gtx 660ti driving four displays

drtc

drtc

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 19, 2008
Messages
239
Hello, currently using a Gigabyte gtx 460 1Gb along with an Asus 520 low profile card to drive four displays. (2x 1080p, 1x 2560x1440 & 1x wuxga)

I am thinking of replacing the two cards above for a single Gigabyte GTX660 Ti 3GB OC or similar 3-4gb card.
The reasons:

  • Dual cards are not optimized for use with Adobe's Creative suite
    (Adobe recommends a single card for PS, or two of the same for AE)

  • Currently nvidia's kepler cards support more than just two displays!

  • Enhanced performance: Recently tested rendering a raytraced scene from within After Effects and a similar machine fitted with a GTX 670 2Gb was twice as fast than the one with a 460 1gb...
However, reading a review on Amazon on the EVGA 660ti 3Gb, it appears that there is an issue with 4 displays.
I was wondering whether anyone has any experience on this, which is a desicive factor for proceeding with the new card or not.
I'd appreciate your input.
 
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Honestly, that reviewer sounds about as knowledgeable as my 85 year old grandmother when it comes to graphics cards and displays.

Now, I doubt you will be able to run those 4 displays you listed because of the fact that you will NEEd the DVI-D in the card to run the 1440p monitor. Normally, how it works is that you are able to set the DVI-D port to lower bandwidth, to make it a single port, and move that bandwidth to the HDMI connection on the card. That way you can have a display hooked up to each one of the ports. That 1440p display, however, requires the full bandwidth of DVI-D to show a picture, which means that you will only have 3 display ports that are actually functioning.

You will need something specifically designed to do around 6 displays to be able to pull this off, or go with dual gpu's.

Secondly, unless you are actually gaming across all those monitors (unlikely) You don't need the 3gb buffer on this 660ti - save yourself money and stick with the 2gb version.
 
You should be able to do it no problem. It should work with DP->1440p, DVI/DVI/HDMI for the rest. If you use the DL-DVI for the 1440p screen you may run into issues.
 
thanx 4 ur replies.
No gaming at all, just video & image editing & compositing using Adobe suite & some light 3dsmax use.
If it matters at all, the PSU is a corsair TX850.
I want the 3Gb version as After effects uses the GPU memory to render raytraced objects much faster.
I would plan to use the DP 2 DP connection for the 27'er 2560x1440, the dual link DVI-D 2 DVI for the 24 wuxga and the DVI-i 2 Hdmi & HDMI2HDMI ones for the rest.
Phishy714 does nvidia allow only the DVI-D port to lower its bandwidth?

However, that reviewer claims this is an issue with four monitors and a quick trip to nvidia forums shows that even higher end cards like the 670& 680 have issues with multiple displays, which does put a halt as I'd rather be safe than sorry realizing this setup may not work.
Any other suggestions?
 
I would not base a purchasing decision on someone who left a one sentence review and included absolutely zero pertinent information. I've run 3 displays on 670's and 680's, never once had a problem. What are these "issues" people are reporting?
 
This card should work fine for what you're needing, but Galaxy can do it for $40 less with superior cooling and a faster clock, and this is the route I'd most strongly recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008PFE4CW/

As for the Amazon user, there's really no limit to what this customer could have done wrong or what else could have been faulty in her system that resulted in her displays not working.

I run a triple display setup off of a GTX 680 in my office and run Photoshop CS5, and I've only run into one minor issue myself which will not affect you since you will not be using NV Surround. If I use Photoshop while Surround is set up for triple display gaming, it maximizes across all three displays intead of one. This only happens because Surround shows the 3 displays as a single, and the problem goes away if I simply disable Surround when not playing a game in multi-display.
 
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I appreciate all of your suggestions! I'll probably just go for it.
As for the Galaxy card, unfortunately I cannot find it in Europe, so it seems like I would stick with the big boys, unless you can point out a way to obtain it which will also cover warranty etc.
Tnx
 
drtc said:
I appreciate all of your suggestions! I'll probably just go for it.
As for the Galaxy card, unfortunately I cannot find it in Europe, so it seems like I would stick with the big boys, unless you can point out a way to obtain it which will also cover warranty etc.
Tnx
Click to expand...

Ah. We're known as KFA2 in your region, so I can see how that might be the case. I only handle things for North America so I can't help too much in terms of shopping/service/etc., but here is the KFA2 card you'de be looking for:

http://www.kfa2.com/GTX660_ti_exoc_3gb_x.shtml
 
drtc said:
I see, only that Amazon.de has it quite overpriced :
http://www.amazon.de/KFA2-GeForce-G...2PE8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1357245123&sr=8-2
whereas:
http://www.amazon.de/Gigabyte-GeFor...1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1357245448&sr=1-3
&
http://www.amazon.de/EVGA-Grafikkar...1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1357245668&sr=1-2
Click to expand...

Anyone who wants to can sell our products on Amazon.com, which means some crazy prices can show up. For instance, we have our GTX 660 Ti GC 3GB for $308 on Amazon.com right now, but if you scroll down the page another seller is pitching the same card for $499.

I'd check with some of the authorized retailers from KFA2's website and shop around for the best deal:
http://www.kfa2.com/buy.shtml
 
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