5 Monitor setup without DP monitors

Hi all,

I've built a 737 simulator that's running on a sapphire 6850 with three monitors attached. I have one DVI and 2 VGA both running on adapters. 1 display port adapter and 1 DVI adapter.

My question is what arrangement would I need to run 5 monitors? Could I use a second 6850 card in Crossfire, or is there a newer card that will support 5 monitors. Bearing in mind that I only have 2 DVI monitors and 3 VGA. Of course I'm happy to get adapters if that's what's needed.
I paid a visit to Novatech who would have happily sold me a second card and a new motherboard to accomodate it, but they were convinced that in crossfire it would not work. They said that in crossfire the second card becomes part of the first card and you cannot use the output connections; is that correct?

Sorry it's a bit long winded but I've been trying to get this sorted for weeks now. :telephone:
Any advice would be appreciated

Regards
Joe.

You can get all 5 or 6 monitors working in Crossfire I believe, but it wouldn't work in Eyefinity.

To get more then 5/6 monitors working, you need a GPU that has 5/6 ouputs, like the Eyefinity 6 GPU's released a while ago or for example this: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-a...vi-displayport

After that, you need the active DP to DVI/VGA adapters.

Thanks for the info Iron Warrior, I suspected as much.
Where can I get the active display port adapters, most on ebay are advertised as passive.

Regards
Joe

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Caspajack

Thanks for the info Iron Warrior, I suspected as much.
Where can I get the active display port adapters, most on ebay are advertised as passive.

Regards
Joe

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Well, you can find them on scan.co.uk and amazon.uk for sure, overclockers.co.uk and novatech, dabs and ebuyer.com will likely have them as well.

They not cheap through, they cost £20+ each. My brother needs 2 as well. :p

Powercolor do a 6870 eyefinity 6 which you should be able to crossfire with your 6850 and use up to 6 mini-DP adapters to run up to six monitors, however I believe the 6870 would clock down to 6850 speeds and would also only use 1GB of its 2GB frame buffer, so that might not be a good solution (plus the cards are pretty expensive compared to normal 6870s).

Apart from that there don't seem to be many eyefinity 6 graphics cards being produced. There was a glut of E6 5870s, but very few 6000 series. The 6990 has DVI + 4 mini-DP as standard so can drive 5 monitors (as long as you use active adapters, but then you\'re looking at a pretty hefty outlay anyway...

Still searching for the Holy Grail, I found this card on eBuyer:
Asus HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI Quad DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card

Can\'t find the full spec on it though, so I don\'t know if it will run with the monitors I have.
Any thoughts guys?

Regards
Joe.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Caspajack

Still searching for the Holy Grail, I found this card on eBuyer:
Asus HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI Quad DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card

Can't find the full spec on it though, so I don't know if it will run with the monitors I have.
Any thoughts guys?

Regards
Joe.

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That's the baby brother of the one I posted above, the specs are at the bottom of the page, you can also find the full specs for it on the ASUS website.

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/A...DCII2DI4S2GD5/ there is also this version: http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/A...DCII2DI4S1GD5/

The first one you shown and that I linked is a three slot card, meaning it will eat up three slots on the motherboard, it's huge but it's one hell of a card, it run 6 monitors.

The second only has 1GB of RAM, and imnsho there's no point in even thinking about gaming across 5 or 6 monitors with that little RAM. If you're going to go for one of those the triple-slot 2GB version would be the better option. That said, I'm not sure how well a 6950 would run 5 monitors in games - it's not the most powerful of graphics cards and can be found wanting at a relatively modest 2560x1600 res (that's relatively modest compared to the potential 5k x 2k you could easily generate from 5 monitors, obviously ;) )