Jump to content

Graphic card to run 4 displays

Dos_Box

By Dos_Box
in Hardware

 Share

Recommended Posts

Dos_Box

Dos_Box

Posted
Posted

As the problem highlighted by Photoshop Elements the other week has shown, I am currently in need of a card that will suppor 4 dispays at once.

I have 2x 23" full 1080p monitos with HDMI\DVI and 2x 19" HP's with DVI.

What I need is a card that will support all 4, as currently I have 2 running off a Radeon 48xx and 1 19" running off an Nvidia 7100 card I had laying aroung to replace the Quadro that prevented PSE from starting.

Anyone know of such a card? Max spend £150.

And yes, it should game well also (well, when you're the boss you too can engage in some lunchtime deathmatching!)

ZeroHour

ZeroHour

Posted
Posted

There is not really a proper setup tbh that can do this yet.

Adobe has issues with SLI/crossfire acceleration as well I believe (when searching for a solution to your adobe problem)

I would probably disable acceleration and put your card back in and you should be good to go.

localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted (edited)
Ahh but without having the rebuy monitors with display port as good ones are expensive and active converts can be expensive I believe.

 

Adapters are around £15 a shot. So, yes, you'd have to add an extra £60 to that cost. However, that's the cheapest you're going to get 4x outputs on a single card. Matrox are the other option and they're £400+.

 

Whatever the case, the end result with a single card and so many outputs will be that you're going to get questionable gaming performance IME.

 

Edit: Scan have some for £10 a go. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-mini-displayport-11a-to-dvi-d-single-link-adaptor-cable-pc-mac and http://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-hdminidp-hdmi-mini-display-port-11a-to-hdmi-13b-adaptor-cable-(apple-compatiable)

Edited by localzuk
  • Thanks 1
ZeroHour

ZeroHour

Posted
Posted
Adapters are around £15 a shot. So, yes, you'd have to add an extra £60 to that cost. However, that's the cheapest you're going to get 4x outputs on a single card. Matrox are the other option and they're £400+.

 

Whatever the case, the end result with a single card and so many outputs will be that you're going to get questionable gaming performance IME.

 

Edit: Scan have some for £10 a go. Scan.co.uk: Mini Display Port 1.1a to DVI Adaptor Cable (Apple Compatible) - HDMINIDP-DVI and http://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-hdminidp-hdmi-mini-display-port-11a-to-hdmi-13b-adaptor-cable-(apple-compatiable)

 

Ahh I was told you really needed active converters and not passive, that could work okay but tbh like you say gaming is not good at that.

localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted
Ahh I was told you really needed active converters and not passive, that could work okay but tbh like you say gaming is not good at that.

 

To be honest, I've never come across any company selling active adapters. Even Apple only sell passive ones with their DisplayPort fitted notebooks. I've got 1 machine at work which has a DisplayPort and it came with a passive adapter to DVI which works perfectly.

Guest Guest

Guest Guest

Posted
Posted
Ahh I was told you really needed active converters and not passive, that could work okay but tbh like you say gaming is not good at that.

 

I believe you only need active for Dual Link DVI. You can run 1080p@60hz on single link

Chillibear

Chillibear

Posted
Posted
I believe you only need active for Dual Link DVI. You can run 1080p@60hz on single link

 

That's correct, you only need it for the higher dual link resolutions. I use an active Display Port->DVI with my (now old) Apple Cinema display. This adapter is resold by several companies Scan.co.uk: 490-11917 - Dell / Bizlink Active DisplayPort to DVI (Dual Link) Adapter - 1080P Ready - not sure if there are any others on the market, but it works well.

Cue

Cue

Posted
Posted (edited)

Some of you are way overcomplicating this, all you need is a second graphics card, no need for Crossfire/SLI, just stick them both in and make sure the drivers are installed, easy 4 displays providing the cards have two usable heads.

 

Grab a GTX460, stick it in as a replacement for the 7100, you should be good to go.

Edited by Cue
Guest Guest

Guest Guest

Posted
Posted (edited)

I've been looking at a new GFX card for gaming over the last few weeks so have done abit of research. If you want 4 monitors from one card the best option imo would be to go for a ATI 68xx/69xx.

Eyefinity, UVD3, And AMD APP Compute : AMD Radeon HD 6870 And 6850: Is Barts A Step Forward?

 

The best pick imo being the 6870. It has 2 DVI and 2 displayport and is pretty much the same as the 5870 performance wise which still retails at £200+ . So for the price of teh card plus 2 £10 DP to DVI convertors you're set.

 

The total spend comes in over your budget at £190 - PowerColor HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DP Out.. | Ebuyer.com + 2x Scan.co.uk: Mini Display Port 1.1a to DVI Adaptor Cable (Apple Compatible) - HDMINIDP-DVI

 

But if you are happy with the 6850 you will come in under budget - PowerColor HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DP Out.. | Ebuyer.com + 2x Scan.co.uk: Mini Display Port 1.1a to DVI Adaptor Cable (Apple Compatible) - HDMINIDP-DVI

 

In respect to multi monitor gaming - yeah you aint going to be able to run 4 monitors off one of these card, but then you aint going to find a card under £400 which will be able to either as you would probably want to be looking towards 4gbs of frame buffer to handle that sort of resolution; 2x 2gb card in crossfire!

