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looking for a budget video card to run 3 monitors. 2xdvi and 1 hdmi

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  • Sep 9th, 2013 12:33 am
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Sr. Member
Dec 13, 2006
722 posts
652 upvotes
Vancouver

looking for a budget video card to run 3 monitors. 2xdvi and 1 hdmi

so i want to run 3 monitors, right now i have a gtx 9800 , but only has 2 dvi ports. Im getting a new monitor, going to run 3, The're so many video cards out there, ive read radeon is the way to go... looking at ncix, ive also read that any 75-77x series would suffice.. anyone have any helpful input?
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Deal Addict
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Jul 13, 2010
1999 posts
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Ottawa
I'm running the 7850 and think it has dropped below $200 now.
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Sep 21, 2012
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Mississauga
if you are looking to single card nvida solutions, do your research first. Most nvida cards will not output a third monitor. Even if they have more than 3 ports.
Deal Addict
Jan 13, 2009
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Oakville
meatwagon wrote: so i want to run 3 monitors, right now i have a gtx 9800 , but only has 2 dvi ports. Im getting a new monitor, going to run 3, The're so many video cards out there, ive read radeon is the way to go... looking at ncix, ive also read that any 75-77x series would suffice.. anyone have any helpful input?
I was in perfectly same situation. Ended with 6770.
Cannot say that i'm really happy, but it does the trick, so I'm fine. :)
Sr. Member
Dec 13, 2006
722 posts
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Vancouver
What aren't you happy with?

As for nvidia i know they don't support 3 displays. That's why I said radeon.. Thanks
Deal Fanatic
May 25, 2005
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St. Catharines
KosMos wrote: I was in perfectly same situation. Ended with 6770.
Cannot say that i'm really happy, but it does the trick, so I'm fine. :)
Radeon HD7750 would be a better choice then the HD 6770 which is huge power hog and hot compared the to the HD7750. It's also around the same the performance level.
Member
Jan 23, 2011
431 posts
319 upvotes
I could only find one 7750 that came with dual DVI and it used DDR3 ram, that's why I linked those 7770s. It's the best card for the money for 3 monitors and it even has some gaming chops.
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Nov 27, 2003
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Do you still need to have a Display Port input for the 3rd monitor for the AMD cards?
Member
Jan 23, 2011
431 posts
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BooR4dL3y wrote: Do you still need to have a Display Port input for the 3rd monitor for the AMD cards?
For eyefinity yes, but you don't really need eyefinity unless you're gaming. For straight extended desktop you can use any connections.

The only exception is the Sapphire FLEX boards, (one of which I linked). They can use an HDMI to DVI adapter for Eyefinity.
Deal Addict
Jan 13, 2009
1567 posts
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Oakville
meatwagon wrote: What aren't you happy with?

As for nvidia i know they don't support 3 displays. That's why I said radeon.. Thanks
1) Sometimes it doesnt not work properly with my personal multi-monitor config.
I have a weird config of 18+27+46.
In some combinations (connection from tv\monitor to ATI) PC doesnt even start! :confused:
Sometimes when PC wakes up from the sleep - ATI becoming "confused" and switching resolutions between 18 and 27 monitors (basically it displays 1280x1024 on 27 and 1920x1200 on 18), pushing PC back to sleep and waking it up again usually helps. :confused:
Sometimes it does not automatically recognize turned on TV (which is turned off most of the time), so I need to go to screen resolution settings and manually click "detect". :confused:

2) I'm missing CUDA possibility sometimes.

3) latest nvidias do have 3+monitor support. :)
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Feb 16, 2006
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Vancouver
I wish Nvidia would make it clearer exactly what they offer on their cards in terms of LUT's (Look Up Table). I have not looked into this in over a year but previously I've not been able to find a document that clarifies exactly what you get on a card.

Not that AMD/ATi is any clearer with their Radeon cards but I found what I needed to know via image editing forums and then confirmed the following by using one of their cards, a HD5770.

I know that with an AMD Radeon card offering the EyeFinity feature you get a card with a dedicated LUT for each one of the 3 ports on the back of the card. For calibrating monitors using a colorimeter device like a Spyder4 Pro/Elite or a Colormunki Display so that each monitor looks near identical, if you're not using high end monitors like a Dell U2413, NEC PA241, etc that have programmable LUT's in the monitor, then you have to rely on using a video card with a dedicated LUT for each port.

The LUT holds data loaded from a custom ICC profile created by the colorimeter during the calibration process. 3 monitors - requires 3 ICC files - requires 3 LUT's to hold each file. Anything else and you will have 2 or more monitors sharing the data from a single ICC profile and of those, only one monitor will have accurate colors.

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Sr. Member
Dec 13, 2006
722 posts
652 upvotes
Vancouver
i think performance vs price, ill pay the extra and get the 7770 , thanks guys!

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