Linus, Please Test This! Theory Crafting: Multi GPU Setup that Works for Any Kind of Game

[TechyInAZ]

Ok so my theory goes as thusly:

If you have three monitors you game on, and you put three graphics cards in your computer. You can game with all three monitors and all three graphics cards at the same time.

How so?

1. DO NOT use SLI,CFX, or Eyefinity or Surround.
2. Leave everything at windows defaults.
3. Enter the config file or console of the game your playing and force a max resolution that supports all three monitors like 5760 x 1080.
4. Enter borderless windowed mode in the console/config file aswell.
5. Launch game, and you should be able to use all three GPUs and monitors together for gaming.

Am I right or wrong? Does this work?

The only downside would be that you need to have 1 monitor attached per GPU for this to work.

[dany_boy]

Wont work, you have 3 discrete monitors each with a unique resolution, if you want to use all 3 of them you need to create a "virtual monitor" (surround). Also please use autoformat

[EunSoo]

I'm pretty sure that it'll only work if the game supports that dx12 multi-GPU feature that doesn't require SLI or cf. But only a few games support it.

[Shiv78]

This wouldn't work for gaming because if the GPUs are unable to communicate with each other (through SLI bridge) they cannot understand what the other GPUs are rendering, so each monitor would have a different image even IF the game managed to launch (it wouldn't work, look it up).

[TechyInAZ]

I don't think you guys understand, that's why in the game you force the resolution in the console. I've seen this happen where you can run two monitors without eyefinity/surround, force a resolution in game and it will overlap into the 2nd monitor!

[ARikozuM]

Wouldn't work. AT ALL.

[TechyInAZ]

1 minute ago, Shiv78 said:

This wouldn't work for gaming because if the GPUs are unable to communicate with each other (through SLI bridge) they cannot understand what the other GPUs are rendering, so each monitor would have a different image even IF the game managed to launch (it wouldn't work, look it up).

 

They wouldn't need to. Each GPU is running it's own monitor. So it doesn't need to communicate to the other GPUs. All they need are the pre rendered frames from the CPU.

[TechyInAZ]

Can somebody please test this though? I won't know for certain until somebody tries this.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, TechyInAZ said:

I don't think you guys understand, that's why in the game you force the resolution in the console. I've seen this happen where you can run two monitors without eyefinity/surround, force a resolution in game and it will overlap into the 2nd monitor!

INI edits for resolution won't matter if the program itself won't use more than two GPUs.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, TechyInAZ said:

Ok so my theory goes as thusly:

If you have three monitors you game on, and you put three graphics cards in your computer. You can game with all three monitors and all three graphics cards at the same time.

How so?

1. DO NOT use SLI,CFX, or Eyefinity or Surround.
2. Leave everything at windows defaults.
3. Enter the config file or console of the game your playing and force a max resolution that supports all three monitors like 5760 x 1080.
4. Enter borderless windowed mode in the console/config file aswell.
5. Launch game, and you should be able to use all three GPUs and monitors together for gaming.

Am I right or wrong? Does this work?

The only downside would be that you need to have 1 monitor attached per GPU for this to work.

I'll fix this

5 minutes ago, TechyInAZ said:

Ok so my theory goes as thusly:

If you have three monitors you game on, and you put three graphics cards in your computer. You can game with all three monitors and all three graphics cards at the same time.

How so?

1. DO NOT use SLI,CFX, or Eyefinity or Surround.
2. Leave everything at windows defaults.
3. Enter the config file or console of the game your playing and force a max resolution that supports all three monitors like 5760 x 1080.
4. Enter borderless windowed mode in the console/config file aswell.
5. Launch game, and you should be able to use all three GPUs and monitors together for gaming.

Am I right or wrong? Does this work?

The only downside would be that you need to have 1 monitor attached per GPU for this to work.

And also, I promise you, some games will not work

[Shiv78]

Just now, Factory OC said:

And also, I promise you, some games will not work

*most if not all lol

[Guest]

Just now, Shiv78 said:

*most if not all lol

What would I have ever done without you, a feature of Windows XP that almost made me bash my monitor...

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 minutes ago, TechyInAZ said:

I don't think you guys understand, that's why in the game you force the resolution in the console. I've seen this happen where you can run two monitors without eyefinity/surround, force a resolution in game and it will overlap into the 2nd monitor!

