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Will a card like the GT 430 which has 1x dvi, 1x vga, and 1x hdmi ports allow me to connect 3 monitors to it giving me a large desktop spanning 3 screens?

Assuming I have 3 vga monitors and get the following adapters for the graphics card:

dvi to vga
hdmi to vga

2 Answers 2

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No, all current Nvidia Geforce cards only support two monitors. Even in Windows.

For three monitors you either need two cards or a different brand that will support all three at once (ATI/AMD have some that do lots of screens but I'm not sure how well supported this is in Linux).

Edit: If you're determined to stick with one Nvidia card, you can get a Matrox DualHead2Go which is a box that you plug two monitors into and then plug that box into one of the outputs on the video card. It makes the video card think that those two monitors are just one screen. The downside is it's not cheap (over £100) and it also enforces some refresh/resolution limits.

They also do a TripleHead2Go (three monitors into one port) and this costs twice as much. But that does mean you could have 6 monitors coming off one Nvidia card which would be pretty epic (assuming it didn't crumble into dust trying to render that much at once).

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  • So does that mean you have to disconnect a monitor from either the dvi or vga port before connecting a monitor/screen/tv to the hdmi port? Dec 14, 2011 at 15:59
  • I'd imagine so, yes. I haven't tested it though so it might automatically override one of the screens.
    – Oli
    Dec 14, 2011 at 16:02
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It will only recognize the first two you plugged in. The third shows up in the display manager, greyed out. If you click to turn it on, it freezes for a while then times out. You could leave your TV plugged in all the time, then just unplug one of your monitors and click "detect displays" in the display manager. I have the same exact everything as you, and I was pretty bummed after waiting a week for a new DVI cable that I couldn't use my third monitor. I thought the GeForce GT 430 could handle more than two monitors.. otherwise I wouldn't have bought it.

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