Eyefinity cards question

[perdomot]

I currently have 3 monitors, 2 on a HD3870 and 1 on the IGP of the 785G mobo in surroundview mode, and am thinking of upgrading my vid card to a HD 5xxx series. I know you need an active adapter to do Eyefinity but what if you are simply extending the desktop as I currently have? I keep one monitor in portrait mode for the internet but the other two are in landscape mode. Do I still need an active adapter for this?

 

[RaiderJ]

You would, since supporting three monitors on a 5xxx card requires you use the DisplayPort.

 

[Sp12]

Actually, you 'can' use a passive adaptor for general use, but you limit your refresh rate, and it's not guaranteed.

 

[gorobei]

or he could just replace the 3870 with the 5xxx and keep the 3rd monitor on the IGP. No adapter needed.

 

[perdomot]

or he could just replace the 3870 with the 5xxx and keep the 3rd monitor on the IGP. No adapter needed.

The difficulty with my current solution is that when I maximize a video on the monitor connected to the IGP, Win 7 Aero turns off after giving me a message that Windows is low on memory. I view a lot of MKV files so the error crops up and I figured a 5xxx card would eliminate this.

 

[jtvang125]

How much system memory do you have? This will be shared with the IGP so if you're low on system memory it would give you that error.

I had 2 HD4850 before going to 3 24" monitors and even when stretching a mkv video file across 3 monitors I never had any memory problems. The 4850 had 512MB each with 4gb of system memory.