Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, JustAnEngineer
mmmmmdonuts21 wrote:Thanks, both of you. I had thought the integrated GPU only as a backup, not for real. That's a great suggestion; I'd love to reuse my existing 8600GT (with a passive Accelero heatsink). It has two DVIs and doesn't require extra power from the PSU. I'll see if the integrated + 8600GT works with three monitors well. If not, I'll buy an Eyefinity card, and won't have lost any money.One other question that I don't know the answer to is can you use the integrated GPU along with another smaller GPU to have a triple monitor setup? Then you could get a $25 GPU with dual outputs and use the integrated for another.
Airmantharp wrote:You're right, I just want to have an IDE in my main monitor, and documentation and graphs and other stuff in the secondary monitors. Is this simpler than stitching? I'm getting confusing with the capabilities. Is this possible with a 8600GT + H67, or do I need a Z68 instead? If a Z68 is required, which board would you recommend for this? I'd like a second x16 slot, because there's a realistic chance I get back into gpgpu during the machine's lifetime.I'm not sure why you keep mentioning Eyefinity- you're not going to be stitching your monitors together, from the sound of your usage, you just want the outputs. If you're just using the outputs, then the 8600GT would be a fine secondary card to the GPU on the 2600, if you use a Z68 board.
ozymandias wrote:Yeah, I probably shouldn't have dismissed that option so quickly. What hdd is substantially faster than the 7200 Spinpoint? I already bought the 128GB sdd; I currently have 120GB of OS & programs, and it's unlikely to shrink.Alternatively, you could use a z68 board, get a smaller SSD and a bigger (and faster) hdd.
wibeasley wrote:You're right, I just want to have an IDE in my main monitor, and documentation and graphs and other stuff in the secondary monitors. Is this simpler than stitching? I'm getting confusing with the capabilities. Is this possible with a 8600GT + H67, or do I need a Z68 instead?
insulin_junkie72 wrote:wibeasley wrote:You're right, I just want to have an IDE in my main monitor, and documentation and graphs and other stuff in the secondary monitors. Is this simpler than stitching? I'm getting confusing with the capabilities. Is this possible with a 8600GT + H67, or do I need a Z68 instead?
H67 will work.
Airmantharp wrote:The salesman at Microcenter checked (with someone in the back) and reported that the H67 doesn't let you combine integrated and discrete GPUs; he said the Z68 does. Since he didn't have any Z68s to sell, I don't think they were lying (at least intentionally).My only verification would be to make sure that the onboard GPU wouldn't be disabled when a discrete GPU is plugged in but I don't think that will be the case either.
wibeasley wrote:Airmantharp wrote:The salesman at Microcenter checked (with someone in the back) and reported that the H67 doesn't let you combine integrated and discrete GPUs; he said the Z68 does. Since he didn't have any Z68s to sell, I don't think they were lying (at least intentionally).My only verification would be to make sure that the onboard GPU wouldn't be disabled when a discrete GPU is plugged in but I don't think that will be the case either.
I've searched for two hours, and haven't found anything convincing either way. (Non-TR) forum posts are split, and reviews don't seem to cover this aspect. I've looked through manuals, and they rarely seem to address it. In fact, the only place I've seen it explicit in is a Z68 manual by ASRock (see "Surround Display Feature" on p.23).
Am I missing something obvious? I feel like playing it safe and getting a Z68, like this ASRock.
(And Newegg ran out of that discounted case.)
wibeasley wrote:The salesman at Microcenter checked (with someone in the back) and reported that the H67 doesn't let you combine integrated and discrete GPUs; he said the Z68 does.
My ASRock manual, page 19 wrote:This motherboard supports surround display upgrade. With the internal VGA output support (DVD-D, D-Sub and HDMI) and external add-on PCI Express VGA cards, you can easily enjoy the benefits of surround display feature.
insulin_junkie72 wrote:That's pretty helpful. The manual for your board (p.23) has the exact same page as that Z68 linked above. But the only ASRock H67 with display currently costs more than the Z68 version. So that makes that comparison easy.I've got an H67, and I've done it. I must have a magic board!
Airmantharp wrote:Pretty sure retail people are clueless. At best, I hope they have a cursory understanding of the marketing materials, and I regularly confound them with my decisions .
eperez wrote:I didn't realize any MicroCenter people would be reading this, but since apparently some are, I want to state that I was very happy with the visit and your knowledge and advice (and you were pretty tolerant of my daughter's energy too). This H67 integrated-discrete combination seems to be a obscure and tricky issue that's stumped a lot of people who had a lot more time to research it than we had in the store. And as I said in the online survey, I'd much rather be underpromised than overpromised about the H67's capabilities.I certainly am not the type to be clueless, I graduated high school early and I've earned a few IT certs... Should of I known a definite answer? Yeah, but I'm not omniscient. Did I try to get an answer that would work for Will's situation? I did my best with what I could find. Did I lie to him so he could buy more stuff? Nope. Do I have a load of cash to try different setups? I wish.
eperez wrote:Yea, the stuff I searched through on company websites didn't help with this.BTW, the marketing material is useless as it really doesn’t drill down into the technicals of the chipsets.
eperez wrote:I don't know what to think. I looked through the manuals for several companies' boards, especially Asus. I never saw something that addressed the issue clearly. Some bios options had "iGPU" and "dGPU" in their names, but the one sentence description didn't make things clearer, and I couldn't find any longer explanations.We don’t carry ASRock, but considering someone actually has the scenario working on H67. I see no reason why it would not work on other boards.
JustAnEngineer wrote:If you're talking to me, I knew something like that was possible, but I've never had more than one DisplayPort monitor, so I haven't paid attention to the specifics.You know that you could put a Multi-Stream hub on the DisplayPort 1.2 output of your graphics card and drive up to 4 DisplayPort monitors from that single output, don't you?
JustAnEngineer wrote:You know that you could put a Multi-Stream hub on the DisplayPort 1.2 output of your graphics card and drive up to 4 DisplayPort monitors from that single output, don't you?
Airmantharp wrote:Well, I bit the bullet and did my exchange stuff with Newegg for the P67 -> Z68 ASRock Extreme4. Should have my Z68 board by Thursday, and I'll be able to confirm/deny the following:
gbcrush wrote:Airmantharp wrote:Well, I bit the bullet and did my exchange stuff with Newegg for the P67 -> Z68 ASRock Extreme4. Should have my Z68 board by Thursday, and I'll be able to confirm/deny the following:
Hey, while you're messing around with the setup, do you mind letting me know how low the DRAM voltage will go on that board? Do you remember how low the P67 board went?
I'm looking to hit 1.25v if I can, of course. But not all motherboards support going that low, from what I've been able to tell.
zzz wrote:Is this rage because I bought a CPU with a locked multiplier? That choice wasn't motivated by $15. I use the machine for modeling and simulations. I don't want any of my results to be questioned by a reviewer that's concerned that I used unstable, overclocked systems. There would actually be a little value in having a machine that can't be overclocked at all. But it's fine with me if you make a different purchase.I'm not going to tow-the-line here. You're aware of this website and as such you should be aware of how over-clocker friendly these chips are and it'd be pretty stupid for the informed not to simply not change a single number in the bios to gain a huge performance boost. There is no way to justify saving a handful of dollars when you can easily and simply double the hardwares performance.