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Setting up this system isn't quite as straightforward as a standard build. As Nvidia don't officially support 3 monitor gaming with a single GTX580, KFA2 have had to come up with the procedure themselves.
The software supplied with the KFA2 MDT X4 contains the drivers and the overclocking tool.
We were quite surprised to see such an old driver bundled with the card and decided to head over to the official KFA2 site to check the revisions, as we were told this card might need specific drivers. Their main product page lists all the cards in the MDT range but we need to head over to the support page to check out the software. They say “NVIDIA released their new official 285.54 drivers, these new drivers enable 1080p gaming on our MDT Graphic Cards.”
We decided to ignore this and went with a much newer set direct from Nvidia, ForceWare V290.36.
On this page KFA2 have created software for the card which they call ‘EZY display‘. I found their website painfully slow, taking almost 30 minutes to get the software downloaded. Sadly it wasn't included on the optical disc either, which seems an oversight. At least this way they force the user to get the newest version.
A quick recap on how this is meant to work. There are three mini HDMI ports on the rear of this card and a DisplayPort. For gaming, the user has to connect three screens to the HDMI ports, leaving the four slot free for a main ‘desktop' panel. As a quick test we connected two screens to two of the mini HDMI ports and a Dell U3011 to the Displayport connector.
As the Nvidia display panel above shows, the Dell U3011 connected via the DisplayPort shows separately, which is how it should be.
‘GM-Quadrant-B' is the listing for the two 1080p panels we have connected to the mini HDMI ports. Combined they measure 3840×1080, which is correct. We decided to fire up the EZY software.
The software shows the two linked monitors and the single screen (C). These can be split up into 3 separate resolutions via the software.
We rebooted with three screens attached to the mini HDMI ports. The three monitors were correctly detected in the EZY software package.
The system detected these correctly, configuring them into a single spanned panel. The only problem is that the resolution is set to 3840×720. We need to set up a custom configuration in the nVidia driver panel at the right resolution.
Custom resolutions can be created via the Nvidia driver panel and only takes a few minutes.
We manually set a resolution of 5760×1080@50hz. We tested with 60hz, and although the monitors might support the refresh natively, it has to be 50hz via this card or it won't work. It is worth pointing out that not every game supports 5760×1080 over 3 screens, so some of our testing today will focus on single screen performance.
