Radeon 4870 + X1600 for 3 Monitors?

[Tuscarora]

Radeon 4870 + 6450 for 3 Monitors YES

Hi everyone, I've bought myself a couple of nice 21.3" monitors to flank my 24". I won't even try to justify that, I just think it'll be awesome. I set up dual monitors a few months back and feel bereft if I have to work on just one now - I reckon three will be even better!

I haven't really been following the hardware side of things for the last couple of years, does anyone know what state multiple graphics cards are at? I'd want to run two monitors of my current 4870 and I have an X1600 sitting about that I thought might be able to run the third?

Has anyone tried something like that with a card mismatch? Early indications say that it will work in Windoze 7, but I'm just wondering about how the hackintosh will handle it...

I'm going to upgrade to 6870 / 7850 once it's confirmed if Apple are switching to Nvidia or not - I hope there'll be drivers for 7850, it looks like a great wee card!

PS For anyone looking at triple monitors who wants something not ridiculously widescreen, you can get a 1600x1200 21.3" monitor and it will perfectly match a 24" 1920x1200 in dot pitch! Square monitors FTW

 

[Tuscarora]

Well, I tried that and it didn't work. The X1600 is just too old of a card, it seems that it can be made to work in a 32bit environment, but I ain't going back to 32 bit kernel (especially with 16GB of RAM installed!).

So next attempt will be with a bang up to date, but nice n cheap, Sapphire Radeon 6450 1GB. I've seen reports of that working already on this site, so we'll see what happens when it arrives.

The plan is to update the bootloader, plug em both in and see what happens. Then, when that doesn't work, the fun can really begin!

 

[Tuscarora]

Sweet, got my 6450 and it worked with only minimal arm-twistery.

I've only tested with DVI (that's the only port I need) and it's working spot on, full QE/CI and DVD player works.

The card is a Sapphire 11190-02-20G HD 6450 1GB DDR3 Graphics Card. It's identified a little funny in System Profiler, but works just fine :

ATI Radeon HD NI40:

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD NI40
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x8
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x6779
Revision ID: 0x0000
Displays:
LCD2170NX:
Resolution: 1600 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number: 94A13442HB
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected

To get it working, I just set AtiConfig=Motmot (hurr hurr hurr, if you watch Celebrity Juice) and that was it. It's installed in the second slot, just below a Sapphire 4870 1GB. I'm running 10.6.8 and Chameleon v2.1svn r2070.