Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'll start off by saying I love my display real estate. :) I am going to be setting up my new office in about a month and am curious as to what the best way is to achieve this goal. Currently I am running an XFX 6970 with three monitors connected and configured for Eyefinity. I recently borrowed a USB to DVI adapter and attached a 4th monitor. I would like to mount this monitor above my Eyefinity setup. I also have a 42" TV that I would like to connect and wall mount on the other side of my corner desk. What is the best way to go about running the two additional displays? Having two USB to DVI adapters seems like a non-efficient way to hook those additional displays up. Not to mention I could get a cheap video card for less than I can purchase two of those adapters. Can I add a second video card to the PC without doing a Crossfire setup? If so, is there anything special I need to do? The reason I ask that is, wouldn't adding an additional video card, not in a Crossfire configuration, try to take precedence over my current one (or vice versa)? If I can provide any additional details to help, let me know. Thanks!

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Motherboard: MSI X79A-GD65 (8D)

Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (8 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9Q2-32GBZL

PSU: Rosewill LIGHTNING Series LIGHTNING-1000 1000W ATX12V/EPS12V 80 PLUS GOLD Certified

You can add any GPU you'd like! so a HD6970 + a Geforce GT610 would work! but then every GPU would work only on the Monitors connected! so playing on the 42" Screen would be a no go!

If you'd want that. you'd have to connect 4 Monitors to the 6970 ( that works, had i running like this last week, 2xminiDP, 1x HDMi, 1x DVI) and the last one to the other GPU.
But then i assume you'd have to get an extra adapter for that!

And not sure if you get driver problems if you run AMD + Nvidia GPU's at once. it does work. but might be complicated. so maybe a HD6430 would fit better ?

P.S, USB - DVI Adapers are better now? old version were to slow to play games on them, do they work fine for Videos?

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We gonna send it to outa space!

The throughput of USB is not nearly high enough to keep up with the full demands on DVI. DVI is basically streaming bitmaps at 60 frames a second. Excusing any overhead and 1080p, that's 24bits*1080*1920*60fps and then divided by 8(bits).

That gives us 373,248,000 bytes (373 megabytes) every second.

USB 2.0 has an effective throughput of 35 MB/s
USB 3.0 has a maximum transmission speed of up to 625 MB/s

So, it is technically possible to do it on USB 3.0 without stuttering or degradation, it's still too much for two screens. And besides, video acceleration outputted through USB is going to need some serious processor overhead... unless there's some special connection I'm missing...

It's not a very feasible setup for gaming. :(

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(imagination not allowed in signature)

I know over my USB adapter I can watch Netflix videos just fine. I mostly use it just to have a browser or e-mail open. I definitely would not use the USB adapters for gaming. I wanted the additional two monitors for Xslpit, web browser, TweetDeck... things like that while I am playing on my Eyefinity setup.

I ended up purchasing a MSI ATI 6450 and got it for like $25 with the rebate! It does what I want it to do even though CCC was fighting me when trying to setup Eyefinity. It works great except I have to go in to CCC and set the profile every time I boot the machine because otherwise only one of the newly added monitors and my Eyefinity setup turns on and the hotekeys I have setup for that profile don't seem to work. I am going to play around with it some more, but overall it does work so that's all that matters.

_________________
Motherboard: MSI X79A-GD65 (8D)

Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (8 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9Q2-32GBZL

PSU: Rosewill LIGHTNING Series LIGHTNING-1000 1000W ATX12V/EPS12V 80 PLUS GOLD Certified