V15 2008-09-22 02:34
Hi
I am looking to buy a new pc, and need it to be able to run 3 monitors simultaneously.
My plan is the following:
Monitor 1 is for the pc - running on graphics card 1 (PCI)
Monitors 2 and 3 are tv, are clones of one another and run on graphics card 2 (PCI-e 16)
I was wondering if anyone has got this working? Will I expect driver problems and the suchlike? Does it matter which cards I buy? I am looking at 2 nvidia cards, but they wil be different (since one is pci-e and one pci).
I know I could get a more expensive motherboard, and run 2xPCI-e cards in SLi mode, but that would cost a lot more than I wanted to spend, so was hoping this would work?
Thanks a lot
V
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Christian Studer 2008-09-22 10:06
With XP this should work fine, but if you want to install Vista I would recommend getting a board with 2 PCIe x16 slots, and two identical video cards.
I've had mixed results with mixing PCIe and PCI video cards for use with Vista, some configurations worked, others didn't.
Christian Studer - www.realtimesoft.com
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V15 2008-09-22 20:15
Thanks a lot for getting back to me.
I think that I will probably stick with XP for awhile, since there is a bigger community of XPMCE users, and so more plugins etc.
V
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ECarlson 2008-09-26 23:47
If the 2 TV's are going to be mirrored, then why not just use one output and a splitter to send that output to the 2 TV's? Then you can use the second output of the video card for the monitor.
PS: SLI is for driving 1 monitor with 2 cards, so even if you do go with a solution that uses 2 matching PCIe video cards, SLI won't come into play.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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V15 2008-09-27 06:18
Thanks for that - I've been doing a whole lot more reading on SLi...Life was much simpler last time I bought a PC! (though I've never been a gamer, so not been concerned by graphics that much).
anyway, I've found a relatively cheap motherboard that has 2x PCIe 16 slots, so going to get 2 8600GT cards, and run them in non-SLi mode (when I figure out how!)
This will leave me with 2xDVI outs (tv1 and monitor) and an svideo out (tv2).
Thanks a lot for all the advice guys
V
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V15 2008-09-27 08:46
Actually, I hope one of you guys can help.
I am considering getting an Asus P5N-E SLI 650i motherboard: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125082
The specs for the board say:
2 x PCI Express x16
- Single VGA mode: x16 (Default)
- SLI mode: x8, x8
and I have read that there is a "chip" which can be set in two modes: "single card" or "dual card SLI" - which I guess correspond to the above two modes. The problem is that I want "two cards, non-sli" (happy to run at 8x each).
Does anyone know if this will work? Or am i better of sticking with a single pcie and a single pci?
Thanks again
V
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ECarlson 2008-09-28 10:09
I'm pretty sure that would work fine with two PCIe X16 cards without using SLI mode. You probably still want to set it to X8 + X8 mode, but just don't use SLI mode.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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ECarlson 2008-09-28 10:21
According to the user's manual you will be okay.
- Eric, www.InvisibleRobot.com
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V15 2008-09-29 04:44
Fantastic - thanks a lot for that. Can't wait to get it put together!
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