Chain Displays (DisplayPort) or Use Separate Ports?

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

New graphics card coming in (1060 GTX), and the card has 3 Display Ports. I also have 3 monitors. Do I plug them in separately into individual ports or do I chain them through 1? What's the advantage of each?

The reason I ask is my current video card only has 2 mini Display Ports, I plug 2 monitors in separately and chain a 3rd off of the middle monitor. Also is there a technical difference in MiniDP vs DP other than the plug physical shape?

 

[mnewsham]

Your monitors will need to support daisy-chaining functionality, also known as Multi-Stream Transport (MST). If they do, then they will have two displayport ports, one for input, and another for output (they're usually labeled as such).

So just plug your monitors into each other, and then the final link into your GPU.

It should look like the following.
GPU > M1 DP input, then M1 DP output > M2 DP input, then M2 DP output > M3 DP input.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Correct, my monitors are new (Dell 2717) and support MST. I currentlly have Monitors #1 and #2 plugged in directly into my Radeon 7850, and then Monitor #3 chained off of Monitor #1 because I only have 2 MiniDP plugs on my GPU.

With my new graphics card I will have 3 DisplayPorts, so I'm wondering if there's any technical difference/advantage/disadvantage between using daisychaining versus plugging directly in. Also if I were to plug my 3rd monitor in directly, I'd need to buy a new 10 ft cable too

 

[mnewsham]

Since they're U2717's they're 2560x1440, and while DP 1.2 technically supports up to 17.28 Gbits/sec, and 2560x1440p is "only" 5.31Gbits/sec so theoretically it would be possible to have 3 running on the same cable, but it limits you to a maximum of 2 monitors above 1200p res. 2560x1600 *3 would exceed the 17.28Gbits/sec figure, which makes sense as to why it isn't supported, I assume 2560x1440p *3 is equally unsupported for overhead reasons or similar.

So you can have two daisy chained, but not 3.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Since they're U2717's they're 2560x1440, and while DP 1.2 technically supports up to 17.28 Gbits/sec, and 2560x1440p is "only" 5.31Gbits/sec so theoretically it would be possible to have 3 running on the same cable, but it limits you to a maximum of 2 monitors above 1200p res. 2560x1600 *3 would exceed the 17.28Gbits/sec figure, which makes sense as to why it isn't supported, I assume 2560x1440p *3 is equally unsupported for overhead reasons or similar.

So you can have two daisy chained, but not 3.

Ah yes I almost forgot about that. Only 2 daisy chained... but anyway is there a reason to daisy chain versus plugging in directly to the GPU? Or is it just for convenience in wiring purposes? I haven't kept up too much and these monitors are relatively new too. I previously only had a single monitor that used DVI so this is my first venture into DisplayPort world.

 

[mnewsham]

No real reason not to unless you're having issues.

If it works fine in your setup, it's essentially the same as plugging them in directly.

It's mainly just for convenience, no real drawbacks and no real advantages besides cable routing. Theoretically there would be slightly more latency for the monitor down the chain, but it SHOULD be 100% imperceptible to a human.