Monitor setup / videocard(s)

[D_Dragon 0]

First I like to introduce myself in this first post on this forum. My name is Theo Scholten and I live in the Netherlands, so English isn't my native tongue and I apologize beforehand for any typos and so. My first experience with Microsoft Flight Simulator was in 1978 on a TRS-80. FS had no number in those days (it was their first version). Can you imagine a flight simulator on a screen with a resolution of 64x16 positions (more pixels off course but you couldn't address them seperately). During the time I 'played' FS on and off (more off obviously) until I got cought again with the flying virus a couple of years ago. I am now flying with FSX with UTX, GEX, and some photorealistic scenery off the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

 

My original rig was based on an ASUS P5QL-CM with a Q6600 processor, 4 GB RAM, 2 HDD's of 500 GB each and a Sapphire Radeon HD5770 videocard. Apart from that I have the Saitek yoke, throttle quadrant, rudder pedals and switch panel and also an iPad 3 for my radiostack. I had two monitors attached to this videocard, one for the view and one for some instruments.

 

I want to 'grow' to a setup with an ivy bridge processor, 16 GB of RAM, 2 SSD's (90 for OS and 240 for FSX) and a total of 8 monitors just for FSX. In addition to that another monitor on an old PC for FS Commander. A new PC will have to handle 5 screens for 'the outside view' and my current PC will have to handle 3 monitors for 'the instrument panels'. In this 'growpath' I already got both the SSD's and recently I bought two additional monitors for 'the total view' of scenery and instruments. The attached image shows what my setup looks like at the moment.

 

The lower three monitors will, for the time being, be showing the total image. In the future the five 'outside view' monitors on the new PC will be placed on a pedestal above the current three monitors. The current monitors will then be used on my cuurent PC for the 'instrument view'. The separate monitor for FS Commander will find a place elsewhere in the still to build cockpit ( ala SimSamurai) for the complete setup.

 

So far so good (more or less), but now comes 'the hard part' and the questions.

 

I can't seem to get the third monitor working. I know that one of the monitors must be connected to the display port with the use of an active adapter, so I bought such an adapter. I connected the display port plug to the video card, the USB plug to an USB port and the DVI cable to the converter and... initially only a low res screen and after trying to group them all in an eyefinity group, only two monitors were recognized and the one on the display port was not one of them. I tried every combination of the two DVI and the HDMI ports, but nowhere in the world could I get the display port to get active. I searched for new firmware for my videocard, but couldn't find any. The one that I did find gave an error of an incompatible subsystem. I am affraid that I will have to get another videocard that indeed does handle three monitor.

 

So here come the questions I have.

- On the (new) main machine I want to have 5 monitors for the outside view. I know that Nvidia cards have a better performance than the AMD ones, but how to get the five monitors to act as one continious diplay. The new GTX 680 cards only allow up to four monitors. Is it possible to group two of those cards to get the wanted five continious monitors for the outside view?

- Is it perhaps 'better' to stick with an eyefinity6 card like the 7970 for this five screen monitor setup? I have cheked the FSXMark11 results with comparable hardware for the differences between the GTX580 and 7970 and I find the differences acceptable for my situation (unless you can convince me I am wrong).

- Shall I opt for a Nvidia card for the three instrument panel monitors in my current PC?

- Or is there an eyefinity3 card that indeed can power all three instument monitors at once? If so which one?

- How can I 'split' the outside view from the instrument view?

 

So it has become quite a lenghty story, but I hope you get the drift and can give me directions in the best way to proceed to achieve my ultimate goal.

 

 

 

Sorry for the double posting. On the first posting I only got a blank screen in return, so I refreshed the page with as result this double posting.

 

MODERATOR(S) Can you please remove the posting without the attached image...

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Theo Scholten