ATI Crossfire and 3 Monitor support

[Caddywampus]

would one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813121016

plus 3 of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814195001

support 3 of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16824002270

and surround gaming?

[JKeefe]

According to Matrox 2400x600 is the max res in all modes if you are using Crossfire:
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/offhome/support/th2go/compatibility.cfm#list

This is different than back in April/May, when Crossfire was not supported at all, so it appears things are getting better. However, nVidia is still the way to go.

[Caddywampus]

According to Matrox 2400x600 is the max res in all modes if you are using Crossfire:
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/offhome/support/th2go/compatibility.cfm#list

This is different than back in April/May, when Crossfire was not supported at all, so it appears things are getting better. However, nVidia is still the way to go.

im not talking about using a matrox product, im talking about plugging the 3 DVI inputs from the monitors into the 3 DVI outputs in the videocards...

[Living Ghost]

1. That mobo won't. You'd need a DFi mobo with 3 PCi-E slots
2. You need 1 CF card, and 2 more regular x1900xt (not xtx)
3. You can only use the DVi slot(s) on the CF card (I think)

[Paradigm Shifter]

Let's see if I can sort some apparent issues out.

CrossFire (like SLI) outputs to one monitor. One. No more.

The X1900XT(X) has two dual-link DVI ports. The X1900CF has one, and a weird port that allows CrossFire to actually work.

In order to run three screens in 'surround' mode, you would need some way of tricking Windows into believing that the res of all three monitors combined was the 'native' res of a 'single' panel. I believe that is how the TripleHead2Go works.

So you can't use SLI/CrossFire, as it outputs to one display. Even if you had it working in Windows without SLI/CrossFire enabled, all the monitors but one would go dark. Disabling SLI/CrossFire would light them all up again.

To the best of my knowledge, without specific support from a game (such as some of the heavy duty flight sims out there) there is no way of running 'surround' off of multiple graphics cards. Certainly in OpenGL and probably in Direct3D.

If you got a normal SLI board (such as the A8N32-SLI) or an RD580 (CrossFire3200) board and put two X1900XT's in it, you could run four monitors off it. To get Windows to treat all of them how I think you would want it to, you'd need to use a progam like UltraMon. I have no clue how games would handle it, however. They might appear across all of the screens, they might display on just one. The latter is the most likely option. Of course, they might not work at all...

TripleHead2Go is the one method I am currently aware of, of 'surround' gaming.

[BHawthorne]

would one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813121016

plus 3 of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814195001

support 3 of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16824002270

and surround gaming?

Won't work without going TH2G. Also, ATI+TH2G won't work very well because of resolution limitations. 3D hardware acceleration out of multiple ports across multiple cards doesn't work period. You can't use 3 video cards to 3 monitors and expect your 3d game to push pixels to all 3 monitors. At most hardware acceleration across same card with 2 ports out works. Otherwise use TH2G. Blame limitations in hardware and XP for this.

TH2G wouldn't have been invented if games worked pushing to 3 monitors from 3 ports on a multiple video card setup. Trust me when I say it's not gonna work. Most of us in here learned the hard way on SLI systems before looking into TH2G.

[Tucson]

Yeah for real. What are you smoking...