4th monitor and second video cards

[alister]

Recently I built my new system with a XFX 5870 and I'm using the DisplayPort for my center monitor and the two DVI outputs going to my left and right monitors for a total of three displays. My goal was an Eyefinity setup. I use a 4th, older LCD TV above the three for a reference screen and to watch movies from time to time. In my last system I had two 8800GTX's that worked well for this purpose of feeding 4 displays. Now, however, I don't want to get another giant video card to serve the purpose of feeding only the 30" LCD.

On my Asus P7H57D-EVO board I was reading that the PCI-E slot bandwidth is halved when a second card is in the other PCI-E16 slot so I was going to just get an older $50 PCI Radeon 9250 card or something similar to stick in one of the two older PCI slots (if it'll work with Win7 64-bit).

My question-- does anyone have any experience with this or comments on what they might have heard/seen? I can't find much on this concept through my web searches. Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Something that old is not supported by the current ATI drivers. You have to use the legacy Cats, for Vista, which will not support ATI's newest cards at the same time.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

PCI-E 2.0 at 8x will be plenty for the 5870 either way so don't limit yourself to just PCI cards. Legacy connections like PCI and AGP cost a fortune compared to PCI-E cards of the same GPU.

You are thankfully running Win 7, which means you can mix and match video card drivers so you could grab an old NVidia card and throw it in there. I'm running a similar set up, except with a 5850 and 4 monitors. I have a passively cooled 7600gs that I use for my 4th monitor, it works great.

Also, I'd be curious about your 4 monitor setup, post a picture?

 

[lopri]

I agree with OverLorDI. If you are close to MicroCenter, they have BFG 8400 GS PCI for $29.90 right now, though.

 

[alister]

I really appreciate the advice. I've gone back and forth more than I should've and it has been driving me nuts.

My phone is dead but I'll post ya' a picture tomorrow.

In the meantime, I actually do have an old FX5200 PCI and a Radeon HD 2400 PCIe I could use. I didn't realize you could mix NV and ATI stuff together now though but in the end it sounds like my 2400 might just do the trick if it doesn't make the 5870 suffer in the performance arena. I did see that 8400 @ MC though which thankfully is local to me (the only component I bought locally was my Antec DF-35 case, lol).

So many decisions..

 

[dawza]

While I have no direct experience with mixing vendors, from everything I have read, you should have no issues getting an ATI card to work with an NV model in W7. However, I do have some experience with running additional (3rd and 4th) displays off of a PCI card, and have not had good experiences at all in Vista or W7 (both times all NV cards). I mainly had issues with Aero not playing well with the display(s) hooked up to the PCI cards, and experienced intolerable lag for actions as simple as scrolling down a spreadsheet or a webpage. This occurred with both a PCI 8400GS and a 6200. I could get rid of 90% of the lag by turning off Aero effects, but this caused general desktop performance to suffer overall (jerkiness when dragging windows from one monitor to another).

I did some extensive searching (after trying different drivers, driver reinstalls, swapping my 7800GT for a Quadro FX3500, swapping display configurations, etc) before I decided that there just wasn't enough collective feedback to make any conclusions about PCI cards and lag with Aero. I was able to find some scattered forum postings that corroborated my experiences, but that was about it.

My solution was to swap out my existing motherboard (Intel integrated video, which meant that an add-in GPU would render the onboard vid inoperative) for a GF9300-based board. This setup currently allows me to run up to four displays with a single PCIe x16 card (2 on card, 2 on integrated), three of them over digital, and all without lag. If I could have added a second PCIe card, I would have, but I just could not find a mATX LGA 775 board with dual PCIe x16 (even if both ran in x8) slots, and did not feel like doing a complete rebuild. And forget PCIe x1 video cards- prices are just ridiculous.

IMO, avoid PCI, unless you have a means to try before you buy.

 

[alister]

Back again. I stuck my HD2400 in and it works like a charm. I didn't get to test the PC while gaming without in my other PCIe16 slot but we'll try this down the road. Thanks a lot, guys.

BTW, the cam couldn't capture it in its colorful glory but this will suffice--

Please disregard the mess..

 

[betasub]

Nice work. Although I guess the lower 3 monitors don't function as an Eyefinity set because of the different resolutions (...without forcing something unusual).

 

[kashwashwa]

Hm, I have a 4870 x2, and a spare 9800GTX... I really wanted to hook up a 3rd monitor, but wasn't sure that this would work.

Would an Antec Earthwatts 650W PSU handle those cards (In addition to a pretty generic system otherwise - E8400, 1 HD, 4 GB RAM etc.)

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Nice setup man. I have a similar setup, except my side monitors are not vertical.

So the HD2400 uses the latest Cats like the 5870? If that is the case you will have problems when the HD2400 gets moved to legacy and the 5870 is not. Running two different drives of the same vendor is messier than two different drivers of different vendors.

 

[kashwashwa]

Hm, I have a 4870 x2, and a spare 9800GTX... I really wanted to hook up a 3rd monitor, but wasn't sure that this would work.

Would an Antec Earthwatts 650W PSU handle those cards (In addition to a pretty generic system otherwise - E8400, 1 HD, 4 GB RAM etc.)

Well, I went ahead and tried the two video cards - it booted, and after the Win7 splash screen, it gives a BSOD... is that a sign that the PSU can't handle it?

 

[OCGuy]

^ Yea that is pushing it for a Earthwatts 650.