Best Way to Use 3 Monitors with 780G?

[bentech]

You'll have to check specs but I remember that you couldn't drive 2 digital signals with those generations of integrated graphics. Don't know about 2 analog signals though.

That's a no on two analog signals as the ports available are DVI-D (digital only, not integrated with analog signal like DVI-I) and HDMI. Only one analog out, the VGA.

As to two digital signals, that's what I'm going to try and test next, but I seem to recall that you are right.

 

[ther00kie16]

That's a no on two analog signals as the ports available are DVI-D (digital only, not integrated with analog signal like DVI-I) and HDMI. Only one analog out, the VGA.

As to two digital signals, that's what I'm going to try and test next, but I seem to recall that you are right.

You can't drive 2 digital signals simultaneously but I was successful in switching between DVI and HDMI on the 690g in XP although ATI catalyst was fussy. Maybe it's gotten better, especially with Win7.

 

[bentech]

I'm still on XP SP3. In lieu of getting the DVI-D to HDMI adapter needed to try the 780G with three monitors, I picked up an HD 4650 DDR2 card for $13.50 shipped. Nice buy, and fits well with my budget! Hope it works (he says it does).

When I get it, I will report back as to whether the onboard graphics work alongside the video card or not. Then I would have at least 4 outputs.

 

[guskline]

Here I am with another question.

I have an AMD 780G (ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics) chipset motherboard and need to run three monitors. The chipset graphics only support two monitors (HDMI + VGA).

So, what is the best hybrid crossfire card that is compatible with the 780G? Or, would it be better/cheaper to ignore the hybrid idea on such an old board and go with another type of video card? A small boost in FPS (gaming) would be nice, but low price (used OK) and power consumption are more important factors.

Thanks for any tips. The Wikipedia entry for the 780G and ATI Hybrid technology was too confusing as to what might work these days with such an old motherboard.

Bentech: Size of monitors and resolution? I don't profess to be an Eyefinity expert but I do have 3 24" monitors running in rig 1 below in my signature. I have an Active Display port for the 3rd monitor and am running 2 5850 video cards in crossfire. I point this out, not to brag, but to give you an idea of my hardware (running Intel 2500K@4400, 8 g ram,ssd etc). Eyefinity really puts a stress on video cards. If I had the $$ I would run 2 7970s to get the frame rate and all the bells and whistles.
That said, I think your hardware is minimal for 2 monitors and 3 just won't cut it.

Do you want to game? How big are the monitors etc. I can play COD MW3 on Rig1 at 5780x1080 but have to set the setting at most normal and no more than 2x AA to have sufficient framerate to play. Smaller monitors and lower resolution would help and that's with my hardware. You can give it a shot but be prepared for very low frame rate.

 

[bentech]

guskline: Thank you for your reply. However, I am only needing to use one monitor at a time. The video card just needs to be a zone switcher basically. I have a projector (for watching movies), a main monitor for work, and a screen in a nearby room for reading e-books. As mentioned above, I bought a cheap ATI card and hope that I can still use the outputs on the onboard graphics when that is installed.

 

[guskline]

Thanks bentech. Hope all works well.

 

[bentech]

I inserted the HD 4650 today. The BIOS set the onboard graphics to disabled. I re-enabled it, set the video memory to 256M, set the surroundview to on, set the primary graphics to PCI-E, and I was in business. Works fine. I'm on Ubuntu Linux now, and configured the multiple cards with sudo aticonfig --adapter=0,1 --initial

After a reboot, Catalyst saw both cards and associated monitors. Catalyst 11.12 for Linux.