What do I need to make this work?

[ingeborgdot]

What type of video card or whatever would anyone recommend for this setting. I have a guy that wants to hook up his computer to his standard monitor but also at times wants it to be able to be able to watch it on his big tv. The tv has a vga in plus hdmi, and component. He also has a smaller tv that is already wired with hdmi to come from the computer.
So in a nut shell he wants the regular monitor which will be DVI, the small tv that has hdmi and the large tv I am not sure what to run, whether it be vga, hdmi, or component. I like the idea of another hdmi because it runs audio too where vga only runs video and would need another audio cable. Component would be the same issue. I would also like to use cat 5e to run any of this. Is that possible?
So, if this makes sense to anyone, what equipment would I need to make this possible? What do I need for a video card or cards? What would I need to make the cat 5 work? Thanks.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Would this 6870 be a good card for what I need?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150507

 

[Tmagic650]

That video card would work very well, and going HDMI to the TV is the way to go...

 

[ingeborgdot]

The board I am using also has HDMI so I can run and HDMI from that also to the other little TV. I will use the DVI to the computer monitor. I could even use one of the mini display ports for the small TV too I guess. Is this card overkill for what I am doing or necessary?

 

[Tmagic650]

"Is this card overkill for what I am doing or necessary?"

Yes it is overkill. Use the HDMI connection. You will need a good shielded HDMI cable long enough to reach the TV. The HDMI connection supplies both video and sound

 

[ingeborgdot]

I do need 2 hdmi outs because there are two TVs. One is a large 55" and the other is a 23". The DVI would go out to the monitor so no sound is needed.
What would you recommend if the one is overkill?

 

[Tmagic650]

You could go this way:
EVGA

I have one, and it does the job...

 

[ingeborgdot]

What about this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150447

 

[Tmagic650]

If he want's to spend the money, it will do fine

 

[yRaz]

I think this card will get the job done
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131367&cm_re=5670-_-14-131-367-_-Product

The VGA could connect to the TV, but I don't know how long VGA cables can get. It really would be easier to have HDMI, HDMI, DVI. Problem is, I can't find anything that fits that bill in any price range. I could have swore that I saw an AMD eyefinity card that supported up to 5 displays and I think it had 3 HDMI ports. Even if you could find it, I'm sure it would be very expensive. It would suck if you had to pay $200+ for a graphics card just to get that feature. You'd think that with how popular HTPC's are becoming they'd have something like already.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Okay, I have the computer finished. I have an XFX 5830 plus an ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890GX motherboard with HDMI onboard. I have several problems with what I want to do. I can get the HDMI on the 5830 to be recognized and the DVI but when I go into duplicate it drops the resolution on the dvi monitor to lower than the recommended 1920 x 1200 to 1360 x 768 or something like that on both. I don't want to have my main monitor that low if I don't have to. What do I have to do to fix that?
The other problem is that I can't get my CCC to recognize my onboard HDMI, what am I doing wrong?

 

[ingeborgdot]

Okay, I think I found out about the dual mode and both having to be the same and if one is lower res than the other that is what they both will be. Sucks, but it is what it is. I still have not been able to get my onboard hdmi to be recognized. Anyone???

 

[Tmagic650]

Are there any yellow exclamation marks in the device manager?

 

[ingeborgdot]

No, and the only display device listed is the 5830.

 

[Arris]

The board will most likely disable the onboard video when a discrete PCIe video card is used. I'm not sure that it will even support using both at the sametime. Check in the bios and see if the onboard video can be enabled and still use PCIe as the main video device.

For your "same res on both screens" issue. I'm currently running a HD4830 card at work with outputs to two monitors, one at 1280x1024 and the other at 1600x900, so that should be possible for you too.

Check the Display Properties and under "Settings" make sure you have the option "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor". If you check the same settings in CCC right click on "Desktop 2" and make sure it isn't cloning Desktop 1. I think the clone options force the displays to use a resolution supported by both whilst the "extend" option lets you run them at different resolutions.

 

[ingeborgdot]

The problem is he wants to watch the same thing on the two that are on the same card as they are in two different places in the room. So extend will not do it.

 

[Arris]

Check out the video options in CCC, Theatre mode. There are some configuration options there to set which monitors should show the video when full screened. Might be something of use there for you.