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Triple Monitor Setup confusion

justbeingmiko

justbeingmiko

justbeingmiko

Associate
Joined
16 Aug 2013
Posts
81
Hey there all. I think I might be going mad - or at least I have got lost in the interwebs mass of answers to a question I have!!

The background:
I have been hankering over a triple screen setup (for Elite and Project Cars when they finally make market!!). But I have hit a hurdle in the road.

My current monitor is a 1440 res 27". I love it - it so shiny. I am not sure I will have the GPUs to run 3x1440 resolution (currently running 2x7950, but will be upgrading to 2xR9-290)

The question:
So I wondered if I could run lower res on two other monitors at 1080, with the 1440 in the middle???

I researched on line and found so many conflicting responses- so please, any help you guys could give me would be very much appreciated.

Here's hoping!!
 
justbeingmiko said:
Hey there all. I think I might be going mad - or at least I have got lost in the interwebs mass of answers to a question I have!!

The background:
I have been hankering over a triple screen setup (for Elite and Project Cars when they finally make market!!). But I have hit a hurdle in the road.

My current monitor is a 1440 res 27". I love it - it so shiny. I am not sure I will have the GPUs to run 3x1440 resolution (currently running 2x7950, but will be upgrading to 2xR9-290)

The question:
So I wondered if I could run lower res on two other monitors at 1080, with the 1440 in the middle???

I researched on line and found so many conflicting responses- so please, any help you guys could give me would be very much appreciated.

Here's hoping!!
Click to expand...

Hi this all depends on how you are going to run with 3 screens...

Option 1

If you are going for Eyefinity then the answer is easy its NO ... if you are turning all 3 screens into one ( this is what Eyefinity does ) then you must have 3 screens with the same res I would go as for as to say you need three identical screens as I have done this with mixed brands of screen and was never happy with it so got 3 23" ones from OCUK at the same time.



Connections - all three monitors into a single card and you will need an active display port adapter

Option 2

If you are going to run in windows extended desktop mode then yes you can run different screen sizes and this means you can have 3 different desktops one for each screen etc but when gaming you would run on a single screen, now if you do this you can run in window mode and jump from your game to either of the other screens to browse the web etc.



Connections - two monitors into one card and the third into your second card.

This response is based on what I have actually done with my 2 7970's so should be the same for your 7950's
 
Last edited:
justbeingmiko said:
My current monitor is a 1440 res 27". I love it - it so shiny. I am not sure I will have the GPUs to run 3x1440 resolution (currently running 2x7950, but will be upgrading to 2xR9-290)

The question:
So I wondered if I could run lower res on two other monitors at 1080, with the 1440 in the middle???
Click to expand...

You can run the side monitors at a lower res than the middle one.

AMD added support for this in Eyefinity with Cat 14.6 :

http://techreport.com/news/26516/wa...-enhancements-coming-in-catalyst-14-6-drivers

Below is Elite Dangerous running at 4682x1080 on a R9 290.
Monitors are 2 x 1280x1024 17" Dell for the sides & a 1920x1080 24" BenQ for the centre.
'Expand' mode set in Eyefinity :

kIzr4j.jpg
 
Forgot to add that the 2 Dell are running of dvi, and the BenQ is running of hdmi.

With R9 290 cards, the need to run one display off of a display port connector when using 3 screens doesn't apply anymore.
 
Oh thank you all for the answers. that has clarified things brilliantly. I was very worried for a bit - I invested in a nice Samsung 1440 monitor and if I had to buy another 2, dear god, the price!!!!!

Now to do some more water cooling planing :)
 
As far as I know the new Eyefinty modes are for all cards, as it is a software tweak / addition.

Running 3 screens without having to use a display port is 200 series cards only, with a few catches :

"As a result it’s now possible to drive up to 3 TMDS interface displays off of a single 200 series card, albeit with restrictions.

The catch here is that these can’t be independent displays, and this change is primarily intended towards enabling Eyefinity with cheap, DVI/HDMI-only monitors. To utilize clock sharing and to drive 3 such monitors off of a single card, all 3 monitors must be timing-identical, which functionally speaking almost always requires the monitors to be completely identical. Furthermore the sharing of the clock generator can only be engaged/disabled upon boot, so the 3rd display cannot be hot-plugged and must be present at boot time. Consequently this is by no means as unrestricted and easy as having native support for 3 TMDS interface displays, but for Eyefinity it will get the job done."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx/3
 
MoodyB said:
As far as I know the new Eyefinty modes are for all cards, as it is a software tweak / addition.

Running 3 screens without having to use a display port is 200 series cards only, with a few catches :

"As a result it’s now possible to drive up to 3 TMDS interface displays off of a single 200 series card, albeit with restrictions.

The catch here is that these can’t be independent displays, and this change is primarily intended towards enabling Eyefinity with cheap, DVI/HDMI-only monitors. To utilize clock sharing and to drive 3 such monitors off of a single card, all 3 monitors must be timing-identical, which functionally speaking almost always requires the monitors to be completely identical. Furthermore the sharing of the clock generator can only be engaged/disabled upon boot, so the 3rd display cannot be hot-plugged and must be present at boot time. Consequently this is by no means as unrestricted and easy as having native support for 3 TMDS interface displays, but for Eyefinity it will get the job done."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx/3
Click to expand...

That is good to know ... just a shame they didn't ever really fix the screen tearing issues ....
 
Yeah I've noticed the tearing on the side monitors.
I haven't found it too distracting so far though.
 
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