AMD HD6870 with 2 VGA screens possible?

Computer Hardware Graphics & Multimedia cards (Archive)
#1

At the moment I have 2 VGA screens on my ASRock Z77 Extreme mainboard with a GeForce GT8500. The screens don’t work well together.

I’m wondering if I should get a AMD HD6870 but I wonder it is able to have 2 VGA screens. Because I’m not sure if the 2 VGA screens will work on the DVI outputs (with an adaptor)

I’ve seen posts about DVI-I (works) and DVI-D (doesn’t seem to work), The AMD site also states DL-DVI and SL-DVI and now I’m lost.

Can anyone tell me if my VGA screens work well with the HD6870 and what kind of adapter do I need, if any?

#2

The DL and SL refer to signal processing - dual or single ‘channels’ of signal processing - and is a Cable issue. Here’s a single-channel DVI cable, and it’s set of pins separated into two blocks…

The Dual Channel DVI cable fills up the ‘space’ with more pins so I call it a “solid block of pins”…

This is a Response Time issue mostly, but early in flat-screen DVI development, there may have been some circuit boards that couldn’t handle Dual Signal Processing. I don’t think that’s true with any DVI-flat-screen in several years, though.

(I hope I haven’t confused these two - “Two blocks of pins is Single. One big block is Dual.” Could they possibly make things MORE confusing?!!)

But that’s not the issue for you… running two VGAs, one that’s converted from the card’s DVI. I’ve never tried that. I’ve done the exact opposite - converting the VGA into a DVI - and I’ve been using a history of ATI cards for those - from the 3000-series on.

Not the other way around, though. Sorry.

#3

You need a mini displayport to vga adapter and it will work…

#4

Thanks everyone! I have just receive the package with the card and adapter and I’m typing from that PC now :wink:

#5

Good to hear you got it working! :smiley: