What card should I buy for triple monitor support?

[thomasames]

I'm curious what card to buy for triple monitor support in 10.6.8 and Lion.

I have a Sapphire Vapor-X 5770 and I'm tired of trying to get a third monitor working in 10.6.8 and I'm not really sure going to Lion would fix anything.

I want something that will work with minimal effort. My monitors are all VGA/DVI but I have a VGA -> DP adapter and a DVI -> HDMI adapter.

 

[lrusak]

I don't think triple monitor support was every supported in OSX, there was someone on here that posted about getting triple monitors working with some hacking.

 

[thomasames]

In 10.6.7, I was able to get triple monitors working without any effort. I just downloaded the 5770 ktext and it worked.

OS X supports triple monitors. Why else would the new iMac's allow daisy chaining two cinema displays together? And I've seen video guys use 4 monitors on Mac Pros.

 

[thomasames]

Can you post the exact files you use? I've tried probably 30 different ktexts and gone through countless boot failures trying to get it to work with my current card.

 

[rhalls]

This is not really correct
I have a powercolor ati 6850 silent card which works... well... mostly with three monitors (2 x DVI, 1 x active DisplayPort->AIT Adapter, all 1600x1200 pixels). Mostly because it is not always reliable. What exact configuration do you have?
i have:
- PowerColor ATI 6850 silent 1 GB Card
- Gigabyte GA-Z68P-DS3 Mainboard, 16 GB
- OSX 10.7.2 Lion
- Chimera 1.54 bootloader, MultiBeast 4.03 Installation, DSDT F4 from DSDT Database
- GraphicsEnabler=No Flag in org.chameleon.Boot.plist
- AppleRTC.kext patch via cmops reset fix (sudo perl...)
- Lnx2Mac Network Driver 0.90

This results in
- Working three monitors. If sometimes one of those three (normally the one connected to the upper DVI Port) if kind of "fraggled", sometimes only two monitors are detected. i can send the machine to sleep and wake up and then it works. But sleep is another issue with my install at the moment... I notice that, when i first boot in one of my test-10.7.2 installations and then reboot to my normal installation, it works without "frazzles" of missing screens.
- Qe/Qi not enabled (don't know how to fix that....)
- DVD Player crashes
- Cinebench Score 52.52 (good)
- Geekbech works, 64 Bit 12470 without overclocking

What I want to achieve is:
- DVD Player Working
- Qe/Ci Working Works, I just had to set "System Preferences -> Mission Control -> Show dashboard as space inactive. It worked before but i thought it does not because the ripple effect in dashboard was missing...
- Stable boot and stable sleep

 

[straycat264]

I have reliable, fully working triple monitor support (each 1920x1200) more-or-less OOB with my XFX 6870. I've posted about this elsewhere, but in brief the setup that works for me is:

1 from the HDMI output (HDMI->DVI adapter)
1 from a DVI output (only one DVI will work with this card)
1 using an active miniDP->DVI adapter. I stress: active adapter. Use a passive adapter, and one of the other displays will stop working. You'd need someone who understands this stuff waaaay better than I do to explain why.

One other caution: Under 10.6.8 I was getting some strange graphical corruption on boot from the miniDP-connected monitor. AFAIK, this only happened when using 1920x1200, and was easily fixed by setting the default resolution in com.apple.Boot.plist:

<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1920x1200x32</string>

I'm now on 10.7.2, and I don't know whether this is still needed, but I've kept it in anyway.

 

[moarfish]

I've heard both HD 6850 and HD6870 work with Active Display Port to DVI connector OOB under Lion 10.7.2

Am I right?

 

[rhalls]

Yes.

 

[aedon]

Is there any nVidia card working with triple monitor setup on OSX Lion?

 

[moarfish]

Can I take XFX HD 6850 instead of XFX HD 6870?
I will just drive three monitor and not four. The benchmark of 6850 and 6870 is similar but 6850 is cheaper.

The only difference I can find is 6850 got 1 display port while 6870 got 2.

However, XFX card usually cannot have Dual DVI to work.

Should I connect HDMI, DVI and Display port and it works fine?

If my monitor got Display Port Input, is that I don't have to buy the Active DP-> DVI adaptor?