3 monitor video card. Looking for suggestions

[Jeff Schroeder]

Nigel,

Well, you can do it with a GTX 460, if one of the monitors is connected via HDMI. I can confirm this tomorrow. I will plug both my monitors into 1 card and add another monitor to the HDMI and see what happens. You can pick up a decent 460 for around $140.

Jeff

Windows 7 64-bit, ASUS P6X58D, i7 960 3.20GHz, 24.0GB DDR3, 12TB connected storage

[Jeff Schroeder]

Nigel,

The good news is… I plugged the 3rd monitor in the HDMI and it was recognized. The bad news is… When I went to activate it in the nvidia control panel, I got a message “this GPU supports up to 2 monitors.”

So, I can have 3 plugged in but can only use 2 at a time.

Maybe you could look into something like this: ENCORE External USB Video Adapter 1920×1080 (DVI / VGA) ENMUV-2 USB to DVI Interface https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815153012

-or-
StarTech USB VGA and DVI Dual Port External Video Adapter USB2VGADVI DVI Interface https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158201

I don’t know what the response time would be like or how these would affect your other usb devices.

Sorry,

Jeff

Windows 7 64-bit, ASUS P6X58D, i7 960 3.20GHz, 24.0GB DDR3, 12TB connected storage

[Stephen Mann]

On one of my editing workstations, I run my third monitor with a USB to DVI adapter. They run about $60 and they are designed to add displays to laptops. However, the USB/DVI adapter has no processor or RAM and uses your computer processor and steals some system RAM, so don’t plan on using it to display video. I use it to show my Project Properties, Explorer and other relatively static Vegas windows.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Nigel O’neill]

Thanks Steve and Jeff. I have something similar to a StarTech USB 2.0 video card, but I came across posts on the Internet suggesting that having 2 video drivers loaded can cause system instability issues. I did try it, albeit not with 3 monitors (just 2) and Windows 7 blue screened after a driver update, my first ever on Windows 7. Once I rolled it back, it was OK.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Dave Haynie]

I have the ATi/AMD Radeon 6970, which supports up to six monitors. Only two can be “legacy” (eg, HDMI/DVI), the rest have to be DisplayPort. This can be via Active DisplayPort adapter.

-Dave

[Colin Morris]

Hi Nigel. I was looking to do the same thing and came across this on guru3d.com.
“both AMD and NVIDIA have game support for triple monitor gaming. AMD has Eyefinity and NVIDIA calls this feature NVIDIA Surround Vision. Whereas AMD’s implementation is supported on many ‘single’ cards ever since the 5000 series, NVIDIA requires you to go SLI with the series 500 cards in order to get that feature activated. The GTX 590 however runs SLI internally and as such it’s NVIDIA’s first standalone card that supports three monitors straight out of the box.”

The reason I like the site is because they take into account higher resolutions. I’m doing a “wait and see” because I prefer to use Nvidia cards with SVP11.

[Stephen Mann]

[Nigel O'Neill] ” but I came across posts on the Internet suggesting that having 2 video drivers loaded can cause system instability issues.”

The problem comes when a program wants to call a function in the driver – and the same function exists in both drivers. Which does it use? (Not all driver functions are specific hardware related. You have audio functions in your nVidia drivers, but nVidia doesn’t make an audio board).

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Nigel O’neill]

I am currently trialling an ATI Radeon HD3450 + Winstar USB 2.0 displayport. So far so good. I am using 3 monitors right now.