GTX 970 & 3 Monitors - Adaptors Needed

JLK03F150

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May 17, 2005

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Georgia

• Jun 30, 2016

• #1

I'm getting ready to connect my GTX 970 to 3 monitors & I need some adapters. I'm coming from an HD 6950, which had 2 DVI & 2 mini DP (and an HDMI I didn't use). My monitors are all DVI, so I used two DVI cables & one DVI cable with an active mini DP adapter.

The GTX 970 has 1 DVI, 1 HDMI and 3 DisplayPort (not mini). I know I need either 1 or 2 DisplayPort to DVI adapters - but do they need to be 'active" like AMD required? Obviously, if I only get 1 DP adapter I'll also need an HDMI to DVI adapter too. Which adapters would you get?
Thx

 

ATMINSIDE

Sim Racing Aficionado Co-Owner

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Joined

Jun 28, 2012

• Jun 30, 2016

• #2

Am I correct in assuming you're running Surround?

 

OP

JLK03F150

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• Jun 30, 2016

• Thread Starter
• #3

Is that what nVidia calls it - lol. Yes, I want to span 3 monitors with one desktop & game at that resolution.

BTW, I have 3 1280x1024 monitors.

 

ATMINSIDE

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• Jun 30, 2016

• #4

I do believe you'll only need an active adapter in Surround, the nVidia multi-monitor solution, if your monitor is 1920x1200 or larger.

 

don256us

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Jul 17, 2003

• Jul 6, 2016

• #5

At work, we found that we had to use active adaptors for our AMD cards. The card we used was particular as to which ports needed the active pigtails but it worked out well for us. I don't recall the specific term or spec but it had to do with only having enough clocks built in for two monitors thus the need for the active adaptor for 3 or more.

 

OP

JLK03F150

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• Jul 19, 2016

• Thread Starter
• #6

I ended up buying one passive display port adapter & one active display port adapter, and Surround is working for the desktop. Getting ready to install a game & really test it out.

 

ATMINSIDE

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• Jul 20, 2016

• #7

Good to know you can use passive!

 

JrClocker

AKA: JrMiyagi

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Sep 25, 2015

• Jul 20, 2016

• #8

Sweet!

I LOVE gaming in surround!

 

OP

JLK03F150

What have I done! Member

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Joined

May 17, 2005

Location

Georgia

• Jul 20, 2016

• Thread Starter
• #9

ATMINSIDE said:

Good to know you can use passive!

Click to expand...

Yes, so I ended up with one straight DVI, one Passive adapter, and one Active adapter. (this is to help the next n00b searching for the same answer )

JrClocker said:

Sweet!

I LOVE gaming in surround!

Click to expand...

I was a big fan of Eyefinity, which is AMD/ATI's version of Surround. Yes, lots of fun to game at 3840x1024!


I do have a stupid question. Why is my taskbar only on one monitor? With eyefinty the taskbar spanned all 3 monitors.

 

ATMINSIDE

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• Jul 20, 2016

• #10

I appreciate you updating the thread with your solution. It's nice to know they don't all have to be active!

 

don256us

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Joined

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• Jul 21, 2016

• #11

In re-reading my post, I did not say that at all and I meant to. Sorry. We found that the video card could handle two conversions on its own but anything more than that needed an active adaptor. When mixing the active and passive, the video card would be particular. I can't recall how that went but for example, in the top slot going down we had to do passive | passive| active. If you put in the active adaptor in the top slot, it wouldn't work out for all three monitors. I'm happy to hear that you figured it out at minimal cost.