How many monitors?

[drinfernoo]

I have a single XFX Radeon HD 7870, with 2 DVI's (1 Single, 1 Dual), 1 HDMI, and 2 MiniDP's. How many monitors can i run through this one card? And I know some (if not most) of them will have to have dongles, but just curious as to how many _maximum_ it would support. If I was going to do more than three, I'd probably buy another card and Crossfire :P

[Haldi]

uhm.... i think the maximum that was reached was 36 Monitors! But then you'd need Special Adapters and 6 mini DP ports ;)

But with your Card you can run 2x DVI(and then HDMI is blocked) + 2 mini DP. So 4 Screens should work :)

Or 1x DVI and 1x HDMI.

[drinfernoo]

If I took advantage of miniDP daisy-chaining, could I run 2 DVIs + 6 miniDPs? 3 on each port, for a total of 8?

[Haldi]

There are no Monitors with Daisy Chain, neither are the MST Hubs !

So theoretically Yes you Could. Practically nope. Maximum is 6 Monitors if you get a "Eyefinity 6" Card with 6 mini DP Cables. .. okay... 12 if you try that DP-> 2x HDMI adapter from... Zotac was it ?

[drinfernoo]

Gotcha. I thought there were some monitors that could. I was just curious, I'm pretty happy with my 3x1 set up anyway. What if I had two cards?

[Haldi]

IF you run Crossfire -> Nope. You need to connect all Monitors to one Card!
If you run an addition Card -> Yes, but then you cant use it to increase your "Eyefinity" Only extended mode.

[drinfernoo]

So my games wouldn't see five monitors, for example, as one 9600*1080 unless they're all on one card?

[Haldi]

exactly

[drinfernoo]

Is this the same story with nVidia?

[Haldi]

Nope. old nvidia supports 2Monitor per GPU. In SLI you could run 3Monitor surround setup.
With new 600er series you can run 3Monitor surround+1extenden as you wish. On a single GPU or in SLI connected as you like. But IIRC you cant connect 5Monitors. So there is no 5P mode.