You can get all three GPUs sending signals to all three monitors, but you cannot have the 3 GPUs splitting the workload between them by doing this.

I'm not 100% sure of whether you won't get the game to display on more than one screen, or you will get the game on all three but with all the work being made by the main GPU, and the other 2 just passively passing on the output to the respective monitor.

Either way, it wouldn't be better than hooking all three monitors to the same GPU (or having one gamine GPU and 2 of the cheapest GPUs you can find.

[NumLock21]

When you have multiple graphic cards, there is no need to have it run on AMD Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround. They can operate independently from one another, but your game idea probably won't work because, the game is always played from the primary monitor. There is the option to set it to windows mode and then you can drag it to another screen, but there is no way to tell which gpu it's running from. The only way it can probably work is if you can assigned the gpu to a specific monitor.

[MedievalMatt]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

You can get all three GPUs sending signals to all three monitors, but you cannot have the 3 GPUs splitting the workload between them by doing this.

I'm not 100% sure of whether you won't get the game to display on more than one screen, or you will get the game on all three but with all the work being made by the main GPU, and the other 2 just passively passing on the output to the respective monitor.

Either way, it wouldn't be better than hooking all three monitors to the same GPU (or having one gamine GPU and 2 of the cheapest GPUs you can find.

 

In the scenario TechylnAZ references i belive what would happen is a single GPU would take on the workload using the other 2 as slaves to just push signal to the displays.

[MedievalMatt]

Just now, NumLock21 said:

When you have multiple graphic cards, there is no need to have it run on AMD Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround. They can operate independently from one another, but your game idea probably won't work because, the game is always played from the primary monitor. There is the option to set it to windows mode and then you can drag it to another screen, but there is no way to tell which gpu it's running from. The only way it can probably work is if you can assigned the gpu to a specific monitor.

if you set the game to open on a specific monitor, say 3.  and plugged that into the 3rd GPU.  it would open and run on the 3rd monitor with the 3rd GPU.  So you could in theory run 3 games at the same time on 3 GPUs across 3 monitors.

[TechyInAZ]

Sorry if I didn't get this thru, but each monitor is connected to each GPU. 

[NumLock21]

3 minutes ago, MedievalMatt said:

if you set the game to open on a specific monitor, say 3.  and plugged that into the 3rd GPU.  it would open and run on the 3rd monitor with the 3rd GPU.  So you could in theory run 3 games at the same time on 3 GPUs across 3 monitors.

Well the minimum for a basic gpu lets you run 2 monitors, so with 3 gpus, in theory you can really run 6 games!

I remember doing up a 8 monitor setup for a person who does stock trading. Best part is starting that the flying windows screen saver move across all 8 screens.

 

 

[iRileyx]

Pretty sure if this worked people would already be using it rather than SLI/Crossfire, and I've not heard of anyone doing this so  

[dany_boy]

1 minute ago, TechyInAZ said:

Sorry if I didn't get this thru, but each monitor is connected to each GPU. 

Yes you DID say so

[Electronics Wizardy]

13 minutes ago, TechyInAZ said:

Can somebody please test this though? I won't know for certain until somebody tries this.

the game will render on one gpu, and the images will be pushed to other gpu's. you won't get any higher frame rates. You could run 3 games at full frame rate though(if you got them to run on different gpus(which can be a pain in windows) and the cpu wasn't a limit)

[MedievalMatt]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

Well the minimum for a basic gpu lets you run 2 monitors, so with 3 gpus, in theory you can really run 6 games.

 

True. And i have run 2 EVE clients on 2 displays connected to a single R9 290x.  so with 2 more, that 6 EVE clients all running at 60FPS.  youd need 6 monitors tho.

[Ashiella]

To me its funny how the op is standing ground on getting people to try it even though everyone has literally said that it will NOT work under pretty much any circumstance. I've tried something similar and it didn't work (It was with intel IGPU and a 750ti)

[waterjug]

to sum up this post in one sentence: sorry it will not work

 

also rip dark theme users

[Shiv78]

4 minutes ago, wii8cookies said:

to sum up this post in one sentence: sorry it will not work

 

also rip dark theme users

agree applies to both