Edited by Guest
Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted

Even with plain old single-link DVI, DosBox would still need to buy at least two active Mini-DisplayPort to single-link DVI adapters if he went with an Eyefinity Radeon HD graphics card. These cost around £24 each. Alternatively he could spend a few pounds more and get the dual-link equivalent for £29 which will support resolutions higher than 1920×1200 (may be useful in the future?).

 

http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx

 

Connectivity Requirements: AMD Eyefinity technology is supported by graphics cards in the ATI Radeon™ HD 5400 series and higher. These cards can support up to six monitors (depending on the model), subject to the following restrictions:

 

  • A maximum of 2 legacy monitors (VGA, DVI or HDMI) can be enabled simultaneously, provided that each monitor is connected either directly or via a "passive" DisplayPort™ adapter/dongle. "Passive" adapters/dongles will NOT support more than 2 legacy monitors.
  • To enable support for more than 2 monitors, "active" DisplayPort™ adapters/dongles are required (or monitors with direct DisplayPort™ connectivity must be used).
  • Approved “active” adapters have no general connectivity restrictions with AMD Eyefinity technology.

localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted
Even with plain old single-link DVI, DosBox would still need to buy at least two active Mini-DisplayPort to single-link DVI adapters if he went with an Eyefinity Radeon HD graphics card. These cost around £24 each. Alternatively he could spend a few pounds more and get the dual-link equivalent for £29 which will support resolutions higher than 1920×1200 (may be useful in the future?).

 

AMD Eyefinity Validated Dongles

 

Indeed, with the Eyefinity stuff. Which is why I'd recommend the FirePro 2460 I linked earlier - it doesn't need active adapters (at least, there's no mention of it on the amd site). It even comes with a single passive miniDP - DVI adapter in the box. The only restriction when using DVI adapters is that the 4 ports become '2 pairs', and each pair must have identical monitors (ie. 2 x identical monitors in pair A and 2 x identical monitors in pair B, but the monitors don't have to be the same across pairs (ie. pair A does not have to be the same as pair B)). The only other restriction is that those monitors have to be set up identically in the pairs too (ie. monitors in pair A must both use same resolution etc...).

Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted
Which is why I'd recommend the FirePro 2460 I linked earlier - it doesn't need active adapters (at least, there's no mention of it on the AMD site).

From what I can gather, the GPU used in the FirePro 2460 is exactly the same as the one in the Radeon HD 5450 (RV810 a.k.a. Cedar). As mentioned below, the 5000 series cards are limited to driving a maximum of two DVI or HDMI displays because the GPU only has two TDMS clock generators.

 

As we’ve covered a number of times now, AMD has been heavily pushing Eyefinity across its entire range of Radeon HD 5000 series cards. Depending on the GPU in use the 5000 series can drive up to several monitors, however because each TMDS transmitter pair necessary for driving a DVI/HDMI port requires an independent clock source, the 5000 series can only drive 2 such ports. The bulk of AMD’s flexibility is with DisplayPorts, where they only require 1 clock source between them allowing AMD to offer upwards of 6 DisplayPorts at once. (Source)

 

"If you’re already using two DVI connectors on the board, you can’t use a passive dongle because, in theory, that would be a third TMDS signal stream," says Roger Quero, technical manager at AMD's GPU Technologies unit. "You can have two passive dongles, and the rest have to be active. Like, if you’re thinking about the six-output card, that’s six mini DisplayPorts. Two of those connections could be passive, putting out TMDS over those ports, then the rest have to be active so that we think it’s a DisplayPort monitor."

 

Currently, you’ll find active adapters available in the market for DisplayPort to VGA and DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI. You’ll also find passive dongles for DisplayPort to HDMI and DisplayPort to Single-Link DVI. Keep watching, though, and you should soon see a DisplayPort to Single-Link DVI active dongle appear. With this, Eyefinity will be able to support three Single-Link DVI monitors, side-stepping the present two-TDMS-connections-only rule. (Source)

 

The entire HD 5000 series products have Eyefinity capabilities supporting 3 outputs. The Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity Edition, however, supports six mini DisplayPort outputs, all of which can be simultaneously active.

 

The display unit on Evergreen family of GPUs was completely replaced with one that has two DACs which are used to drive the DVI ports in analog mode (for example, when a DVI to VGA converter attached to a DVI port), a maximum of six digital transmitters that can output either a DisplayPort signal or a TMDS signal which is used for either DVI or HDMI, and two clock signal generators needed to drive the digital outputs in TMDS mode. Dual-link DVI displays use two of the two TMDS/DisplayPort transmitters and one clock signal each. Single-link DVI displays and HDMI displays use one TMDS/DisplayPort transmitter and one clock signal each. DisplayPort displays use one TMDS/DisplayPort transmitter and no clock signal. (Source)

 

The Eyefinity whitepaper linked to in the FirePro Resource Center also implies this (see the example configuration on page 4).

 

If only one or two DVI/HDMI monitors are attached through a DisplayPort connector, then only simple passive adapters are required. With a passive adapter the GPU outputs the display signal required for the monitor with no conversion occurring within the adapter itself

 

AMDs website doesn't state why it is necessary to pair the displays into two identical groups. It would be interesting to know if this is used as a way around the TDMS limitation?

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing


×
×
  • Create New...