Hi,

I would like to ask if someone has knowlodge or perhaps own/experience this kind of a machine, Im buying a desktop with a plan of having multiple monitor 3 or 4,now my question is, i want to used the sli or crossfire config with each video card has 2 dvi or vga connector, does this 2 connection wil help me achieve my goal of 4 monitor. 1 monitor each dvi or vga ports. How about in our lovely linux OS this will have no problem right.

I just read, i can use 4 or 3 using 2 video card but the video card is capable of multidisplay.

I hope someone out there would be kind to share his/her knowledge or enlight me as to what i planning to achieve..

Thanks in advance for future input..

I have had 4 monitors working with 2 nvidia geforce cards in the past, but they werent SLI.
And am currently running 3 (my personal sweet spot), with a radeon HD5770.

Most modern cards these days support multi-head.

I have never tested it with SLI/Crossfire but i dont imagine it would cause any problems.

Thansk for the responce.

I done my reading about what i want, Using 3,4 or 5 display now is available using 1 card AMD radeon HD 6770 with eyefinity technology Im using this one and i had some question about the functionality of the multidisplay in linux, does it detect automatically or we should configure manually, Others says that newer linux distro now has autodetect function using mutli display.I guess its true cause now im using ubuntu lucyd with my asus laptop using 1 vga extra monitor and its autodetect. But how about three im planning plugging 1 monitor on the HDMI but i dont have adapter from HDMI to VGA cause only vga monitor is available here at the office. About the inquiry on SLI/Crossfire using multi display i mention it for the purpose of gaming.DUal boot for game OS like XP and For linux for productivity and work..

To clear things up a little:No, if you use SLI/CrossfireX you can not use all outputs. You only can use them all if you deactivate SLI/CrossfireX.

That simply is because they don't exist. While DVI-I ports had an integrated analog signal for use with simple adapters HDMI doesn't have that, so no simple HDMI to VGA adapter.

THanks for the input..

Yup thats what i want to know and confirm upon my reading about the SLI/Crossfire..

About the DVI-I to VGA, now i know...I guess in need to buy the HDMI-DVI-VGA adapter since i saw it in the store this morning.

I have used two different setups. 4 monitors connected to two Nvidia 250GTs (no sli), this used Xinerama and therefore was a bit of pain to get sorted and also performance wasn't all that good really. It was setup as 4 servers joined using Xinerama. It was fine for day to day type stuff. Email, web, coding etc.

Now I use a much better setup using one HD 6850 card and three monitors in a row (the setup could drive 4 monitors, two on mini-DPs and two on DVI/HDMI). This uses Eyefinity and therefore you don't need Xinerama and I think it performs better for it. Works very well with KDE4, no reason why any other window manager wouldn't do just as well. AMDs ATI drivers are much much better in Linux these days. I think three in a row is optimal. 4, 2 up to down was a bit hard on the neck sometimes. 4 does work well if you are stood in front of the screens though. Like a stock market trade or something. ;-)

Enjoy,
Phil

@sniff: i would like to ask about the HD 6850, when you say it works for you in 3 setup and maybe 4 monitor what OS are you reffering, If windows, had you tried it the 3 monitor setup on linux how about using AMD driver.
Im using my laptop with one extra monitor and having pain to get working the Nvidia 310M cuda actually i surrender for now to get it working and i believe the laptop is using the onboard intel graphics and
and the built in video driver in linux

Hey, I am using it in Linux. Latest AMD driver. The model of card I have is XFX HD6850 (their model no HD-685X-ZCFC), its a UK model in case there are differences. It has two mini-DP connectors, 2DVI (only one does vga I think), and a HDMI. To use it with 3 or 4 monitors then you have to use at least one of the mini-DP connections. So I have connected three DVI monitors. On on each of the DVI connectors, and the other on an active adapter connected to a mini-DP port. To add a fourth monitor it would need to be connected to the other mini-DP port to work.

I hope that makes sense.
Phil

@sniff: Thanks for a speedy reply..thnx,thnx, In addition i would like to ask about using the AMD driver in linux does it give you some pain by configuring some xorg files or some additional conf or some tweeks or text file conf or is it seemlessly plug and go.

I went from nvidia to ati. So I uninstalled the nvidia drivers, installed the ati drivers. Deleted my existing xorg.conf file and rebooted. It started up with a basic setup in place and then there is a graphical setup program called AMD Catalyst Control Centre which you use to setup the monitors. Dead simple.