[rollingbear]

Hi there, I'm new to the forum and kinda new to building a gaming rig. I want to do triple 1920x1080 23" lcd monitors on dvi and a small 15" monitor on vga to surf the web and watch movies on while i game. but i also want to be able to able to play movies on the big tv down stairs and the tv in the bed room on hdmi... but not all at the same time. what do i need to get this done?

I am looking at a msi gtx 660 ti oc power edition as my video card... will this do all that i want and still run games at a very high level?
i would like to run with one card for now and sli 2 660s when i get every thing built.

this is what i have so far
msi z77a-gd65 mother board
3770k processer
4gb of hyperx predator 2133 memory & 4gbmore to come soon
hx850 psu

i have two of the three 23" monitors and the 15" web monitor

 

[Paradigm Shifter]

There is a lot of variance in multimonitor setups at the minute.

If you want a single card...

The cards that allow four monitors (three in Surround and an 'accessory') are DVI, DVI, HDMI and DisPort (unless you buy a non-rerefence card with a different port layout...) so having a VGA monitor as an accessory display will be troublesome - requiring costly adaptors, most likely.

If you've not got the monitors already (you don't have all of them) then make your life a little easier by getting something with DVI and DisplayPort. You can run a monitor via the HDMI port on the cards with an HDMI->DVI cable.

If you want SLI...

It's a little easier as you have to mix what ports on which card the monitor is connected to (nVidia's website gives details there)...

But to be honest, if you want to run a VGA monitor, I'd suggest running it off a cheap secondary card, like a GT610 or something like that.

edit: Surround is great, but setting it up can be a challenge. While mixing monitors can work (I do it myself) it's not a path I would really recommend because it can have the strangest issues.

 

[rollingbear]

hi there thanks for the response, I like the idea of running a 2nd small card to just run the VGA monitor. i have an old 9500gt card would that work to just drive the VGA monitor for now and then run the gtx 660 for my surround set up. i already have two of the same 23" monitors and will defiantly buy a 3rd matching one when i see it pop up on line. so i will have to get a display port to dvi adapter cable. in the future i can steal my daughters 18" monitor w/ dvi connection and get her a bigger monitor but i want to finish this build before i go shelling out the cash for that right now. Plus i really like the small monitor where it is.

ok next question ... should i wait and save up to get the gtx670 card with 256 bus or am i ok with the gtx 660ti and its 192 bus is it really necessary for triple monitors?
thanks

 

[Paradigm Shifter]

Kepler is seriously memory bandwidth limited, and Surround only makes it worse because of the sheer number of pixels that need to be pushed. If you intend to do any serious gaming in Surround, you'll kick yourself if you don't go with the wider memory bus.

Make sure that the 9500GT is supported by the same drivers as the 600 series card(s)... you really don't want to go mixing drivers if you can help it; it just makes life difficult.

Depending on the monitor brand you may get a nasty shock with buying one separately - we've had a couple of instances in the nVidia Surround thread recently where people have "identical" monitors, but have bought them at different times and they don't work 100% in Surround because they're not actually identical - the manufacturer has changed something. Acer seems particularly bad at tweaking the specs of their monitors (particularly in the normally undocumented sync polarity specification) without incrementing revision numbers... or, indeed, giving any indication they've done it at all.

If you have any problems, pop into the Surround thread and we'll see what we can do to help. It's a centralised meeting place for all the Surrounders.

 

[rollingbear]

i wanted to say thanks again, i did check and yes the two cards would use the same driver so that's what i will do for now, i'm still hunting my 3rd monitor at this time and nothing showing yet, but one will pop up in the next few weeks im sure. but this will definitely fix my problem for now and i will wait and save a bit longer so i can pick up the 670 card too. I'll probley want to pick your brain more when i get it all set up in a few more weeks and i am hoping to start my new rig build by next weekend when all the parts are in.

 

[Paradigm Shifter]

Good luck and enjoy.