I'd like to use three screens. I've looked on Google and found a lot of different and contradicting answers, so I decided to post a question.
What I have now: three screens, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 with 2 DVI ports and 1 HDMI port. I think that just linking the HDMI port to another screen won't work, and I've found a lot of solutions, but I'd like to hear the best and cheapest way to get it done.
I also have an old NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT. Could I use that to send the signal, but let the 460 GTX do any calculations? Or perhaps it's possible to let Windows/the card think the three screens are one screen, so it's only really rendering one big image that can be split somehow?
Best Answer
You need to use an additional video card to get the triple monitor setup working. Additionally, if you wanted to use SLI/Crossfire in this setup, you would have to check Nvidia's website to see if triple monitors are supported (e.g. I had 2 x 8800 GT's in SLI, and had to disable SLI to get triple monitors to work - this does work with some newer Nvidia cards however). See this page for more details.
Using two video cards in non-SLI is a completely different story, and quite possible with the 8600 GT you mentioned. My recommendation is to use your one center monitor as your "main" monitor (and have the 460 GTX be that monitor's hardware acceleration), and plug the other two monitors into the 8600 GT. That way, 3D applications that output to your main display won't take a performance hit (those running on the additional monitors will - you might want to put one of them back on the main 460 GTX if you need something else hardware accelerated).
The core requirement from Nvidia's website to use an additional video card to drive an additional monitor is:
The above information applies wether or not you use SLI.