ATI Hybrid crossfire?? - Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H with Gigabyte GV-RX387512HP Radeon HD 3870

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › ATI Hybrid crossfire?? - Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H with Gigabyte GV-RX387512HP Radeon HD 3870

nzwogboy

93 posts

Master Geek

#28092 18-Nov-2008 15:31

Hi guys, I am trying ot find a solution to getting 1080P from dual outputs from my HTPC. I have a Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H which has the good ATI onboard graphics (3200HD I think) with the AMD 780G chipset which, supports ATI's Hybrid Crossfire Technology.
I need 1 x 1080P signal via HDMI and 1 x 1080P signal via VGA, the best I can get from the onboard graphics is 1280x768 out of both of them.
1 - Will the Gigabyte GV-RX387512HP Radeon HD 3870 support the Hybrid Crossfire or will it turn off the onboard graphics?2 - Does it matterif it turns the onboard graphics off? ie Will this card be able to handle dual 1080P output?3 - Is there a different card I should use?Preferabley no fan?4 - Is it best to use ATI or will it be ok to use a nvidea card.
Silence is a must, no gaming required just must be able to disply 1080P out of both VGA and DVI/HDMI similtaniously.
Also saw this card Gigabyte R467D3-512I HD 4670 512MB GDDR3

eXDee

4032 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#178622 18-Nov-2008 18:11

If you're looking for dual 1080p TV outputs, i think this is often an issue with HTPCs. But forgetting software side for the moment, hybrid crossfire wouldnt be necessary with the 3870 - thats a last generation top end gamers card.

You could use a nvidia card also, i'd suggest the 9600GT, You can use DVI-HDMI and DVI-VGA converters.

nzwogboy

93 posts

Master Geek

#178730 19-Nov-2008 08:18

cheers for that eXDee. Also saw the Readon HD 4670. Do you think this would do the trick, it is a bit cheaper and the Gigabyte one has HDMI out. Does the 4 stand for the generation? So the 4670 is a new generation but the 3870 is a better model?
The model numbers are a bit confusingt, might have to take a look at wikipedia.

hashbrown

463 posts

Ultimate Geek

#178748 19-Nov-2008 09:09

Hybrid crossfire with a 780G motherboard only works with 3400 serires cards, but it's more for better 3d performance, and doesn't sound like what you need.

Can you explain what you want to do here? I'd be surprised if you couldn't drive a cloned 1080p view from the 780G. If you want to extend your desktop or run different apps on different monitors/tvs, you should be able to use both the onboard video and any old card, even an NVidia one.

nzwogboy

93 posts

Master Geek

#178753 19-Nov-2008 09:41

Want to Clone 1080P. One Screen has a VGA that accepts 1080P but no HDMI, other screen has HDMI that accepts 1080P but VGA does not accept that high resolution, that is why I cannot use a either a VGA splitter or HDMI splitter to do the job
780G will not drive tem, I have tested and asked Gigabyte. So what graphics card to use? The chepaer and quieter the better, no gaming needed, just 1080P video. Thanks for you help guys.

hashbrown

463 posts

Ultimate Geek

#178777 19-Nov-2008 11:54

So what happens when you use the onboard VGA and HDMI connectors and set the screens to clone in Catalyst Control Center?

nzwogboy

93 posts

Master Geek

#178805 19-Nov-2008 13:42

It gives it a go then changes to a wierd supported resolution, not the one it was on and not 1080P. something like 13XX x 768 or something

eXDee

4032 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#178816 19-Nov-2008 14:16

nzwogboy: cheers for that eXDee. Also saw the Readon HD 4670. Do you think this would do the trick, it is a bit cheaper and the Gigabyte one has HDMI out. Does the 4 stand for the generation? So the 4670 is a new generation but the 3870 is a better model?
The model numbers are a bit confusingt, might have to take a look at wikipedia.

Yes, the HD4 is the generation, and the 670 and 870 are models. You're also correct that the 3870 has better raw performance for gaming, but the 4670 being newer generation probably has better video decoding implementation and related driver support.

Again, Nvidia is a possibility, i'm not saying use one or the other, its up to you, i've had no problems with my ATI HD4850, Nvidia 9600GT and 8500GT decoding Freeview HD.

hashbrown: Hybrid crossfire with a 780G motherboard only works with 3400 serires cards, but it's more for better 3d performance, and doesn't sound like what you need.

Can you explain what you want to do here? I'd be surprised if you couldn't drive a cloned 1080p view from the 780G. If you want to extend your desktop or run different apps on different monitors/tvs, you should be able to use both the onboard video and any old card, even an NVidia one.

Its likely it can't handle the high resolution of dual 1080p, not to mention you'd want to maintain hardware decoding so any old card isn't going to cut it.

I'm not sure if a better solution would be using the dual output of the graphics card or one from the graphics card, one from the onboard. I'm also not sure where DXVA hardware acceleration comes into this - it seems to be trivial at times, i wouldnt be suprised if it had issues with dual monitors.

nzwogboy: It gives it a go then changes to a wierd supported resolution, not the one it was on and not 1080P. something like 13XX x 768 or something

Are you 100% sure both TV's are 1080p resolution (ie 1920x1080, 'Full HD') and dont just have the capability of taking a 1080p input and downscaling it? It should only change to 1366x768 if thats the TV's native resolution, which is what a typical 720p (or 'HD Ready') TV uses.

Again you have to come back to the software side of things - i've personally had issues with clone monitors where video will only show on the primary monitor, the other will be a black square.
This is something you really need to look into because i'm not sure if theres many people here who have cloned the output on both TV's, or tried. No use getting a brand new video card to find that its not going to do what you want.

Sorry if this post proposes more problems than it solves, but buying something expensive only to have it not work is never fun.

Tradepub

Free professional, reference and technical white papers (affiliate link).

nzwogboy

93 posts

Master Geek

#178860 19-Nov-2008 17:08

The native resolution of the HDMI screen is 1920x1080 and the native resolution of the VGA screen is 1360x768. But the VGA screen will run 1080P fine by itself and vice versa, the VGA screen is a Origen ae 12T touch screen, it is designed for this purpose, they said it works but they said they contacted Gigabyte and that the onboard graphics would not support dual 1080P cloning, so which card do I buy, there are tomany options, I have no preference when it comes to ATI and nvidia (use to only ever use nvidea until this motherboard came along). Only reason I though ATI was because thats what the onboard graphics is and would have the least conflicts. So what ya reckon?