triple monitor setup?

How does one achieve such feat?

Either with a desktop computer and 3x monitors, or a laptop and 2x additional monitors. Also, how much performance decrease is there from going from 1 to 3 monitors?

I want to use this for playing MMOs when I get back to the states, and 2 monitors doesn't really work for that (or your character would be split down the middle I would assume).

I've never used more than 1 monitor (desktop) or 1 additional monitor (laptop) for non game related purposes.

 

Think about the resolution. Assuming 1080p, that's 5760x1080.

You can bet your there's going to be a huge performance hit.

 

Performance hit is not as bad as you may think. In most cases its not like 3x more because how things render.

It does become much more important to have a strong gpu with a lot of vram though to hold texture data.

I play 6004x1200 and a single desktop 5870 has pretty much maxed out any game I throw at it short of Crysis, Metro 2033, and a few others and those are mostly due to bad optimization.

Triple monitor for gaming is desktop only pretty much, you want to go with AMD Eyefinity (My recomendation) or Nvidia Surround or use 3rd party hardware like a Matrox TH2GO, or software like Soft TH2GO.

On a laptop you can add extra monitors via usb adapters and things but they are not suited for gaming. If you go the hardware route with a Matrox on a laptop the GPU and perhaps cpu may not be up to the task. Also I dont think it would be easy to match 2 monitors to the laptop screen and make it look good. Ideally you want 3 identical monitors preferably with thin bezels.

 

yea, I thought it might look strange with the laptop, but if your 5870 can handle it I don't think the M18x would struggle too much.

I'll probably build a midrange desktop when I get back just so I can use all the cool peripherals. I just heard that in order to use 3 monitors like that you had to have special connector cables and some sort of hardware box, that would end up costing almost as much as the monitors.

I did like the looks of your setup though, vicious

 

The problem is that most Notebooks only come with 2 display buffers, so you won't ever run more than two displays. You can get some USB displays that provide their own display buffer, but those are seriously stunted.

As for the special hardware, unless you're running higher than a 1920x1200 display, a passive DVI adapter (about $30) is all it takes to get a 3rd monitor running with a desktop Radeon 6950. But we're pretty much off of notebook discussion now... let's steer it back to notebooks or let the thread die here, mmkay?

 

For single GPU and 3+ displays High-end Radeon with Eyefinity support is needed. Nvidia doesn't offer that yet, not even in their desktop models (unless it's SLI configuration with 2 or more GPUs).

Apparently that M18x has SLI/Crossfire option, can anyone confirm if it can run 3-4 displays with nvidia cards installed? (Even tho I wanted, I will not buy that to test it myself )

Matrox TH2GO, is it a GPU in itself or some kind hardware multiplier for existing video out? I'm just thinking what kind of performance it has when compared to existing powerful GPU.

 

What kind of laptop is required to run a double monitor setup (15.6" 1920x1080 and 23.6" 1920x1080) with only one monitor running the game and the other displaying non-gaming applications.

 

not quite correct, with Eyefinity on my m7820 (5870m ) I can nicely run 4 external screens plus my LCD. the difference though is I am using a business class unit with HP's advanced dock. mulitscreen is fairly mature on the radeon platform.

assuming you are thinking somethign lke a web browser and requirring minimal GPU work pretty much any laptop thats GPU i slightly faster than you need for the game and then add a USB video card such as a matrox or evga unit.

one thing that was overlooked was laptops you can hook a vidock/eGPU to and run a desktop card with such as my X220 where I hook three monitors up on a FirePro card.

in a desktop a good eyefinity ATI/AMD card you can run 5 or six displays per card easily enough. gaming you would want to possibly stick with 3 or 4. Nvidias multiscreen support is not near as mature as the eyefinity IMO.