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Passive graphic card

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:30 am
by Vampirtc
Is there a passively cooled graphic card that has at least 2x DVI output (for monitor 2560x1440 res.) and 1x HDMI?

Re: Passive graphic card

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 6:12 am
by KadazanPL

Re: Passive graphic card

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 11:01 am
by mczak
While it wasn't specifically asked for, note you can't use the two dvi ports and the hdmi port simultaneously - there's very few (one?) card out there where this works (these cards need additional DP->hdmi adapter chip onboard). If you really want to use 2xDVI and 1xHDMI simultaneously, you need to use a DP->HDMI (active) adapter (though the card mentioned still qualifies).
The low-end 5450 could do that as well if you don't need a fast card, these are typically always passively cooled - too bad I don't think there's actually one out there which has two dvi ports, always come with VGA instead and potentially no DP port neither...

Re: Passive graphic card

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:09 pm
by fumino
im not entirely sure about this... i know you cant use eyefinity with 2 dvi and one hdmi, but what about just setting it up as a standard multimonitor system? im not sure if anybody could try this/has tried it/knows anything more?

Re: Passive graphic card

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 1:41 pm
by mczak
No, this won't work no matter what. The reason is VGA/DVI/HDMI always need their own clock source and there are only 2 of them in the hw. DP OTOH uses fixed clock regardless of resolution (ok strictly speaking this is not quite true several different fixed clocks are available, I don't know which one radeons support).
It is technically possible (but I don't know if the driver supports it) to drive more than one VGA/DVI/HDMI output from the same clock source (using 1 crtc) which is good enough for traditional clone mode. I'm not sure if the hw could support using the same clock source for 2 crtcs (to output different images) as long as resolution and timing are the same, but I'm quite certain at least the driver doesn't support it.

Re: Passive graphic card

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 4:04 pm
by fumino
fair enough. i knew it was kinda a stretch.

depending on OPs needs, two lower end video cards might do the trick fine.

Re: Passive graphic card

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 6:26 pm
by Vampirtc
I currently have 5750 and I use 2x DVI to display 2560x1440 on my LCD and at the same time I use HDMI to display 1080p on my HDTV.

Re: Passive graphic card

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:14 am
by Plekto
Just get a dual slot motherboard - the HDMI card is a simple thing if it's just being used for movies, so a tiny TV tuner card or similar would probably be more than enough to get the job done.

Re: Passive graphic card

Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 4:08 pm
by mczak
Vampirtc wrote:I currently have 5750 and I use 2x DVI to display 2560x1440 on my LCD and at the same time I use HDMI to display 1080p on my HDTV.
How do you use TWO dvi ports to drive ONE lcd? Dual-link DVI != 2xDVI. Quite far from it (granted dual link DVI needs two tmds transmitters just like 2 single links, but only one clock source - I assume that the tmds chips always run synchronized in such a case). The number of tmds transmitters is not a problem - these cards also support 2 dual-link DVI connections just fine (note though in the HD6xxx chips AMD actually seems to have saved some pennies and they only support one dual-link DVI connection now).