Simple upgrade, possibly to run 3 cards?

[cctaylor88]

Im just not familiar at all with 7950/70 so honestly don't even know which ones to look for, but I appreciate the assistance guys. So nothing less that a 7950 to run 3 monitors really?

 

[Knufire]

What settings? Max max settings, 60fps constant, you probably need multiple cards

High settings no AA, single might be fine.

 

[DaaG]

How much are you wanting to spend on a motherboard?

 

[cctaylor88]

Honestly I have no idea, I just want to upgrade really..had intentions of going for an SLI setup but got talked out of that. Gaming isn't my main concern here to be honest but 3 monitors would be great as I currently have only 2

 

[Knufire]

Do you want to get across all three or just have the third for productivity?

Gaming across three is awesome...but it's a hard core money sink because you need serious power to drive those resolutions.

Two 460s in SLI is technically almost as powerful as a single 670, but not enough vRAM for triple monitor.

 

[DaaG]

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=Fatal1ty 990FX Professional&cat=Specifications
http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/990FX Extreme9/?cat=Specifications

I personally like these two, the Fatality is as far as we know the stronger overclocker, if that matters. It has dual gigabit lans, and 6 sata ports.

The Extreme9 has single lan but it is Intel, has 8 sata ports.

 

[DaaG]

Im just not familiar at all with 7950/70 so honestly don't even know which ones to look for, but I appreciate the assistance guys. So nothing less that a 7950 to run 3 monitors really?

Well if you can find one, the old 5870 w/eyefinity was able to support 6, but you need ed display port cables/inputs to do it.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk...-5870-eyefinity-6-edition/pages/overview.aspx

 

[cctaylor88]

Honestly I don't think Ill be doing very much gaming across all three monitors, I would more or less want 3 monitors for the productivity, esp since its looking like this spanning 3 monitors set up would be around $500

 

[Knufire]

Maybe just get a cheapo second GPU to drive the third monitor. Like a 5450..cheapest thing you can find.

 

[cctaylor88]

Maybe just get a cheapo second GPU to drive the third monitor. Like a 5450..cheapest thing you can find.

My motherboard only has a single 16xpcie slot, but below that slot are two pci slots.. is the 5450 compatible with these? Obviously I would need a gpu that can go into a pci...is that even doable?

 

[DaaG]

My motherboard only has a single 16xpcie slot, but below that slot are two pci slots.. is the 5450 compatible with these? Obviously I would need a gpu that can go into a pci...is that even doable?

No, cant to pci and pcie, even if you found a pci card, it wouldnt have the cf/sli bridge needed, nor would................. no, just no.

 

[DaaG]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...57-266^13-157-266-TS,13-157-281^13-157-281-TS

In order to go multi gpu your gonna need to spend a little, these aren't too bad.

I actually had the Extreme4 for my son's pc, but it didn't like him setting drinks on top of the case. Add in cats and = dead board.

 

[cctaylor88]

Okay, so with the motherboard I currently have I am forever stuck using 2 monitors?
If I want to use three monitors I have to buy a gpu that can support that many or buy a motherboard with more than one pcie 16 ?

 

[cctaylor88]

Well I was trying to go multi gpu earlier but everyone trashed the idea, are you saying multiple gpu like keep my 460 and just buy a ****ty gpu for a third monitor? Is this technically SLI or how would this work? I thought you needed 2 of the same gpu for SLI

 

[Boulard83]

You dont need SLI of CF for multiple display to work. You could install 2-3 GPU and run 6 or more monitor out of them but not while gaming. Gaming on 3 monitor require some more specific GPU to work correclty.

If you finally just want the productivity on 3 monitor but the gaming on only one.... you dont need particular GPU like the 7950/670 to get decent performance.

 

[Knufire]

SLI and CFX combines the power of the GPUs in games and such. You can run completely separate GPUs without SLI or CFX (even from different companies), they'll just power the monitors that are connected to it.

They do make low end GPUs in PCI versions.

 

[cctaylor88]

Well I would still need a motherboard with more than one 16pcie slot and those aren't exactly cheap

 

[RGone]

IF and it is a big IF you had two monitors with DVI input connectors and ONE monitor with a Display port you could run three monitors from that one video card. You can do that pretty easily with an ATI video card that supports EyeFinity. But that setup requires a very powerful video card to game across three monitors. If you did not game across the three monitors then the video card does not have to be so powerful.