4 screens on 2 8800GT

[Stonkie]

Hi,

I currently have a 8800 GT with 2 1080p monitors. I'm looking into doubling that. I have an opportunity at a 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition for 60$, plus 2 x 23" Ultrasharps with Dell's Days of Deal for 230$. The total is just near 600$.

What I want to know is if I will have any problem. I worry about :

- Having enough power (the power supply fan makes noise so I wouldn't mind changing it, but I'd like to know in advance about the extra cost).
- Incompatibilities (driver stuff?) between the two card with the same model, but different edition. Should I buy another card instead?

Here is the setup (I just copied from my NCIX invoice) :

- Silverstone Strider ST60F 600W ATX12V 24PIN Modular Power Supply W/120MM Fan Active PFC
- ASUS P5K Premium WIFI-AP ATX LGA775 P35 2PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 3PCI SATA RAID Sound WLAN 1394 Motherboard
- EVGA E-GEFORCE 8800GT 600MHZ 512MB 1.8GHZ DDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI-I HDTV Out Video Card

[blaze15301]

im not sure about how well the 8800 sli together. but if you want a good estimate of if your powersupply can handle it we need to know.
cpu(stock or oc)
how much memory
and hardrvies
last fans.


edit; i just did a system similar to your with a intel core 2 quad 4 gigs of ddr2 4 fans 3 hdds and 2 8800 and the system at full load is 575. so your power supply should be able to do it. but honestly one newer card would be so much better and easier then 2 older cards. also i her before when i had 2 9500s in sli that you couldn't run dual monitors in a sli configuration unless they changed it. if you didnt care about performance you could always just buy a splitter box that plugs into your usb port and then bam you have 2 other vga or dvi ports for a low cost.

[Stonkie]

I'm satisfied with the gaming power it has right now. I mainly want to two more screens for work.

CPU is Intel Xeon X3350 Quad core with 5 fans each with blue leds (it was designed for OC, but I never saw the need and left it stock). There is a 120mm on top, 3 small ones around the case and one last fan snapped on a gigantic CPU heat sink.

The RAM is 4 x 2 GB OCZ platinum DDR2 for a total of 8GB. It has two WD hard drives, 750GB and 1TB.

I don't know if it matters, but the motherboard also has a built-in wireless internet access point and there is the usual keyboard/mouse/web cam/headset needing constant power.

My setup seems pretty close to what you were building so I guess I would be ok. How can I tell my current load to make sure?

[blaze15301]

yeah your power supply is fine then.

i use http://extreme.outervision.com/secure/psucalculatorpro.jsp you have to pay 10$ for it but its worth it. or you could use thermaltake free psu calculator. you can determine the load of your system by looking at the cpu, gpu ,and ram usage.

something like this would work pretty well for you http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&sugexp=gsisc&xhr=t&q=vga+splitter&cp=5&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=14064807061771269302&sa=X&ei=J46BTcLoBYOx0QGRrMHLCA&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQ8wIwAA#

also for your load when i use a online psu calculator i always do my system at 100 with a 15% capacitor aging. that way i know i will have more then enough power. like right now my set up is using 756 wat i have a 750 wat psu. at 100

[Stonkie]

The power supply usage is pretty close to 600W, but since I don't use it at peak power very often, I suppose it should be good enough. From my understanding, the worse that can happen is that the power supply will burn out and I'll have to buy another (quieter) one, right? No chance of frying my hard drives or anything?

Thanks, I just ordered the screens and made the move to buy the card. I could probably get away with screen splitters like you mentionned, but at 60$, the card is pretty cheap! If he's already sold it, I look into that instead.

[blaze15301]

The power supply usage is pretty close to 600W, but since I don't use it at peak power very often, I suppose it should be good enough. From my understanding, the worse that can happen is that the power supply will burn out and I'll have to buy another (quieter) one, right? No chance of frying my hard drives or anything?

Thanks, I just ordered the screens and made the move to buy the card. I could probably get away with screen splitters like you mentionned, but at 60$, the card is pretty cheap! If he's already sold it, I look into that instead.

yeah most high end psu like the silverstone one are rated below what they say for reason like what im using mine for. so it dosent burn its self out. and your computer wont be at 100% load constantly

[FuzzyPlushroom]

That PSU will run two 8800GTs without issue (speaking as someone with two 8800GTs). With SLI disabled, four screens will be peachy. The price is probably right on that card, too - I paid that much apiece for mine a while back, but that was from a good friend (whose Skulltrail system I helped build 'em into the previous autumn).

[Outlaw]

With the 2 8800GTS's I have, Nvidia allows you to enable and disable SLI as needed through the Nvidia Control Panel for gaming or work (assuming you weren't going to game with 4monitors). When gaming, you could just enable SLI for a boost in performance on your primary monitor/s and disable again when you need all 4 monitors.

It will also allow the 2 monitors that are plugged into the Primary card work in SLI (expanded desktop or clone). I'm not sure about the monitors plugged into the secondary with SLI as I only have 2 monitors (one is a our TV).

[x88x]

Looks like all the bases have been covered. Just to clarify a couple points blaze made.


i use http://extreme.outervision.com/secure/psucalculatorpro.jsp you have to pay 10$ for it but its worth it.
They have a free version here:
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
IDK what the difference is, but their free version is my preferred PSU calculator.


something like this would work pretty well for you http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&sugexp=gsisc&xhr=t&q=vga+splitter&cp=5&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=14064807061771269302&sa=X&ei=J46BTcLoBYOx0QGRrMHLCA&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQ8wIwAA#
Splitters just duplicate a single input to two outputs, so this actually would not solve the problem anyway.

[blaze15301]

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp[/url]
IDK what the difference is, but their free version is my preferred PSU calculator..

the free version dosent let you mix and match gpus.