Can my Radeon HD 2400 run three monitors?

[Refrigerator]

Hi,

My graphics card is pretty old, ATI Radeon HD2400. I currently have one 19" monitor at 1280x1024, but I want to get another 19" 1280x1024, and one big 24-26" 1920x1080 as well.

I don't play games much, but when I do, I'd just use one of the 19" monitors, and I'd mainly use the big one and the second 19" for watching tv shows and movies / displaying webpages.

Can my poor graphics card handle all this? If not, what's the minimum specs for a graphics card that will be able to?

Thanks a lot

 

[EndlessWaves]

No, only the Radeon 5000 series and above can run three monitors and even then one of them has to be connected via displayPort. You won't find any mention of it in the numbers, it's a feature not a figure that's required.

 

[Refrigerator]

Oh no, I'm not asking about whether it has the necessary inputs/outputs, I can sort that out. Just need to know whether it's capable of running three monitors without dying.

 

[EndlessWaves]

Oh no, I'm not asking about whether it has the necessary inputs/outputs, I can sort that out. Just need to know whether it's capable of running three monitors without dying.

Most cards can have several outputs but won't let you use all of them at once, usually limiting you to two.

Outputting the picture isn't a concern, it's been more than a decade (maybe even two) since you had to worry about whether you had enough graphics memory to achieve a particular resolution. Something as recently as a HD 2400 will have no problem with two single link displays (i.e. [email protected] or below).

So if you want three monitors you can replace your card with a newer one, but you can also add a second card and simply connect the third monitor to that. If you're using vista then it has to use the same graphics driver (i.e. be another ATI card) but if you're using XP or Seven then a nvidia card should be equally happy.

 

[Refrigerator]

Add a second card? Don't I have to do Crossfire for that?


And can't I just get a VGA/DVI splitter for 2 monitors?

 

[EndlessWaves]

Add a second card? Don't I have to do Crossfire for that?

No, Crossfire/SLI is only if you want the two cards to work together rendering a game or similar. You don't need if they're just driving an extended desktop.

And can't I just get a VGA/DVI splitter for 2 monitors?

Only if you don't mind them both displaying identical things, a splitter copies the picture to both. You can get devices like Matrox's DualHead2Go that'll pretend the two monitors are a single big one so you can use them almost independently but they tend to be more expensive than a second card.

 

[Refrigerator]

Ah right, so would I put the other card in one of the PCI slots then?

 

[EndlessWaves]

Ah right, so would I put the other card in one of the PCI slots then?

Putting it in a spare PCI-E 16x slot if you've got one is easiest and cheapest but if you don't PCI might be easier as PCI-E 1x cards seem to be fairly scarce for some reason.