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Thoughts on getting Triple Monitor Working

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  • Thoughts on getting Triple Monitor Working

    Hey all, currently I have a 1920x1080 desktop monitor as well as a Sony TV (which takes 1080 and downconverts to 720) hooked up to a 9800 GT Ultimate (the Asus frankenstein one).

    I would like to add hopefully one or two more monitors to the mix.

    My regular work is dealing with GIS 2D/3D openGL stuff but I game a little with mostly indie stuff. Most visually intense game I play is Oil Rush.

    What is the most sensible way to go about this?

    My understanding is there's the following options:
    1. Xinerama with 2 cards
    2. Nvidia Twinview with 2 cards
    3. ATI Eyefinity
    4. a GTX 295 to run 4 monitors
    5. an NVS/Matrox


    But I know Xinerama has limitations about 3D. Would this effect Oil Rush? How stable is it?
    I could go Eyefinity but I have mixed monitors (one I might add is 1280x1024). Also, how good are the newest drivers on the 5770 and 6770 cards? I've had one ATI card about 8 years ago..

    Or a GTX295. But I have a 650W PSU. I could underclock it but this seems silly.

    I could also use an NVS but they seem massively underpowered and poor for games. Would adding one to my existing card using the rendering abilities of the 9800GT Ultimate with the display outputs of the NVS. So I could theoretically have 6 monitors with a quad NVS?

  • #2
    Do you need to game on all three outputs? If not, have the third be a DisplayLink usb one. If yes, perhaps a Matrox dualhead adapter to one of your 9800's outputs would be cheapest

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    • #3
      You can use two nvidia cards (adding another one to your existing Asus card if you still have an AGP or PCIe slot left), or a dual-GPU nvidia card like 295 to replace your Asus, and then configure TwinView in NVidia X Server Settings. That's probably the easiest way.

      Dual GPU with displaylink is not yet really supported. I think it'll be xinerama only for current X server versions if you want to use screens connected to both displaylink and nvidia. Also you would require really cutting-edge code to get it working a bit.

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      • #4
        Those are some interest additional thoughts... hmm. Never thought about those DisplayLink devices. Big question is if support exists for them...!

        I'm also heavily considering a Matrix multihead box. Seems the best and most stable way, but not necessarily the cheapest.

        Does the Nvidia Twinview avoid some of the problems with Xinerama?

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        • #5
          Yes. TwinView fakes one GPU with three monitors, when you're in fact using two GPU's. This solves most of the problems with dual GPU, including the 3D acceleration.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by AlbertP View Post
            Yes. TwinView fakes one GPU with three monitors, when you're in fact using two GPU's. This solves most of the problems with dual GPU, including the 3D acceleration.
            Hmm, could you please give me a link with info about that. Thanks.

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            • #7
              Kepler supports up-to 4 monitors. But there's only gtx680 released and I really don't know are four monitors supported under linux and will lower end keplers support four as well...

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              • #8
                It is possible to have 3 monitors with full acceleration using two NVidia SLI capable GPUs and BaseMosaic option. Some drawbacks exist though, so be sure to research thoroughly before spending any money. Until Kepler comes to lower end graphics cards, the only truly multi-monitor capable NVidia GPU is the GK104 in the GTX 680.

                A cheaper alternative to the Matrox DualHead2Go/TripleHead2Go is the Zotac DP2HD (also available with mDP).

                Eyefinity is limited to the same resolution for all monitors, but that only comes into effect when you want to game across them all. Having a desktop with mixed resolution is no problem.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by tuke81 View Post
                  Kepler supports up-to 4 monitors. But there's only gtx680 released and I really don't know are four monitors supported under linux and will lower end keplers support four as well...
                  I think the answer on both questions is yes. Nouveau already supports 4 monitors with the latest code (or attempts to support it) so it'll definitely be easily possible for the nvidia team given the amount of code that's shared with the Windows blob. Also we've no reason to think that low-end cards will lack the support, unless your card doesn't have 4 outputs (there also exist 680's with only three ports).
                  Last edited by AlbertP; 14 April 2012, 11:31 AM.

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