Widescreen Gaming Forum

This is probably a stupid question, and I'm almost sure I know what the answer is, but I just need to clear something up :)

I've acquired 3 BenQ monitors with DVI and VGA connectors. All 1920x1200.

Now, my XFX 6950 has 2 DVI connectors, 1 HDMi and 2 mini displayport.

Currently, I've got two monitors connected via HDMI, and another connected via a passive mini displayport to HDMI adapter.

I can enable any two monitors I want at a single time, but the windows drivers don't allow me to enable all 3, and the catalyst control panel only seems to detect two at any given time. No I've heard that I need an active adapter for dp > dvi, but I can actually get output on the monitor connected to the passive one, just not at the same time as the other two! (and the same goes for every other combination of monitors, only two at once!)

For the time being I'm just connecting the 3rd monitor to the onboard graphics instead, but obviously this isn't going to work for gaming :).

Anyone got any ideas? Do I just need that active mini DP adapter? Or I've read that a passive DP > VGA adapter could do the trick too?

Thanks :)

With the 6950 the DVI, DVI-D and HDMI ports all share the same bandwidth, so you can only use two of them at a time, if you want to use a 3rd you need to use an active dp-dvi adaptor, which you can pickup for under £20, the best solution is to use both display ports as they are independent channels.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/xfx-active-mini-dp-to-single-link-dvi-dongle-retail-boxed

Brilliant, that makes perfect sense.

Thanks very much!