I would like to run a 3 monitor setup on LFS using 1 x 20inch DELL Widescreen (1680 x 1050) and 2 x 17inch Dell (1280 x 1024) screens.

I have a 8600 GT PCIe NVIDIA and a 5500FX AGP NVIDIA.

When I try to run LFS across more than 1 screen it lags very badly. Even with SoftTH.

I can run across 2 monitors if I configure it as one spanned screen, but cant include the 3rd screen because it is on a seperate card.

Are my video cards too low spec to do 3 screens ?
Any ideas ?

Yeah, I think the 8600gt can't handle the large res. I'd suggest a newer card. If you plan on playing newer games at those res, too, a gtx 260 would be good for ya. Or if you just play LFS in tri-monitor a 9800gt should suffice. I'm not good on ATI's GPU numbers so someone else can fill you in there

Quote from MijnWraak :

I'm not good on ATI's GPU numbers so someone else can fill you in there

I'm on it!

Read this thread starting from this post: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=977997#post977997

Quite how are you plugging in a PCIe and an AGP card at the same time? :S

My motherboard supports AGP, PCI and PCIe.
The 2 cards quite happily run the 3 screens for the graphics apps I use.

Which mobo is it? The only board I can think of that does this (one of the ASRock's) only lets you use one or the other - not both.

Quote from Jakg :

Which mobo is it? The only board I can think of that does this (one of the ASRock's) only lets you use one or the other - not both.

Partly correct.

I have the Asrock 4core dual vsta. It does have both pci-e and agp slots, and you can use them at the same time, i've done it myself.

But..

I wouldn't recommend it.

Firstly, the pci-e slot is only a x4, so you're losing performance from the get go.
Secondly, the slots are far too close to each other. The fan of the agp card is almost touching the back of the pci-e card, so the heat from the back of the pci-e goes straight into the fan of the agp, and subsequently gets very very hot very very quickly.
Thirdly, I've only tried it with 2 Nvidia cards using the same drivers. I doubt it would work with ATI and Nvidia at the same time.
Forthly, the Asrock is pretty crap tbh. It's good if you want to upgrade bit by bit from old technology to new (i.e ddr1 - ddr2, ide -sata, agp - pcie) but after that, it's a very mediocre board.

Cant remember the exact brand ... PC Wizard gives the following info.

Mainboard : Unspecified 775Dual-880Pro
Chipset : VIA PT880 Pro
Processor : Intel Pentium D @ 2666 MHz
Bios : American Megatrends Inc.

LOL this board is such a mutant. PCIe and AGP, DDR and DDR2 ram...I'm surprised it doesn't have an AM2 socket as well

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overv ... del=775Dual-880Pro&s=

Actually they did make a 939 board with an AM2 slot in CPU socket / DDR2 RAM slots :X

haha ... yea, thats the one ... mutant board, lol

Quote from Jakg :

Actually they did make a 939 board with an AM2 slot in CPU socket / DDR2 RAM slots :X

haha yes i had that one.. u could put a expansion bord on it for DDr2 and AM2.. but the complete board is a fail.. i also remember i could have 8 screens connected tho.. but never tried

I am not positive but I do believe SoftTH recommends two PCI-E cards to handle the memory transfer. Also where as SoftTH is the software way to do triple monitors it takes resources as well.

Yeah, it likes PCI-e for the bandwidth. The second card itself doesn't need to be very powerful but both ideally should be in a high-bandwidth port.