Passive graphic card

They make noise, too.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
Vampirtc
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:00 am

Passive graphic card

Post by Vampirtc » Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:30 am

Is there a passively cooled graphic card that has at least 2x DVI output (for monitor 2560x1440 res.) and 1x HDMI?

KadazanPL
Posts: 144
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2009 9:58 am
Location: Poland

Re: Passive graphic card

Post by KadazanPL » Wed Mar 23, 2011 6:12 am


mczak
Posts: 147
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2004 6:13 pm

Re: Passive graphic card

Post by mczak » Wed Mar 23, 2011 11:01 am

While it wasn't specifically asked for, note you can't use the two dvi ports and the hdmi port simultaneously - there's very few (one?) card out there where this works (these cards need additional DP->hdmi adapter chip onboard). If you really want to use 2xDVI and 1xHDMI simultaneously, you need to use a DP->HDMI (active) adapter (though the card mentioned still qualifies).
The low-end 5450 could do that as well if you don't need a fast card, these are typically always passively cooled - too bad I don't think there's actually one out there which has two dvi ports, always come with VGA instead and potentially no DP port neither...

fumino
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:38 pm
Location: ontario

Re: Passive graphic card

Post by fumino » Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:09 pm

im not entirely sure about this... i know you cant use eyefinity with 2 dvi and one hdmi, but what about just setting it up as a standard multimonitor system? im not sure if anybody could try this/has tried it/knows anything more?

mczak
Posts: 147
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2004 6:13 pm

Re: Passive graphic card

Post by mczak » Wed Mar 23, 2011 1:41 pm

No, this won't work no matter what. The reason is VGA/DVI/HDMI always need their own clock source and there are only 2 of them in the hw. DP OTOH uses fixed clock regardless of resolution (ok strictly speaking this is not quite true several different fixed clocks are available, I don't know which one radeons support).
It is technically possible (but I don't know if the driver supports it) to drive more than one VGA/DVI/HDMI output from the same clock source (using 1 crtc) which is good enough for traditional clone mode. I'm not sure if the hw could support using the same clock source for 2 crtcs (to output different images) as long as resolution and timing are the same, but I'm quite certain at least the driver doesn't support it.

fumino
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:38 pm
Location: ontario

Re: Passive graphic card

Post by fumino » Wed Mar 23, 2011 4:04 pm

fair enough. i knew it was kinda a stretch.

depending on OPs needs, two lower end video cards might do the trick fine.

Vampirtc
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:00 am

Re: Passive graphic card

Post by Vampirtc » Wed Mar 23, 2011 6:26 pm

I currently have 5750 and I use 2x DVI to display 2560x1440 on my LCD and at the same time I use HDMI to display 1080p on my HDTV.

Plekto
Posts: 398
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:08 pm
Location: Los Angeles

Re: Passive graphic card

Post by Plekto » Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:14 am

Just get a dual slot motherboard - the HDMI card is a simple thing if it's just being used for movies, so a tiny TV tuner card or similar would probably be more than enough to get the job done.

mczak
Posts: 147
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2004 6:13 pm

Re: Passive graphic card

Post by mczak » Sun Mar 27, 2011 4:08 pm

Vampirtc wrote:I currently have 5750 and I use 2x DVI to display 2560x1440 on my LCD and at the same time I use HDMI to display 1080p on my HDTV.
How do you use TWO dvi ports to drive ONE lcd? Dual-link DVI != 2xDVI. Quite far from it (granted dual link DVI needs two tmds transmitters just like 2 single links, but only one clock source - I assume that the tmds chips always run synchronized in such a case). The number of tmds transmitters is not a problem - these cards also support 2 dual-link DVI connections just fine (note though in the HD6xxx chips AMD actually seems to have saved some pennies and they only support one dual-link DVI connection now).

Post Reply