3 screens I have a ati hd4650 do I need to get eyefinity to run 3 monitors?

0

I have one ati hd 4650 card connect to 2 22" Samsung monitors.

I thought I could just plug another into my motherboard but the company I bought my pc from are telling me that to run 3 monitors I would need to purchase an expensive EyeFinity graphics card.

Is this right/true?

Little more info: I'm not interested in stretching the desktop across 3 screens. I just want Outlook on the third screen. The 1st and 2nd are the ones I actively use for design/development. Therefore, could I get away with just buying a second ati hd 4650 and plugging it into the motherboard?

N00b

Posted 2010-11-22T16:23:50.573

Reputation: 3

Answers

0

Once you plug in an additional graphics card the original one on your Motherboard is disabled by default. Unless there is a way I'm unaware of you won't be able to use this in conjunction with your Graphics Card.

With regards to your edit:Yes this would work. You will however as I've mentioned in comments need to check you have the ports available and purchase your other graphics card based on this. It will probably be a PCI Graphics card.

Somthing like this would easily fit the bill, you could probably find a cheaper one but this is just an example:
http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=413687&CatId=2694

Joe Taylor

Posted 2010-11-22T16:23:50.573

Reputation: 11 533

So does that mean to run 3 monitors I need to purchase an EyeFinity card? – N00b – 2010-11-22T16:27:52.413

You can get 2 cheap GPUs and be able to support 4 monitors...just make sure you have the necessary slots. – Joe Taylor – 2010-11-22T16:40:15.467

yes, if you want to run three monitors on the same graphics card (plus whatever DP-DVI adapters you'd need) – Xantec – 2010-11-22T16:41:39.443

Basically, not interested in stretching the desktop across. I just want outlook on the 3rd machine. 1st and 2nd i use for design/development, therefore, could I just buy another hd 4650? – N00b – 2010-11-22T16:43:37.990

You probably only have 1 PCI Express slot in your machine so you will need to buy a card that fits the available slots you have. Probably a PCi card as Xantec says – Joe Taylor – 2010-11-22T16:48:51.500

@Joe - I believe I have a spare pci slot, it looks exactly the same as the one the current graphics card is plugged into. Does that help? – N00b – 2010-11-22T16:53:30.513

@noob If http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=ati+hd+4650&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=10152774771856167315&ei=FNTqTP_uDsrAhAfno4wP&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEIQ8wIwBA# is your card then you have a spare PCI-Express slot. That's if it is the same. Its worth checking images of PCI slot and PCI-E slot just to double check though.

– Joe Taylor – 2010-11-22T20:37:00.763

yep thats the card and i opened the case up def another one free, thanks for the research – N00b – 2010-11-26T14:21:16.520

0

depending on what your need is you could purchase a cheap PCI graphics card to run the third monitor

Xantec

Posted 2010-11-22T16:23:50.573

Reputation: 2 303

Asked: 2010-11-22T16:23:50.573

Viewed: 1 994 times

Active: 2010-11-22T16:52:06.927