3 monitor setup with two Vid-cards.

[ATWindsor]

At the moment i have two 1600*1200 monitors. I am planning to get a 1920*1200 monitor to put in the middle. The only practical way to do this today seems to be having two video-cards. But i also want to game, and use other 3D-applications, so i am wondering how this will be handled in the practical sense. Lets say i have 4890 today, and two of the monitors hooked up to that one, can i just by a second video-card and still keep my gaming performance, and performance in aero? (my 6600 GT is already struggling with 2 monitors, so it seems like many monitors actually requires som juice, or at least som video ram). If no, what do i need to keep the performance on par? Do the second card have to be as powerful as the first (a 4890), is it enough that it just supports the same DX-version? Is it enough that its powerful enough to render aero on one screen, the 4890 will handle the to other screens, and render games? Or something else? I am abit in new territory for me here.

 

[Billb2]

What one video card is doing has nothing to do with what the other(s) are doing. So, yes, you could game on the high rez card.

It's resolution, not screen size. A video card set to 1600 x 1200 doesn't know if it is sending it's signal to a 19" monitor or a 30" monitor. It sends the same signal to both.

Also, if both both video cards are the same brand (ie nvidia) they wil have to use the same driver version because you can only load one (nvidia/ATI/etc.) driver at a time.
Mixing/matching drivers from different brands is hit or miss.

 

[ATWindsor]

Ok, so in other words, if i set the main montor as the primary monitor, hook i to the 4890, and hook the left monitor to the same 4890, and buy a second monitor and hook the right monitor to that one. The 4890 will render games, as they are run on the main montor, the 4890 will also render aero on the left monitor, and the second vid-card will render aero on the right monitor? So i should get no performance penalty for having a pretty weak GPU on as the second card? How about video-acceleration, does that have to be done on the same GPU as as the one connected to the monitor the video is displayed on? Or does this work more as a CPU?

And does rendering aero steal a lot of resoruces? If i run a game with my 4890, and are also rendering the desktop on the left monitor, will i get a noticable performance degradation? Or problems with video memory? Will it be a better solution to hook the 4890 to the middle primary monitor, and let the second card take care of the left and rigt, since those won't be running games?

I am sorry if i'm flooding you with questions here, but this isn't exactly clear for me.