3 screen setup, gaming, 144hz

[ARG1980]

Hello there

Unfortunately, I have no great insight into setting up three screens, that’s why I want to hear your advice.

I play a lot of SIMRACING and want to run with three screens.
Today I have this hardware
Screen: ASUS VG248QE, 144hz
GPU: Sapphire Radeon R9 290X, Tri-X OC, 4096 MB GDDR5.
When the monitor and graphics card are connected via DVI port it provides access to 144hz.

Now, my question to the gurus are as follow:
My graphics card has two DVI ports, one DisplayPort and one HDMI port

1) Can I run with three screens, where all of them runs 144hz, now that there are only two DVI ports?
2) If not, can you then run 144hz on the middle screen and then the two side screens at 60hz?
3) If not, is it then the lowest common denominator (60hz) that determines how many Hz the other two screens running, although there is 144hz monitors connected to DVI ports?

If there can’t be said yes to 1), is the solution an additional graphics card?

Looking forward to hearing from you?

Br.
Allan</SPAN>
</SPAN>

 

[thesmokingman]

This is easy. You simply run two thru DVI and one thru DP. The Hawaii series was made to run triple screen this way. I'm running triple 144hz on three 290x lightnings.

 

[Xellis]

Okay, just spend a while gathering all the information I need.

You want to drive 3x 1080p monitors at 144hz each. This is going to require a LOT of bandwidth and you will certainly need another card (or two!) if you want 144hz. One 290x Tri-X will run one 1080p monitor at roughly 90 FPS on ultra settings in BF4, so take that into account.
The 290x has DP 1.2, which has a maximum bandwidth of ~17Gbps. Each 1920x1080p@144hz@24bpp monitor will take 7.1Gbps.
You will be driving 5760x1080 which will require 21.5 Gbps of displayport bandwidth, or 2 ports. DVI will not work here as the maximum refresh is 120hz. I believe you will need a MST adapter if you stick with only one GPU because the monitors you have don't allow daisy chaining.

You're right there is not a lot of information out there about this. The biggest trouble I can see is about the color depth of your monitor. I assumed 24 bits per pixel but you can calculate the bandwidth required yourself. Resolution*FPS*BPP = bandwidth.
The AMD control panel should have display port diagnostics if one of your monitors is hooked up via DP. This page shows you how each monitor takes up a certain % of bandwidth: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/DrivingMultipleDisplaysFromaSingleDisplayPort.aspx
From that page, a 1080p@75hz takes up 24% of the available DP bandwidth.

 

[thesmokingman]

Okay, just spend a while gathering all the information I need.

You want to drive 3x 1080p monitors at 144hz each. This is going to require a LOT of bandwidth and you will certainly need another card (or two!) if you want 144hz. One 290x Tri-X will run one 1080p monitor at roughly 90 FPS on ultra settings in BF4, so take that into account.
The 290x has DP 1.2, which has a maximum bandwidth of ~17Gbps. Each 1920x1080p@144hz@24bpp monitor will take 7.1Gbps.
You will be driving 5760x1080 which will require 21.5 Gbps of displayport bandwidth, or 2 ports. DVI will not work here as the maximum refresh is 120hz. I believe you will need a MST adapter if you stick with only one GPU because the monitors you have don't allow daisy chaining.

You're right there is not a lot of information out there about this. The biggest trouble I can see is about the color depth of your monitor. I assumed 24 bits per pixel but you can calculate the bandwidth required yourself. Resolution*FPS*BPP = bandwidth.
The AMD control panel should have display port diagnostics if one of your monitors is hooked up via DP. This page shows you how each monitor takes up a certain % of bandwidth: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/DrivingMultipleDisplaysFromaSingleDisplayPort.aspx
From that page, a 1080p@75hz takes up 24% of the available DP bandwidth.

Nah! His ports are fine, two dvi one dp. You should look up 1080@144hz specs before writing its not possible. As for whether he can run that with one card, it depends on the game. Racing sims are not on the level of can it run Crysis, though Pcars is a bit biased the other way.

 

[Xellis]

Nah! His ports are fine, two dvi one dp. You should look up 1080@144hz specs before writing its not possible. As for whether he can run that with one card, it depends on the game. Racing sims are not on the level of can it run Crysis, though Pcars is a bit biased the other way.

My bad. There's really not a lot of information out there about it in one spot. Not to mention that his monitors have speakers and DVI doesn't carry audio. So I'd still recommend a 2nd GPU just to easily use 3 DP cables.

 

[thesmokingman]

My bad. There's really not a lot of information out there about it in one spot. Not to mention that his monitors have speakers and DVI doesn't carry audio. So I'd still recommend a 2nd GPU just to easily use 3 DP cables.

Dude, stop with telling him to do things differently. He doesn't need to do anything but use the ports on his card. The card is designed specifically for his setup. And on that note, using a second card would defeat the whole point because AMD requires all panels to be connected to one card (main) for eyefinity. Secondly, on 290x there is only ONE DP, so he'd need three cards to get three DP, again that would defeat the point. Third, DVI can carry audio but again that is besides the point. I don't see any good reason to use monitor speakings when one is building an eyefinity setup for simracing.

 

[ARG1980]

Dude, stop with telling him to do things differently. He doesn't need to do anything but use the ports on his card. The card is designed specifically for his setup. And on that note, using a second card would defeat the whole point because AMD requires all panels to be connected to one card (main) for eyefinity. Secondly, on 290x there is only ONE DP, so he'd need three cards to get three DP, again that would defeat the point. Third, DVI can carry audio but again that is besides the point. I don't see any good reason to use monitor speakings when one is building an eyefinity setup for simracing.

Thank you for your reply, it helped me a lot. Ill go buy a DVI-DP converete, and it's all good

I have a follow up question. You say that for eyefinity to work all 3 monitors have to be connected to one card. If I buy a card number 2 and run crossfire, and still have alle three monitors connected to one card, do I still get power from the card that is not connected to the monitors?

Br.
Allan

 

[thesmokingman]

Thank you for your reply, it helped me a lot. Ill go buy a DVI-DP converete, and it's all good

I have a follow up question. You say that for eyefinity to work all 3 monitors have to be connected to one card. If I buy a card number 2 and run crossfire, and still have alle three monitors connected to one card, do I still get power from the card that is not connected to the monitors?

Br.
Allan

Why buy a converter?? Look at your panels closely, see that DP port? Now go buy one DP cable. That's all you need, which is really nothing extra. To recap, two dvi and one dp, that is all.

First requirement is all panels connect to one card. The crossfire is simply adding another card w/o a changing the port connections, so yea nothing changes on the main card. On 290x/etc crossfire connections happen thru the PCIE bus, ie. it's done in the driver software.