Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi guys,
Need a little info please. I have two 4870hds (crossfire) running on windows XP pro SP3 on a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P mobo. I would like to set up three monitors to see if I like it. My center monitor is a Dell2007 FP and I'll probably use two CRT's at first for the sides. What software or other hardware will I need to get this going? It will be temporary until I can get three matching monitors.
I play Cod4 mostly and believe the screen settings can be set properly in game. What else would need to be done?

Thanks in advance for your help.

You will need a DisplayPort adapter. One of the monitors needs to use the Displayport out on your graphics card.

I recommend getting an analog one on ebay ($10). Displyport to VGA works great; there are many problems reported with the digital DisplayPort to HDMI and DVI.

You will probably also need various adapters to go from your video cards to the vga inputs of your crts. You can get DVI-I to VGA (the dvi signal includes the analog signal), but you may need one monitor with a digital input depending on the ports on your card.


Beyond that, all the monitors should run the same resolution.

With 2 Cards and Crossfire you're not forced to put all 3 screens on one card ?
It should be possible to use 2x DVI Port on first card and 1x DVI port on 2nd Card.

But i'm not sure if you can setup a Eyefinity System with different monitors. (what exactly are CRT's ?)

With 2 Cards and Crossfire you're not forced to put all 3 screens on one card ?
It should be possible to use 2x DVI Port on first card and 1x DVI port on 2nd Card.

But i'm not sure if you can setup a Eyefinity System with different monitors. (what exactly are CRT's ?)

All the monitors have to be connected to one card.

CRt is a cathode ray tube, one of those big boxy monitors from yesteryear.

So even tho I've got four video ports I have to have the monitors connected to one card? Dog buggers. Ebay again! A friend has a Y-connector that supports two monitors off a single port. Is that the adapter your talking about? Or the dongle that goes from old style CRT to modern DVI (like what came with the cards)?
Thanks for the quick replies guys.

will it work with xp?

Y adapter is not gonna work.

and that dell 2007fp is a 1600 x 1200 monitor. BOTH of your other monitors need to be 1600x1200 as well, or else everythings going to get all wonked out

Hello again.
I got my 2 4870hd's to show three monitors. Kinda fiddled with them to get them lined up. They look OK but not great but I'm happy for now. I have moved icons from screen to screen and ran programs off each one. Now comes the question.How do I stretch CoD4 across all three at 1024 X 768? I tried 3072 X 768 in my config file in game but no luck. The ingame resolutions show just the basic sizes. Do I need the Fixer? Again I appreciate all your help and prompt replies. Cheers, Darth.

sounds like you have your monitors setup as individual resolutions.
you have to configure your drivers to have "one" resolution.
i dont have an ati card that supports eyefinity so i cant help you there, but i know in the monitor config is where you need to be.
you need to get 1x resolution of whatever res you want to game at, make your desktop res match that, then configure the game for that res and go.

you mentioned cod, youll have to check out the detailed report on cod to get it looking right.
click games from the top and do a search on duty (hehe, i said duty), choose your game and read the report to see how to get it going

I have everything setup hardware-wise. Showing three monitors semi-correctly. When I start CoD4 I get the SoftTH logos on the side monitors and black screen on the middle. I'm looking online now for a fix. Have read a couple of how to's but they were pretty vague.
My setup is 1024X 768 on my CRT sides (but might get changed) and 1600X 1200 on my Dell 2007 middle. SoftTh shows 3072X768 on V1.08. I don't have any bezel correction right now.
Any ideas as to getting CoD4 to play? Thanks again. I must say you guys are pretty fast on the replies. You get paid a comission? LOL

Here's my SoftTH config if you need it.


;
; SoftTH 1.08 configuration file
; by Kegetys, http://www.kegetys.net
;

[config]
; deviceIDLeft/right: Direct3D device ID's of left and right monitor, or 'auto' for automatic
; secondaryWidth/Height: Left&right monitor resolution, or 'auto' to use same as middle screen resolution
; secondaryRefresh: Refresh rate of left & right monitors, or 'auto' for automatic
; secondaryFormat: Secondary device image format, 'RGB32', 'RGB16' or 'RGB16D'.
; borderSize: Size in pixels of frame border between monitors that is discarded
; noHotkeys: Set to 1 to disable all hotkeys
; noOSD: Set to 1 to disable on-screen display when changing settings (Also disables GDI+ initialization)
deviceIDLeft=auto
deviceIDright=auto
secondaryWidth=1024
secondaryHeight=768
secondaryRefresh=auto
secondaryFormat=RGB16D
borderSize=0
sideExtraWidth=auto
noHotkeys=0
noOSD=0

[Direct3D]
; ** Advanced setting for Direct3D games **
; lensCorrection: Lens correction, set to 1 to enable support. >1 to enable by default
; lensCorrectionEdge: Lens correction edge offset
; hideNondefaultDevices: Hides all but the default adapter from the game
; forceHorizontalFOV: Forces horizontal FOV to be three times as wide
; forceResolutionWidth/Height: Forces device to be created with this resolution
; force16bitDepth: Force game to use 16bit depth buffer, can improve performance and reduce memory use
; sleepBeforeRead: Time in ms to sleep before reading back buffer data from video card
; useMultihead: Uses multihead features of primary card if available, can increase performance and reduce memory use
; delayedPresent: When useMultihead enabled, delay primary monitor present to sync with secondary head
; swapOrder: Swap order at which the frame contents are copied
; d3d8dll: Path to D3D8.dll/D3D9.dll to use or auto for automatic (system32 dir)
lensCorrection=0
lensCorrectionEdge=0
cylindicalCorretionAngle=0
hideNondefaultDevices=0
forceHorizontalFOV=0
forceResolutionWidth=0
forceResolutionHeight=0
force16bitDepth=0
sleepBeforeRead=2
useMultihead=1
delayedPresent=0
swapOrder=0
autoSquash=0
d3d8dll=auto

[hooks]
; Win32 API hooking settings - Used for some extra compatibility and game-specific fixes
; doHooking: Enable/disable hooks in Direct3D, with OpenGL hooks are always enabled
; doScaleMouseCoordinates: Scale mouse coordinates for getCursorPos to fix games which do not handle negative screen coordinates properly
; doScaleFromLeftScreen: Spread out mouse coordinates from left screen to full width
; doScaleWindowRects: Scale focus window WindowRect
; doScaleClientRects: Scale focus window ClientRect
; mouseXoffset: Number of pixels to offset mouse cursor position in X axis, to fix misplaced cursor due to negative screen coordinates. auto = use X resolution
doHooking=1
doScaleMouseCoordinates=1
doScaleFromLeftScreen=0
doScaleWindowRects=0
doScaleClientRects=1
mouseXoffset=auto

; Triplehead screenmodes to add to resolutions list (width multiplied by 3 and border added)
; 'auto' adds current primary monitor desktop resolution
; Must be last in this file
[modes]
800x600x60
800x600x75
800x600x85
1024x768x60
1024x768x75
1024x768x85
1280x960x60
1280x960x75
1280x960x85
1280x1024x60
1280x1024x75
1280x1024x85
1600x1200x60
1600x1200x75
1600x1200x85
3072x768x75
auto

Try SoftTH2.0, It should auto configure.
Remember you need the SoftTH files next to the .exe