3 monitors on my setup?

[lagitup]

Hey all

I'm thinking about adding another 2 monitors to my setup and have some general questions.

My current panel is a 20' samsung 1680x1050, driven by a g80 8800gts 640. My MCP is an nf570a-sli and i have an athlon 5200x2 windsor oc'd to 3.0 with 4gb ram.

1. Is it possible for me to game across all three monitors? Will my (relatively) slow proc impair this? Would it be impossible at reasonable detail?

2. What is a good GPU solution for this that won't cost an arm and a leg or overuse my 550 watt psu? What I've been thinking:

2x9800gt(x) - would this be hurt by the 8x+8x sli mode my chipset supports? Would these consume more power than my 8800gts?

4850x2 - would I take a big performance hit since this is an ati card? Would this take more power than my 8800gts?

8800gts + something pci (fx5200 maybe?) - I know I couldn't game on this but it is also the cheapest option...

What brands are good for any of these? Evga has some pretty cheep 9800s and Saphire's is the only 4850x2 I've seen...

3. Is it unreasonable to expect to get a decent quality pair of monitors for less than $230? If so what?

Thanks all!
~Lag

 

[dflynchimp]

1. gaming support using three monitors depends on whether the game engine supports the old resolution. I'd also point out that unless your 8800GTS 640MB had a mutated third DVI connection (my old 8800 only had two) you can't really hope to rig more than two monitors to it. Your CPU is on the slow side, but if you can make do without some of the cpu intensive tasks in games (non PhysX physics run on CPU) you should be fine for the meantime.

2. 2x 9800GT's won't max out the PCI-E bandwidth (8x + 8x is plenty enough). From the reviews I've been reading the only minor performance improvements from going full 16X + 16X is from reduced overhead for slower cards and occasional bandwidth reqs of the quad GPU monsters (2X 4870X2 or 2X GTX295), which you obviously aren't in the financial mood for (or have the wattage for). they should also be well within your power supply's abilities to run. Of course if you hunted around and found another 8800GTS 640 that would be a very cheap alternative (ebay is your best friend here)

3. two 1680X1050 monitors for $230?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16824009127

the cheapest 19" 1680 deal on newegg. Acer's a decent brand. If you hunted around I'm sure you might find another pair for under $250. I'm a newegg-whore (like so many other anand techies) because they actually stock the items they're selling in their warehouses, rather than forward your order to the manufacturer like most other retail websites. Better overall RMA policy too if you need to return something defective. Not always the best in terms of lowest pricing however. If you're willing to take a risk, E-Bay actually is a treasure trove full of very good quality second hand monitors.