Would two Dell 2408s (16:10) and one Dell 2711 (16:9) work right?

[jdomaha]

Right now I've got two Dell 2408 monitors, powered by two eVGA 260 cards in SLI on an eVGA x58 3-way SLI mobo. 12 gigs of ram, an 850 watt PSU and a 920 i7 CPU.

I am mostly playing DDO right now, with ISBoxer running 3 accounts at once - one in a full-screen sized window and two in smaller windows off on the right-hand monitor. When BF3 and Skyrim come out, however, I'm going to want to focus on just one screen, which is why I'm thinking I want to get a bigger monitor and place it right between the two 24 inchers.

Since I've had good luck with Dell, I would like to stay with their monitors if possible.

I was weighing getting the 3011 for around $1300, but that would probably require an additional upgrade of buying a 590, so we're talking a 2k upgrade there.

I was also weighing getting the 2711, but that's a 16:9 monitor. The price is a lot more palatable, at around $900 or so. I do not know if I could get away with keeping the cards I have or if I would also want to shell out for a new 590. So that'd be either $900 or around $1600. But would the middle monitor being 16:9 and the outside monitors being 16:10 screw with things?

And finally, I was thinking that I could go with a 32 inch LCD TV in 1080, pay $400 for that and just enjoy a bigger picture at 1920x1080, with the 2 24-inchers off to each side.

Any thoughts?

 

[SickBeast]

It won't work. The panels have to have the same resolution. Perhaps there is a chance that you could run all 3 of them at 1080p, but I wouldn't count on it. SLI seems to like 3 identical monitors to work at all. IME the 16:10 screens at 1920x1200 whereas the 16:9 ones are 1920x1080.

If you were to go with AMD it's another story entirely.

 

[Cheesetogo]

It won't work. The panels have to have the same resolution. Perhaps there is a chance that you could run all 3 of them at 1080p, but I wouldn't count on it. SLI seems to like 3 identical monitors to work at all. IME the 16:10 screens at 1920x1200 whereas the 16:9 ones are 1920x1080.

If you were to go with AMD it's another story entirely.

Didn't realize that SLI required all monitors to be the same type.

If you take the cards out of SLI mode it should work fine though. Might not be the ideal solution though.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Well, no NVidia card is going to support more than 2 displays. So you COULD try the two 2408s on one card and the 2711 on the other and see what happens, but don't be surprised if there's an issue. Typically you want all displays to be matched.

 

[Emulex]

wouldn't you just reduce to the lowest common resolution denominator?

 

[jdomaha]

It won't work. The panels have to have the same resolution. Perhaps there is a chance that you could run all 3 of them at 1080p, but I wouldn't count on it. SLI seems to like 3 identical monitors to work at all. IME the 16:10 screens at 1920x1200 whereas the 16:9 ones are 1920x1080.

If you were to go with AMD it's another story entirely.

Well, I hauled my old 46 inch monitor out of storage. It's 6 years old or so, 720p. Hooked it up via HDMI to the 2nd 260 video card...and it worked. It looks HORRIBLE, but it worked. Comes in at some weird resolution like 1170x886 or something like that, but I can watch video on that while playing a game using SLI at the same time.

Have both 24 inch monitors plugged into one 260 and the 46 incher plugged into the other.

 

[jdomaha]

Well, no NVidia card is going to support more than 2 displays. So you COULD try the two 2408s on one card and the 2711 on the other and see what happens, but don't be surprised if there's an issue. Typically you want all displays to be matched.

A 590 won't support more than 2? With the built-in SLI there, doesn't that have the ability to run at least 3 monitors?