t wrote:
Thanks Paul,





Is the fan still spinning on the video card ?

It was. I replaced the GPU with another borrowed video card temporarily.


https://www.amazon.com/POWERCOLOR-AX...eywords=HD5670

Thanks, I will look into it.



Doesn't list Eyefinity as supported...

https://www.comx-computers.co.za/AX5...y-p-108092.php



With modern enough cards, they don't really have to run hot when not
in 3D mode. So even if a card has a PCIE aux power input, it might
not actually be using all that electricity on a continuous basis.
Back in the 8800GTX era, the "idle" mode ran at 50% of "full power mode"
and the cards really wasted energy. Now, they're better than that.
Some cards could drop to 3W at idle. Some of the tech used, may not
allow hitting those targets on all cards, but at least they no longer
drop to just 50%, and should draw less than 50% at idle.


Thanks, what other lower priced cards would meet our needs of using two
22 inch Dell mnitors and a 46 inch NEC monitor NEC MultiSync V463?

Would
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 at
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-nvi...lack/5711723.p
220 be OK for our needs?

The next issue will be, AMD may switch to not offering x32 drivers
any more. So if you're buying a brand new card, that's something
else to watch for. And maybe no Win7 drivers ? Buying video cards
now is getting really dangerous. The customers are designed to
get a screwing now. And you have to contend with no stock
at the computer store. They *will* have stock of a $600 card :-)
That's what I discovered in my most recent scan of my
computer store here. Lots of missing SKUs. And then one
card was "stock 10+", which means they have a decent amount
of cards. Too bad the cards are the $600 ones. And these
aren't VEGA cards either, they're ~$250 class cards for ~$600.

I agree, the prices have increased a lot recently.

And they do have 1030 cards - but too bad the connector mix on
the front isn't all that good. I wish they'd just drop the
pretense and put three DisplayPort on it and be done with it.
Then the user can go shopping for a pile of adapters...

Paul

As usual, your in depth guidance and advice is appreciated.

That card has three different connectors on it. Could be
HDMI, DisplayPort, and some flavor of DVI. Do you think
that'll cover it ?

https://www.pny.com/ProductImages//8...TX-1050-fr.png

The V463 is HD (1920x1080) so isn't going to be a problem
resolution-wise for any of those connectors.

And based on size, a 22" monitor probably isn't a monster
either.

*******

Normally, video cards are dual head. There are two logical
display channels in the card, they feed a crossbar that could
have five connectors on it, and 2-of-5 connectors work.

When Eyefinity came along, it allowed a logical display channel
to feed a 1x3 matrix of displays. The displays would all have
the same native resolution. And the "panorama" would be laid
across the three monitors. The first company to do this
sort of thing, was Matrox, with their external solution for
using one connector to drive two or three monitors.

But something similar was done local to the crossbar block
inside the GPU. I think the AMD implementation allowed
up to six monitors. Implemented as two 1x3 arrays. I can
only guess that this uses up the two logical display
channels. I'm not sure whether NVidia goes head to
head with them, and also supports up to two 1x3 arrays.

I don't really understand the significance of the two logical
display channels. It's existed for a dogs age. Back when
a video card with two connectors was invented, one connector
would do 1600x1200 and the other might do 1024x768. They
didn't even make it back then, so they were both the same.
Back then, making "DACs" was "hard", and for some reason they
didn't like to make two identical ones. So somewhere around
that time, some bright individual decided to drive the two
of them with logical display channels.

Sometimes, you can see latency issues between the two logical
display channels. So you don't really want to use both of
them, if you want a "seamless" display. For example you
could have two CRTs (zero thru-delay) and see one screen
update out of phase with the other screen.

And that's where the Eyefinity concept comes in. The
monitors would be perfectly in sync, because the data
being fed to them is a 5760x1080 block in your case.
And the crossbar makes three 1920x1080 in-phase out of it.
The monitors can still have different "thru-delay". Some
monitors, it takes four frame times for a pixel on the
input connector, to become a pixel on the panel. And
some panels can be faster in thru-delay than others.
This can result in a slight disparity that only a gamer
would notice.

"AMD Eyefinity"
"NVidia Surround"

Check your monitors and make sure the connector mix
is going to work.

http://www.htgsd.com/information-tec...g-with-nvidia/

Paul