Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey guys. Love the site, just signed up.

I am building a 3 monitor rig with some stuff I have laying around. I primarily play rFactor and am going to start with iRacing as well. I don't have much PC gaming experience so I know practically nothing about graphics cards.

I have 2 older 20" 1600x1200 Dell monitors (2001FP) and a Dell Optiplex 745 Core 2 Duo 1.8ghz. I think I can fit a full size card in there with a riser card. (If not I have to go half height)

So I need a 3rd monitor and a Video card to finish things off. Figure I'll probably go with a 24" since that is the sweet spot between price and size nowadays. Maybe a 32" TV if I can find a good deal.

I've read the reviews of the ATI cards are this site and they seem to be the best way to go triple head. I just noticed two things that have made my selection unclear:

1) There are a bunch of different models available from ATI that are not covered in the reviews on this site, not sure if they should be considered.

2) Non ATI branded cards like Sapphire and XFX, what's the difference? Are they any good, or have a mix of different features?

I don't mind spending 200-300 bucks on something decent that will give me 60+FPS (vsync on) up to 3 wide 1080 displays (for when I upgrade the 20's one day)

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Welcome. :)

To answer your questions, sort of...

- What cards are you looking at that aren't reviewed?

- The cards are essentially the same, unless they're obviously using an aftermarket cooler. The cards are usually all made by the same company (I believe Sapphire still make all the AMD cards) then the individual companies just slap their own sticker on it and differentiate themselves by warranties.

...

You can't do EyeFinity with three different resolution monitors. Although you can use SoftTripleHead... it's not an ideal solution as it's a software fix that a lot of games don't work with. You might be better finding a third 2001FP and upgrading all of them at the same time.

Welcome. :)

To answer your questions, sort of...

- What cards are you looking at that aren't reviewed?

- The cards are essentially the same, unless they're obviously using an aftermarket cooler. The cards are usually all made by the same company (I believe Sapphire still make all the AMD cards) then the individual companies just slap their own sticker on it and differentiate themselves by warranties.

...

You can't do EyeFinity with three different resolution monitors. Although you can use SoftTripleHead... it's not an ideal solution as it's a software fix that a lot of games don't work with. You might be better finding a third 2001FP and upgrading all of them at the same time.

Cool thanks for the answers. I actually found my answer, seems the best bang for the buck right now is the 6950. The 5's with 2GB RAM seem very expensive. I just want something that will be able to handle 3x1920x1200 and if my PC is too slow I'll upgrade that eventually.

Thank you for letting me know that all the monitors have to be the same resolution. I'll find a 1600x1200 monitor for now.

Good to know they are all the same card, but I will check the warranties, didn't even think about that!

Welcome and hope it all works out for you!

:welcome

Welcome aboard