SLI vs Crossfire multimonitor

[awkmonkey]

I've been planning on purchasing more monitors (1-2 more) and some new graphics cards. It's very important to me that I be able to run the monitors as independently as possible. I want to for an example be able to to have a game running full screen on one monitor, perhaps watch a fullscreen movie on the second, and then have a website up on the third and be able to interact with all of them.

Having sli/crossfire enabled is also important to me as the displays are all 2560x1440. I read somewhere that nvidia in sli mode can only handle 2 monitors. Is this still true? Is this any different with an amd solution?

I understand that I could have each application in fullscreen windowed mode on each monitor but some applications either don't like running like that or don't have the option (or show the ugly start menu across the bottom - distracting.

As far as I understand Eyefinity and surround both trick the OS into think it has one big display and that doesn't meet my needs. First off they wouldn't be running independently but I also don't want to have the pain in the butt maximize window oh look it's on all of my screens issue.

Any comments as far as what would be the best solution for me?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I don't think full screen on several monitors in surround/eyefinity is possible.

I know it isn't with Nvidia (you can run 3 monitors with SLI), 3+1 with the new Kepler gpu.

When you go to a high res triple screen resolution Windows actually recognizes it as one large screen, so there is no divider known to windows between each screen. It would be physically impossible to run 2-3 full screen apps while in surround. I can't speak for AMD as I've never used it.

You can resize windows however you want and run games borderless though. I have personally been able to run a movie in full screen off netflix on one screen, and use 1080p boarderless windowed mode in games like LoL without problem however.

 

[awkmonkey]

Which is why I think surround is not what I'm looking for... or is that the only choice with nvidia sli if you run multiple monitors?

Can anybody comment on AMD?

 

[BrightCandle]

DX in immediate mode steals all focus, so even if you run each monitor separately you are going to need borderless windowed mode to allow you to interact with the other apps. The big problem is that most games don't even have the option to run like that, and its a problem which will impact all graphics cards as its a Windows and directX limited.

Crossfire doesn't work while are in windowed mode either, so there is little point getting a second card if you are going to spend most of your time with games windowed.

When it comes to eyefinity you are telling windows that you have one big monitor. But you don't have to run it like that and most of the time when using applications I use a separate profile where each monitor is its own individual thing. That means apps only maximise to the monitor edge and the start bar displays only on the centre screen. Some people use Hydra vision to achieve a similar thing with Eyefinity on, but I am happy enough changing the profile manually before I run a game.

So really what you want isn't really possible, regardless of what card you buy.