Triple monitor Ivy Bridge

[MacAndor]

Hi all!

I have a new build and these were my requirements and my results:

REQUIREMENTS:
- Ivy Bridge CPU (Check)
- Triple monitor support (all FullHD resolution) under Mac OS X (Check)
- Triple monitor gaming under Windows 7 (64) (Check)
- Not having to remove the CrossFire/SLI bridge when switching OSs (Check)
- Using HDMI with the monitors. (FAIL)

COMPONENTS:
- (1x) Intel Core i7 3770
- (2x) CORSAIR 16384MB Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz CL10 KIT CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10
- (2x in CF) GIGABYTE GV-R687OC-1GD HD6870 1GB GDDR5 PCIE
- (1x) GIGABYTE GA-Z77-DS3H
- (3x) LG E2251VR-BN
- (1x) CORSAIR Carbide Series 400R
- (1x) CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750W v2

RESULTS:
- Sleep WORKING
- Audio WORKING
- 2 GPU's recognized as 6870-s (OpenGL & OpenCL working)
- Intel Core i7 3770 working with tonymacx86 Ivy Bridge patch
- Ethernet working
- Restart & Shutdown working
- 3 Monitors fully recognized

DISPLAY CONNECTION: (Adapters are in Bold)
GPU# - DISPLAY# - CONNECTION TO GPU -> CONNECTION TO DISPLAY
- GPU1 - DISP1 (Left) - (DVI -> HDMI) -> HDMI
- GPU1 - DISP2 (Main) - (MiniDP -> DVI) -> DVI
- GPU1 - DISP3 (Right) - (MiniDP -> VGA) -> VGA
(Can't plug DISP1 simply into HDMI cause Windows is retarded and gives the display a digital border...)

NOTES:
- The MiniDP -> DVI adapter and the MiniDP -> VGA adapter are from Apple.
- With this connection config, CrossFireX and Eyefinity and OSX works. Don't forget that Eyefinity requires all displays to be on the same GPU.
- If I use TWO MiniDP -> DVI adapters, then it FAILS!
- If you let Windows turn off the displays after x minutes, then the display connected with VGA might loose connection. OSX does NOT have this problem!
- The system is quite perfect, with 10.7.4 i don't really know any bugs I can talk about.

INSTALL HISTORY:
- Prepared UniBeast
- Extracted BridgeHelper 4.0 kernel to the UniBeast's USB drive
- Installed 10.7.3
- While still in installer (after install) opened terminal and replaced the default kernel with the extracted one.
- Installed drivers with MultiBeast: Lion Edition
- - Audio (this was a tricky one): NO DSDT, ALC8xxHDA, AppleHDA Rollback, Non-DSDT HDAEnbler - ALC887/888b
- - FaceSMC
- - NullCPUPowerManagement
- - maolj's AtherosL1cEthernet
- Extracted BridgeHelper 5.0 kernel to 10.7.3 HS's root with the name mack_kernel_new
- Opened org.chameleon.Boot.plist and changed Kernel's string to mack_kernel_new
- Installed 10.7.4 update
- Installed complete BridgeHelper 5.0

UPDATE! - ScreenShots (LINK)
UPDATE! - Added additional info
UPDATE! - External pics (LINK)
UPDATE! - Updated to Lion 10.7.4 + Bridge Helper 5.0 + Chimera 1.10

Big thanks to everyone who helped me!

 

[Coupz]

Triple monitor support - you have it with one 6870.
Triple monitor gaming under windows? You would need more power then that.
750W is too much, 500-600 would be enough.

Ivy bridge (Z77 mainboards) are not fully supported yet. Please use search and read other topics too!

 

[MacAndor]

I've been searching for a few days now, if I would have felt safe with the config, I wouldn't have made a topic for it.

I know Ivy Bridge has no official Mac OS X support, but thats a MUST, the graphics part is the one which i have some concerns about.

I looked at some benchmarks and if those were correct, then 2x6850 is faster then 1x6870, and where i live, the price for the for the two version is the same.

With the PSU I am going overprotective, I calculated that at PEAK it will eat about 570W, so a 750W should be able to easily feed the computer.

