Four displays

[Mercutio]

I'm just checking here since I don't have two identical graphics cards sitting around at the moment, but if I stick, say, two ATI 4770s or two nVidia 9500s in the same PC, I can run those as four independent displays without mucking about with Crossfire/SLI, right?

 

[ddrueding]

Yup. You don't need identical cards, either. I've even done ATI/nVidia combos...but that is the devil's work.

Keep in mind that you can also have a pair of 9500s in SLI driving a single monitor and another 9500 driving other monitors on it's own.

 

[Mercutio]

I was thinking more for the "sometimes Crossfire, sometimes not" configuration. Though that certainly does answer that question.

 

[ddrueding]

With SLI, it sometimes required a reboot to switch. Not very happy with the long startup times of a RAID array.

 

[Stereodude]

I'm not 100% sure about that. My buddy told me something about only one display working on the 2nd card leaving you with only 3 displays, not four.

 

[Stereodude]

Ok, I double checked with my buddy, and he confirmed that with 2 SLI capable cards (even if they're not in SLI and the connector is not on them) that only 3 monitors in the video properties, not 4. This was a few years ago with 68xx and 76xx generation cards, so newer cards, and newer drivers may have fixed this, but under XP x32 and x64 it was a no go. He didn't try ATI cards, so I can't speak to them.

 

[ddrueding]

I'll install a 295GTX in the same system as a 250GTX tonight and see what happens.

 

[time]

It's been done.

 

[ddrueding]

Just for grins I dropped a PCIe 1x 4350 in next to my 5870. I had to re-install the drivers (didn't have to with nVidia) but you do get 4 in XP x64