5870 powers 3 monitors?

[Stecchino]

Just so I'm not missing anything, I was hoping my fellow MacRumors members could help my confirm what otherwise appears to be an obvious answer.

The 5870 in the Mid 2010 Mac Pros will support 3 displays out of the box. The tech specs say "Connecting more than three displays requires installation of two ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics cards". Is there anything I'm missing?

Planning on picking up 3 1920 x 1200 monitors soon and I plan on this machine to run them.

[Vylen]

Not missing anything...

Both the 5770 and 5870 can run 3 monitors at once. If you need more than 3, you need 2x5770.

[stujmac26]

Check out this thread http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=997873 - post #11 takes you through to this support doc from Apple - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4279?viewlocale=en_US - seems you can run 3 monitors, it'll just cost you a fair whack in cables.

[Stecchino]

Thanks for the head's up on that.

It's looks like it would be worth trying MonoPrice's alternative (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10428&cs_id=1042802&p_id=6904&seq=1&format=2) ($61 USD) to Apple's cable.

[sboerup]

You can pick up the Apple Dual-link adapters for around $45 on ebay (including shipping).

[Wonderl33t]

WATCH OUT!

Something they don't tell you is that one of the three monitors either has to be native DisplayPort, or use an ACTIVE displayport adapter. Meaning the $10 displayport adapter from ebay won't work. The Active displayport adapters are much pricier, like $40 I think. I wasted $10 on a passive adapter not knowing this.