Quad Monitor Setup

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Twinpeaksr

Senior member
Aug 9, 2000
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Upgrade Time...Looking for input. This is a work in progress, Best fit I have found is PNY NVS450 (PNY VCQ450NVS-X16-PB Quadro NVS 450 512MB (256MB per GPU) 128-bit (64-bit per GPU) GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Workstation Video Card) but I am looking for other expertise. Would consider AMD, but my last attemp to use them did not leave me with great impressions (A serach of the forum would find out why).

System Specifications:

I. Processor/CPU:
i3 2120T Sandy Bridge on ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 (Future upgrade of processor to i5-3550 or i5-3570T)

II. Current Graphics Card:
XFX PVT73GUGD3 GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Support Video Card

III. Display Resolution:
Quad 1920 x 1080

IV. Power Supply Unit Specification (Brand, Wattage, Ampage, Age). If possible, please provide a link to a website containing the power supply specifications:
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W

V. Case Specifications(N/A, Model, Length, Low Profile, Cooling, HTPC, Water, Silent):
LIAN LI PC-7B plus II Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case Used for Workstation, Air Cooled


Purchase Details:

I. Budget? Please be sure to include currency (If not USD), retailer preferences & specify whether rebates are a viable option.
$250 to $400

II. Any particular preferences (Manufacturer[nV or AMD], Brand[XFX, Sapphire, EVGA, etc], Cooling Solutions)?
NVIDIA

III. Do you plan to have any Multi-GPU solutions such as Crossfire or SLI?
No

IV. Have you previously looked at a product(s) which you feel would fit your needs?
NVS450

V. What are your needs for this GPU? Which games(If any)do you intend to play? If you have this information at hand, what are the desired detail levels?
General Comupting, some Photo editing and video editing, Architechtural CAD (DataCAD), Engineering Development (Xilinx ISE, Altera Quartus II, Visual Studio, Spice, ADS), No Games Planned. Heavy milti application use at one time (hence 4 monitors).


VI. Do you plan on overclocking the card you intend to purchase?
No, Value Stability over performance.

Additional Notes

Stability over performance, I don’t want to fight driver issues and instability problems constantly.
I want to use DisplayPort Natively for all monitors if possible, HDMI would be second choice, DVI last (I may have to wait a bit for this)
Timeline is probably Nov/Dec…I know a lot can change but I am not looking for cutting edge
Can use 2 cards or one, doesn’t matter to me.
Upgrading to 4 23” Monitors at about the same time (to replace 2 22” I currently have). Either NEC EX231W-BK or ASUS PA238Q. Also considering Dell U2312HM.
 
blastingcap

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
5
76
Since you don't plan to do gaming and want to use native Displayport connections, then you could probably hook up at least one, if not two, displays to your mobo and run the others off a discrete video card. If you can run two off the mobo then you could use pretty much any video card for the remainder, since most cards can output to 2 displays. If you can hook up just one monitor to your mobo, then you need a card that can output 3+, or else two video cards.

A cheap 3-way video card would be something like the HD6450 though that's not going to be native displayport... a HD7770 would usually come with 2x mini DP and HDMI and DVI though. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102967

NVIDIA currently does not have any single card that can output 3+ displays for less than $400 right now (GTX670 = $399), but you could use two cheap video cards together instead.

If you want to run ALL FOUR off a single video card, you may need to step up to one of the specialty AMD cards that advertises that kind of support. Those cards are rare such as the Eyefinity6 edition cards.

I'm pretty happy with my multi-monitor setup and have been using triple-wide Eyefinity since mid-2010. If you switch display setups a lot, AMD's CCC allows you to set presets and hotkeys to access them. For instance, it literally takes seconds to switch from single-center-screen to Extended Desktop to Eyefinity for me. NV does not allow that yet, but I hope they are working on it.
 
T

Twinpeaksr

Senior member
Aug 9, 2000
386
0
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Thanks for the insight.

I tried Eye-finity last year with awful results, makes me a little scared to try again (took a $100hit selling the card, never achieved what I was trying to accomplish). That has made me aprehesive to use AMD again...though luck with NVIDIA does not mean continued luck.

The HD7770 looks interesting and though i have the on board graphics, 2 of these cards may also fit the need.

No need for them to all be on the same card, if so great, if not, no big deal, have 2 x16 slots.

Thanks.
 
blastingcap

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
5
76
Twinpeaksr said:
Thanks for the insight.

I tried Eye-finity last year with awful results, makes me a little scared to try again (took a $100hit selling the card, never achieved what I was trying to accomplish). That has made me aprehesive to use AMD again...though luck with NVIDIA does not mean continued luck.

The HD7770 looks interesting and though i have the on board graphics, 2 of these cards may also fit the need.

No need for them to all be on the same card, if so great, if not, no big deal, have 2 x16 slots.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

What were the problems? I gave up on Eyefinity for part of last year too because of bad drivers that I never should have "upgraded" to, and the partial sale of some of my monitors and cables. But I'm pretty happy with it nowadays.

If it was a cable problem, beware. Stick to the AMD-approved displayport adapters ONLY as the cheaper stuff doesn't always work even if they CLAIM to be "active." (Exception: the cheap active single-link DVI/DP adapters made by the graphics card companies such as Sapphire) http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx

Even though you are okay with running dual cards, if you want native displayport, the easiest way to get it is to get a "Eyefinity 6 edition" card such as: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131447 You could probably get one of those used for less.
 
T

Twinpeaksr

Senior member
Aug 9, 2000
386
0
76
blastingcap

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
5
76
Twinpeaksr said:
Here is some history on the problems that I had getting my last AMD card running with multiple monitors...I want to avoid a repeat. After some browsing you can probably gather why I was not real happy with the results. Never did get it to work.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2140020&highlight=

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2135606&highlight=

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2137964&highlight=
Click to expand...

Weird. I get a scaling thing and it's annoying to have to re-set the overscan every time I plug in a new monitor, but thankfully I haven't had to do it in a while now. Not even allowing the native resolution though, sucks. I would contact AMD directly about that, rather than forums.
 
T

Twinpeaksr

Senior member
Aug 9, 2000
386
0
76
blastingcap said:
Weird. I get a scaling thing and it's annoying to have to re-set the overscan every time I plug in a new monitor, but thankfully I haven't had to do it in a while now. Not even allowing the native resolution though, sucks. I would contact AMD directly about that, rather than forums.
Click to expand...

Had a simpler solution...got rid of the card. 8 weeks of work and still never worked right. Tried the tech support, but they were even less help. So far the best card I have had is my current 7600GT, stable and no issues.

Now I need to upgrade for additional monitors, its time to retire the 7600GT to my other system.

Thanks.
 
T

Twinpeaksr

Senior member
Aug 9, 2000
386
0
76
So I found 2 New NVS295 Cards on Ebay for less than $30/each. Just bought them, think that makes my decision easy!

Thanks!
 
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