with a Crossfire setup. :).
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Have you actually tried it - as I would be very interested in knowing how.

Yes the crossfire cards can output to two screens on each card, but once crossfire is actually enabled only your main monitor works.

With a seperate card ( my search revealed only a ATI radeon 9250 as the most powerful in PCI form) as in crossfire no other slots would be available apart from a PCIE*1 slot, according to ATI CCC itself isnt compatable and hogs too many resources and I can verify this - if you try and install seperate drivers not only does it seem to mess up the X1900 drivers it also doenst start correctly and continually crashes an otherwise stable system.

Through all my extensive testing , unless you dont use CCC - and therefore dont enable crossfire, it is impossible to have a thrid ati vga card installed simultaneously with crossfire active.

Obviously you can have two slave X1900's ,for eg, as seperate cards installed in the PCIE slots and have four screens but without crossfire
 
FrankJH said:
...snip...
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From what ive read, ive been told that Crossfire can use multiple monitors at once, where as SLI doesnt. Wether thats in regards to 2D or 3D work it wasnt clear, but i cant see a reason why not, as long as both monitors are connected to the 'master' card thats doing the compositing. But if ATI has restrictions set in the drivers, then fair enough. ;)
 
crossifre cards individually are compatable with multi monitors, so that is possibly what you read, even two cards in the same system would allow you to have upto four monitors, but not in crossfire mode.

The compositing is only necessary while using 3d crossfire - but whether in 2nd or 3d makes little difference, still only one monitor is live even with two or more attached when crossfire is enabled within CCC
 
So we've established that after all the high-horseness that Crossfire with mutiple monitors doing 3D cant be done.
Which isnt what ive claimed in the first place. ;)
 
BoomAM said:
So we've established that after all the high-horseness that Crossfire with mutiple monitors doing 3D cant be done.
Which isnt what ive claimed in the first place. ;)
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Yes you did actually in your IIRC comment in your initial comment, and I wasnt trying to be "high - horse " or anything, only accurate with My own research rather than half reported readings - which werent linked to
 
The Matrox TripleHead2Go system should allow you to plug in Crossfire or SLi and then output to 3 monitors simultaneously.

The only draw back is that you are limited to 1280 x 1024 on each monitor.
I'm not sure how many people on these forums use it, I know I don't, as I can't afford it and I already have a 24" widescreen monitor.
 
Another thing for anyone who's interested; crossfire seems to be incompatible with the ATI dvi to component adaptor (it works fine on the non-crossfire port with crossfire disabled though).
 
The $6m Dan said:
The Matrox TripleHead2Go system should allow you to plug in Crossfire or SLi and then output to 3 monitors simultaneously.

The only draw back is that you are limited to 1280 x 1024 on each monitor.
I'm not sure how many people on these forums use it, I know I don't, as I can't afford it and I already have a 24" widescreen monitor.
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Good point - however it would be interesting to see how much lag the matrox box puts in the system , if there is any it would be relatively ok for single player games but for online games might be a lot trickier.

Come to think of it though it would be a little pointless as you wouldnt actuallly need crossfire at such a small res, so might as well use two single cards and have four monitors attached without going to added expense of the matrox box...... infact you may find (unless ATI have been working with Matrox recently) that according to Matrox those boxes only work with nVidia cards anyway
 
It's quite possible that they only work with NVidia as the description doesn't state crossfire compatibility, though I can't imagine why it would be any different. As far as the GFX card is concerned it's outputting to a single monitor, so the matrox device is in all likelyhood recieving a standard VGA signal which it then splits into three.

As for the res, is not that low. 3x1280x1024 = 3,932,160 pixels which is more than 1600x1200 @ 3,200,000 pixels (22.88% more pixels). It also has a wider field of view so there is more scenary to render (i.e. more triangles) it's not just a higher res that the GFX card has to cope with.

You're issue of possible latency is an itriguiing one, but not somehtin I can answer I'm afraid. We'll have to wait for some first hand experience to get an answer to that. :)
 
hi guys sorry for the hijacking but im very interested in this but i was wondering as i have a DQ6 and a more powerfull graphics card on the way ( BFG 7950GT) could i use my 7300gs in the PCI-E x4 slot and have three monitors or would each card conflict in the drivers, if not why the hell did gigabyte put a pci-e x4?
 
no_1_dave said:
The first review I ever read about that matrox box is that it only works with Nvidia. Cant remember why though :confused:
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I remember reading that review, and a few others about it.
There was one that theorised why it wasnt possible. If i get the time, i might dig it up later.
 
Massive Attack said:
hi guys sorry for the hijacking but im very interested in this but i was wondering as i have a DQ6 and a more powerfull graphics card on the way ( BFG 7950GT) could i use my 7300gs in the PCI-E x4 slot and have three monitors or would each card conflict in the drivers, if not why the hell did gigabyte put a pci-e x4?
Click to expand...

As you arent going to be running in SLI you shouldnt have any problem, they will just run as two seperate cards - the only issue is whether you have to install the drivers again (which I think you may well have to) and make sure if I were you they are the same version from nVidia's site
 
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