Triple monitor gaming, well basically, more resolution then fancy graphics

 

[wfj]

I've been searching for a few days now, if I would have felt safe with the config, I wouldn't have made a topic for it.

I know Ivy Bridge has no official Mac OS X support, but thats a MUST, the graphics part is the one which i have some concerns about.

I looked at some benchmarks and if those were correct, then 2x6850 is faster then 1x6870, and where i live, the price for the for the two version is the same.

With the PSU I am going overprotective, I calculated that at PEAK it will eat about 570W, so a 750W should be able to easily feed the computer.

Triple monitor gaming, well basically, more resolution then fancy graphics

If you want to drive 3 monitors for gaming the 1gb cards will be a bottleneck especially if you're running 1080p displays. You need more vram and/or a more powerful video card.

 

[MacAndor]

If you want to drive 3 monitors for gaming the 1gb cards will be a bottleneck especially if you're running 1080p displays. You need more vram and/or a more powerful video card.

Well, no Lets do a little math for the VRAM for example a game using differed rendering.
VRAM for one layer in G-Buffer at FullHD is:
Resolution * BytesPerColorComponent * NumberOfColorComponents
1920 * 1080 * 1 * 4 = 8,294,400Byte = 7.92MB
Usually there are 4-5 layers, lets go with 5:
7.92MB * 5 = 40MB
And I need this for 3 displays:
40 * 3 = 120MB

Currently I have 2xSamsung 2343NW(2048x1152 resolution) with a nVidia GTX 460, and I can run games on Both displays, which uses up 90MB of VRAM.

Please lets NOT worry about the games and how good they will run, I want to have the option to do multi-monitor gaming without problems like having to remove the crossfire bridge every time I want to use 10.7 or any other multi-OS related problem which gets annoying on a daily bases, because a general day for me looks like this:
10:00-18:00 I boot under 10.7, work time
18:30-02:00 I switch to Windows 7 to game with friend.

 

[wfj]

If you want to drive 3 monitors for gaming the 1gb cards will be a bottleneck especially if you're running 1080p displays. You need more vram and/or a more powerful video card.

Well, no Lets do a little math for the VRAM for example a game using differed rendering.
VRAM for one layer in G-Buffer at FullHD is:
Resolution * BytesPerColorComponent * NumberOfColorComponents
1920 * 1080 * 1 * 4 = 8,294,400Byte = 7.92MB
Usually there are 4-5 layers, lets go with 5:
7.92MB * 5 = 40MB
And I need this for 3 displays:
40 * 3 = 120MB

Currently I have 2xSamsung 2343NW(2048x1152 resolution) with a nVidia GTX 460, and I can run games on Both displays, which uses up 90MB of VRAM.

Please lets NOT worry about the games and how good they will run, I want to have the option to do multi-monitor gaming without problems like having to remove the crossfire bridge every time I want to use 10.7 or any other multi-OS related problem which gets annoying on a daily bases, because a general day for me looks like this:
10:00-18:00 I boot under 10.7, work time
18:30-02:00 I switch to Windows 7 to game with friend.

Well I had assumed you were talking about an eyefinity setup where the larger frame buffer is needed to push high resolutions. Anyway...

I've read some other posts where folks claim that they're able have the crossfire bridge in place in os x and it runs fine. Might want to search the graphics portion of the forum.

 

[MacAndor]

Last night looked on YouTube for some answers (because if you have a question, then there's a video for it) and I found this:
[VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt07sP9RBIo[/VIDEO]

And found a guy with the same GIGABYTE GV-R685OC-1GD GPU in a hackintosh, and he said that he needed to use some specific cabling for the (2)monitors but the card is Lion compatible.
[VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hSYMWCTkRs[/VIDEO]

 

[wfj]

You might want to read through this thread:

http://tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=41110

The OP is the same person who made the 2nd video you posted.

 

[MacAndor]

You might want to read through this thread:

http://tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=41110

The OP is the same person who made the 2nd video you posted.

Thanx!

 

[MacAndor]

Here are some screenshots