Surround with GTX295 and 8800GT

nig451964

Junior Member
Sep 3, 2013
4
0
0
Hi, I have looked around various forums and found conflicting information.

Ok I am on a zero budget so I am trying to get working what I have,

I have a supermicro x7dca-l motherboard with one pcix16 (gen1) and one pcix8 slot.

In the x16 I have a GTX295 Twin Board card, out of which I currently have two SVGA monitors (analog mode) and a third via HDMI to DVI in digital mode

When I try to enable the nvidia surround it fails asking me the move the monitor coming off the hdmi port to another port on the same card (there isnt one).

I am summizing it could be because x2 are analog and one is digital.

My question is this.... do I either a: plug in a 8800gt using a riser adapter to the x8 slot even though it will not be sli.... and use one of the outputs on that card... would that enable surround

or do I give up and just be satisfied in having three monitors plugged in and working as they are now... Only I really wanted this as a treat for the kids and me for gaming etc..
 

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
Well, that's news to me. It's either a typo, or they retro'd the feature, because surround was an answer to Eyefinity that was released with Evergreen (5000 series AMD) after the 200 series.
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
All 3 displays have to match. You can't mix 2 analog displays with 1 digital display, for example.

And the 8800GT won't help you, I'm afraid. All of the displays need to be connected to the same GPU (or SLI cluster of GPUs) to use the NVIDIA surround modes.:(
 

nig451964

Junior Member
Sep 3, 2013
4
0
0
All 3 displays have to match. You can't mix 2 analog displays with 1 digital display, for example.

And the 8800GT won't help you, I'm afraid. All of the displays need to be connected to the same GPU (or SLI cluster of GPUs) to use the NVIDIA surround modes.:(

Ok, so am I correct in thinking that the HDMI is digital only ? As I have a monitor which is able to switch between analog and digital......?

I will ditch the 8800gt idea then :) well saves hacking about trying to get it fitted...
 

nig451964

Junior Member
Sep 3, 2013
4
0
0
Well, that's news to me. It's either a typo, or they retro'd the feature, because surround was an answer to Eyefinity that was released with Evergreen (5000 series AMD) after the 200 series.

I rekon really its something for 500 series onwards, apparently they seem to cope better with it.
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
Ok, so am I correct in thinking that the HDMI is digital only ? As I have a monitor which is able to switch between analog and digital......?

I will ditch the 8800gt idea then :) well saves hacking about trying to get it fitted...
Yes, HDMI is digital only. HDMI is basically DVI without the analog pins.
I rekon really its something for 500 series onwards, apparently they seem to cope better with it.
Anything before the 600 series is very hacky. Surround for the 200/400/500 series was a crash program at NVIDIA after they found out about Eyefinity at the launch of the 5870, so it's implemented in softwrae (and as much programming of the GPU as you can do). True hardware support didn't come until the 600 series, where the 4 display controllers per GPU makes it a lot easier to implement (and even then it still has the strict matching display requirements). Though in practice it does work a bit better on the 400/500 series than the 200 series, presumably due to the greater degree of validation NVIDIA puts into newer products.
 
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