Need help setting up 3 monitors to my ATI 5770 on my Mac Pro 1.1

I realized to get all 3 monitors to work off of its 3 ports I needed to buy an:

“Active MiniDP to Single-link DVI adaptor”

You should read these if you haven't already:

Mac Pro (Early 2009), Mac Pro (Mid 2010): Supported display configurations

Mac Pro (Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Early 2009): Issues with three displays and multiple DVI, HDMI connections

The general gist of these articles is that you need two active adapters to run thee monitors on 5x70 cards.

If you use DVI monitors and any of them have resolutions less than 1920 x 1200 then you can use single link active adapters. The "AMD Eyefinity Validated Dongles" chart shows some active (and passive) adapters that are acceptable. For example of a single link DVI active adapter is the Accell B087B-006B. An example of a dual link DVI active adapter would be the one from monoprice.com if you need to connect monitors with a resolution greater than 1920 x 1200.

Here's a good explaination of what's going in here and why you need two active adapters on these cards:

Active vs. Passive Displayport adapters *the truth*

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That's my general response on this topic. I can't get specific on how to play this "game" unless you post the players, i.e., what kind of monitor connections do you plan to use, i.e., dvi (and monitor resolution), mini-displayport, vga, etc.

Instead of the adaptor I currenty have… should I be looking for (2) Active MiniDP to DUAL-link DVI adaptors.

Displays up to 1920 wide need only a Single-Link active adapter. It will not hurt anything to use a dual-Link, but they are pricey.

Dual-Link adapters have the 3 data leads twice, to reduce the data clock speed down to someting that can be done with "regular" electronics and "normal" wiring. The Apple 30" display (2560 by 1600) needs a dual-Link adapter.

KidVid wrote:

I actually own (6) LG monitors that are all 1920x1080.

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Instead of the adaptor I currenty have… should I be looking for (2) Active MiniDP to DUAL-link DVI adaptors.

From an optimized performance standpoint… would you advise me against buying an additional 5770 card to run my other 3 monitors for a total of 6 monitors?

I would love to gain the desktop real-estate but don’t want to fry any circuit boards or burn up any Ram in my MacPro 1.1

All DVI's, all with 1920 x 1080. Looks to me you have an easy solution. Two of those active Accell B087B-006B for each card for 4 of the monitors and the other two plugged directly into the remaing DVI ports. With 1920 x 1080 you should not need dual link dvi adapters.

Each card has its own video memory and power adapter and can handle three monitors so you aren't going to fry them. I assume your power supply can handle the load but I cannot be definitive on that.

One thing I am not sure of though is these cards are double wide so there is the possibility that one card could block access to the pci slot next to it. I have a 2010 mac pro 5,1 and slot 1 for my 5870 is actually physically wider than the remaining three slots.

From a cost point of view, if the cards you already have can handle three of these monitors why get two 5770?

I am not sure you will see a "performance" difference. I guess it depends on what you intend to use all these for. But there is the question of a 1,1 pci buss speed. I am not sure the cards can run full speed on 1,1.

(missed the stupid 15-minute edit timeout yet again)

Google "6 monitors on a mac pro" for similar setups and discussions.

From the card's viewpoint I think they are all the same. I mentioned the Accell B087B-006B because it is Eyefinity approved (i.e., in the list of "AMD Eyefinity Validated Dongles") and I believe others have used it.

I don't know what adapter you are looking at since you never specified a link.

As for power, I believe the power supply will have no problems. But that may depend on what else you stuff in the machine. From the AMD site specs for that card:

So the card only draws about 75W.

The Kill-a watt is good for determining the entire power the computer needs but not for measuring the load on just the power supply.

On the other hand I use iStat Menus and iut does give some of this information. I believe Hardware Monitor will do it too.

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Accell B087B-006B: MiniDP to DVI-D Single-Link Active Adapter

How did you manage to create a hot url link (Accell B087B-006B) without the browser identifying it as such? (In my case hot links show as blue. For example, my last sentence above.

Here's a thread specifically about 5770's on mac pro 1.1's.

ATI Radeon HD 5770 in MacPro 1,1

Here is the link for the new adapter I bough to run three monitors from my 5770.

http://www.frys.com/product/6677834?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

I noticed that Fry’s also offers that Arcell for about 10 bucks less so I think I will pick that one up.

Well the Fry's description has the "magic sentence":

Compatible with all supported Eyefinity configurations AMD Eyefinity Multi-Display Validated ensures compatibility for all Eyefinity configurations

So it will probably work too.

One nice thing about Fry's. If it doesn't work you can always easily take if back in the 30-day window.😉 They will just rewrap it, slap on a slight discount label, and put it back on the shelves -- got to watch closely what you pick up of the shelves when yo get something there.

Most of what I have been reading indicates that I really only need one of these adapters instead of two. No matter—I need another one to check if my current XFX one is faulty.

There is a bit of ambiguity in these requirements. But you said all your monitors are DVI so you need adapters anyhow. Might as well get the active ones instead of fooling around. They don't cost that much anyhow.

For optimal performance: When im finally able to utilize all 3 monitors off my 5770… could I just run my fourth monort off my ancient NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT?

Would that cancel out any of the “OpenCL” benefits of using more of my cores and ram at the same time

I don't know about performance but I did suggest earlier about using your existing cards if you could.

This morning I've connected my 3 monitors to the ATI Radeon HD 5770 using single link active adapters (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004SUELLC/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00).

I'm using them on the two mini displayports, which are connected to two LG Flatron IPS224.

The third monitor is connected directly via DVI-D cable.

Now - it works pretty well, but some weird stuff is happening with the third monitor (LG connected to the middle mini displayport). Every so often it goes in the the Power Saving Mode and straight away back on.

The other one, connected in exactly same way is absolutely fine.

It happens every few hours a few times in a row. Not sure how to resolve this - it's the first day I've got them connected. Any idea what it might be and how to solve it?

By trying different combinations of swapping adapters and monitors on the two Mini DisplayPorts you should be able to determine if the problem is limited to one display, one adapter, or one Mini DisplayPort.