workstation - What concerns are there with putting two high-end graphics cards in one PC?

I want to put two AMD/ATI V3700 into a HP 8200 Desktop to get 4x DVI outputs for 4 separate screens. Can anyone see any flaws in my plan?

Answer

First of all, take a moment to think hard about whether you really want to deal with the hassle of dual video vards. A few things to consider, based on a coddinghorror blog post about it.

• Power consumption: two GPUs will keep your PSU working very hard, and possibly cause it to overheat. Your PSU may not even have enough power to run two cards at once


• Instability: running two GPUs at once is at best a stable as running a single GPU. In reality, dual-GPU setups introduce a lot of issues. It's a very inexact science.


• No overclocking! The GPUs have to run at the exact same configuration, and should be left in their default config. The CPU should also not be overclocked.

Instead of using 2 cards to power 3 monitors, you should be looking at a single card which can support 4 displays. It'll be expensive, but less expensive than two cards + a new power supply. AMD/ATI makes several high-end cards which support up to 6 displays. Remember that you can only use up to 2 DVI, HDMI, and/or VGA outputs on a single card; anything above that must be DisplayPort. Get a card with at least 2 DP and at least 2 DVI (or with 4 DP), and you'll be able to run 4 monitors from 1 card with less power consumption, more stably.