Multimonitor with one gpu possible?

[flonoen 10]

Hi folks.

Recently started playing Arma again, currently have a rig with two 24" full hd monitors. Playing Arma just uses one monitor, which doesn't really bother me since I don't want the "gap" between the two monitors just where the aim is.

But I have my old 21" monitor, 1680x1050 resolution just laying around not being used. So I was wondering if it's possible to put that monitor in the middle and be able to play Arma over all thee monitors for a wider field of view?

Some specs of current setup:

hd6970, 2xdvi + 1 hdmi

Two Acer 24", dvi

i5 2500k

2x4gb 1333MHz ram

Available one 21" monitor with only vga input.

Is it possible to run this extra monitor with only my current gpu at reasonable resolution and fps, using an adapter from hdmi -> vga? If not, what is needed? And how would the resolution be across the monitor? Will the smallest monitor with only 1050 vertical pixels limit the larger ones and creating black lines at the top and bottom? Or is it possible to run different resolutions across monitors? If this is even possible at all!

[Tonci87 163]

It is possible to run Arma on 3 monitors, see if your GPU supports Eyefinity.

[flonoen 10]

It supports Eyefinity it seems.

Amd.com says:

"The third (or greater) display must be connected to the graphics card via DisplayPort."

I don't have DisplayPort on my card, only two mini-DisplayPort. Will this do if I get an adapter from mini-DisplayPort to vga and connect my third screen?

[cjph 0]

Hi

I run three screens in eyefinity from a 6950 flashed to a 6970. There are two DVI connectors and one mini DisplayPort and I use the XFX miniDP to DVI to drive the third display. From your post I think you would need to use a miniDP to DVI and one DVI to VGA converter to use the VGA monitor (from memory I believe you must use the two DVI ports plus either the HDMI or the miniDP, not both). Google up on the miniDP adapter as I use an active one and there was much discussion whether passive (and therefore cheaper) ones would work. Mine was around 15 UK pounds last year.

The available resolutions will probably be a bigger headache with all three needing to be the same for eyefinity (check out eyefinity 2 as I have not read up on it but have seen rumours it allows different res), so any larger res will default to the lowest res monitor attached to the card. It may impact the aspect ratio or even fail if you mix 16:10 with 16:9 etc.. The only option I am aware of for mixing resolutions would be Kegetys SoftTH, which is a software tool but requires a second GPU card as a frame buffer for the third monitor. But since you specifically mention a single GPU perhaps this is not an option due to a motherboard with a single GPU slot.

EDIT For a three screen eyefinity setup you must use the two DVI connectors and the miniDP port, with an adapter to your required screen interface. Note the HDMI cannot be used with both of the DVIs.

cj

Edited March 7, 2012 by cjph

[flonoen 10]

I went and bought a miniDP to VGA adapter already, and it's working fine. I can use eyefinity to stretch the image, but the resolution is so-so. 4800x900 I think was the best available, but that extends the middle screen out of its borders, so I need to use 3780xsomething instead.

However, when trying to enable this in Arma2 (video settings, advanced, and then set resolution) I get bluescreen and message "atikmdag.sys PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA". Works fine with LFS at same resolution. Anyone experienced this before?

[fireone 10]

Not sure what the error message means but if you use an adaptor display port > to something else ,not all of them will work as cjph said. The active ones give the most reliable results if your monitor doesnt have a display port socket. If you google displayport active adapters ,there is an article on overclock.net that has a nice summary. ( tried to cut and paste but ipad doesn't want to cooperate)

it does say this is a requirement for three rather than 2 monitors.

Edited March 5, 2012 by fireone

[Sneaker-78- 0]

or you can use 3 monitors with tripplehead2go

[flonoen 10]

Hi again fellas, purchased a new 1920x1080 display, and a active mini displayport-adapter. Eyefinity works great in windows, resolution is 6208x1080.

I launch arma, and set "interface resolution" to 6208x1080, and the game uses all three monitors, but my field of view isn't any wider than it would have been with only 1920x1080, it just stretches the image over the three monitors. Is there any other resolutions, besides this "interface resolution" that needs to be changed?

[Leon86 13]

you have to fix the aspect ratio too.

[flonoen 10]

Nevermind, edited the field of view in the config file, works now!

Edit: What Leon said!