Widescreen Gaming Forum

I guess the $100 adapter is atleast an option for those with existing screens, for those buying I would probably try to find a native DP monitor.

Now the question is for the 6x DP card will you need active adapters? or will it be setup so that a passive will work as obviously passive works on the current card just that its not internally configured to work once you have the 3rd monitor. If they divide out the "pipelines" i'll call them correctly it should work with a passive adapter I think.

At a guess I'd imagine you'd only need one or two (at most) active adapters to run 6 screens. Passive adapters would work on the rest.

just purchased from dell -

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Cables/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=330-5521

paid extra $21+ for next day delivery, hopefully this adapter arrives this monday 9/28 along with my 3x samsung 2443BWT and 5870.

now just awaiting confirmation email and delivery date from dell, lets hope this works!!!

oh and if this doesnt, low blow to me.

then definitley selling th2g and 1 monitor for a dell 2408wfp but lets keep positive everyone, from the picture that FragU provided -

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q191/Wheelerdealers/TripleHDTV-cables.jpg

it looks just about right and SHOULD work..

we'll see, i'll keep every posted

Yep, looks like we've solved the active adapter mystery. I'm still not overly happy about the $100 port tax though.

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my problem is i'm in the UK and nowhere has the Display Port Monitors yet, so thats not an option, all the $100 adapters are US, i'd try Dell but they dont ship to the UK from their US site, so if anyones willing to try one in the US that would be a great help.

On the Iracing forums someone asked if DP to VGA are any different, they are about £30 compared to £6 for a DP to DVI .. would this make any difference to the signal and how the 5870 see's it ?

Both the Dell 2408 and U2410 are available in the UK and have DisplayPort.

I suppose DisplayPort to VGA might work, but at this point I really wouldn't want to say one way or t'other.

from the picture that FragU provided -

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q191/Wheelerdealers/TripleHDTV-cables.jpg

it looks just about right and SHOULD work..

we'll see, i'll keep every posted

That's odd. Something messed up the link when I uploaded that pic back in page 2 of this thread. Oh well it's fixed now.

That EF setup was working great when I saw it at the launch event (incidentally it was utilizing 4 adapters to go to 3-HDMI). I don't see why the Dell adapter wouldn't work fine.

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

Can't get these locally in NZ, unless my google-fu is weak :(

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Dipping bags at Mach1.9

I just had a thought. Would two 5000 series cards (not in Crossfire) allow you to have 4 DVI ports active? Because it seems buying two 5850 cards (for $250 a piece) would come out to the same as a single 5870 (for $400) + $100 active-DP>DVI adapter. So with 2 cards you could run 4x DVI monitors without any adapters or potential power 6 displays (4x DVI and 2x DP) or 5x DVI displays with only a single active adapter. Plus if ATI ever gets CrossFire and Eyefinity working together it will probably end up being more powerful. What do you guys think?

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That EF setup was working great when I saw it at the launch event (incidentally it was utilizing 4 adapters to go to 3-HDMI). I don't see why the Dell adapter wouldn't work fine.

lol GeneralAdmission dont scare me man!!! it should be the same adapter right? we'll see!!!!!

i was a little confused with the passive & active DP->DVI adapters so i wikipedia'd for a little bit and came up with


Wikipedia (Displayport)

The video signal is not compatible with DVI or HDMI, but a DisplayPort connector can pass these signals through. While DVI and HDMI require separate clock signals, DisplayPort embeds the clock in the data signal. The data transmission protocol in DisplayPort is based on micro packets and is extensible for future feature additions, whereas DVI/HDMI transmission protocol is a Serial Data Stream at a multiple of 10 of the pixel clock rate.

So the "Active" DP->DVI takes the incoming DP packets, splits the DATA from the CLOCK SIGNALS, and formats them into the proper protocol and to the proper pins on the DVI connector


Then i started looking at the ATI unveiling of the 5870, and the slideshows of the architecture.







Now, display port has a little more bandwidth than dual-link DVI. so why are they using 2 of the DP-piplines for the DL-DVI port on the card?

i'm guessing 1 pipline is for the video data (un-packeted, and stripped of timing data so that it can be read by DVI), and 1 pipeline is used to simulate the clock signal that DVI needs.

so i'm guessing the cards we can get now are (2xDL-DVI,HDMI,DP) are configured on the card & firmware to look like this




i'm just confused why we can use the #5 HDMI pipeline & #6 displayport pipeline as a timing signal for the HDMI signal (DVI and HDMI share the same singal type)

or

are the 2 DAC's used in conjunction with the 2nd displayport-pipline configured for a clock signal, and there isnt a 3rd DAC to provide a clock signal for the HDMI output?

is this why we need a ACTIVE DP->DVI adapter to provide a clock signal for a 3rd (dvi or hdmi) display??



Sorry for the long post, but i've been reading all this stuff since it was first unveiled, and i need to get it out of my head and into the open before my brain fries thinking about it all.

everywhere i check they are sold out, wish i could of gotten ahold of one cause then i'd use a Apple miniDP-DVI active converter that i have for my macbookpro to connect to my 30" apple display, to test out some of these ideas.

-Ray