Question 1

I Have an Alienware 18 (The Dual GTX860 variety) with a mini display port to the hub and 2 active DVI adapters to my 2 asus monitors and no dice.  I can get one to work, sometimes, but most of the time all the screens just are black and the mouse is frozen.  Anyone know why it wouldn't work?  Unless Alienware did something really screwy with the display port I have no idea why it's locking up the system.  Suggestions?

Accepted Answer

I have a GTX 740 with a full-size DisplayPort, 2 ASUS 24s and 1 Samsung television.  I can get it to display on all 3 but I cannot do surround (5760x1080) because of the mismatching refresh rates.

My experience is that one of the previous versions of the nVidia drivers would not support that configuration, but the latest does.  It took some fiddling, but I had to start with a monitor plugged into the DVI port, uninstall the drivers, power down, plug in the DP hub with nothing else connected, and power up the machine.  When it detected the connection, I then installed the most recent version of the nVidia drivers and rebooted again to have it detect.  I've also had to go with DP -> active HDMI adapters to get everything to reduce flickering.

An officially supported list of adapters from EVGA would have been swell to have after having gone through 6 adapters to get the right one, but I'm fortunate that my job comped me for the purchases.

Question 2

Can I use 1-4K monitor, 1-1920x1080 monitor, and a Samsung 32' smart TV?

Accepted Answer

I've had many performance issues when the specs are different for each monitor, such as dimensions (1920x1200 vs 1920x1080), refresh rate (60hz vs 120hz), and the like for panaromic gaming.  If you aren't going panoramic, then you should be fine.  Just make absolutely sure that when you get connectors - DP -> DVI or DP -> HDMI - that you specify Active Adapters... which will cost slightly more than the Passive Adapters.  If they aren't marked, assume Passive Adapter.

Question 3

Will this DP Hub be Mini Display Port compatible if I buy a Mini DP to DP cord?

Accepted Answer

I have not tried connecting this device to a mini-displayport on a supported video card.  Theoretically it should still work because it is the same chip driving the port and the same number of wires in the plug.

The bigger issue I've had to work with is the plugs on the outgoing side.  Unless all 3 monitors are DisplayPort, you'll have to get 'active' adapters and if the monitors are not the same resolution (I'm in the process of getting replacements) you'll get some weirdness (like one monitor detects fine, then one has a max res of 640x480).

Question 4

Will this make my three monitors show up in Windows as three distinct monitors (that can be placed horizontally, vertically, one above the other two, etc.) or just as a single monitor with a single image spanned horizontally across three monitors?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you would have three distinct desktops on three monitors.  I am using this hub with a Radeon 7970 card with 1 DVI Monitor, 1 HDMI Monitor, and 1 Display Port to DP Hub split out to 2 HDMI Monitors using DP-to-HDMI cables. Windows 8 natively give me four independent desktops on four monitors. They can be arranged and oriented in any desired combination.

Third party software is needed to create a single desktop spanning multiple monitors. Eyefinity software used with the Radeon card is capable of this and works with this DP Hub.

One problem I encountered was all my monitors needed to be the same display resolution to have all four working simultaneously.  Not sure if that is universally applicable to all system configuration or just my setup. YMMV

Question 5

Any information on the supported refresh rates for this product?  For example, if I wish to run at the max specified supported setup (5760 x 1080 (3 x 1920 x 1080)) will this run at 60Hz?  120 Hz?

Accepted Answer

weakest link in the chain I believe, with the AMD catalyst software the DP will only support one level of display and that will be the highest setting on the lowliest display.  all of my monitors match in max resolution and refresh (3x1920x1080, 60hz) so I can't check for certain, but it stands to reason that the graphics card driving the displays can only send out one set of instructions, and it needs to be able to be understood by all of the connected devices. This is just a sophisticated hub, it does not change the information from the computer but merely distributes it to multiple destinations.

Question 6

Could I connect this to a laptop and show PPT slides on one  external screen and have presenter notes on another external screen?   I know a laptop will already do this with the local screen, but if I wanted to put a laptop at the tech table, the "notes" monitor at the podium and the presentation on the projector.  Thank you.

Accepted Answer

Hello Jeff,

You should have no problem plugging in your laptop to the HDMI in of this unit and display out to up to 3 additional external displays via the 3 DisplayPort Outs.  Hope this helps!

Newegg Support

Question 7

What is the voltage of the external DC power source (doesn't list the voltage on EVGA website or device)?

Accepted Answer

input 100-240v 50/60hz 0.6a
output 12v 1.5a

Question 8

I have a GeForce GTX 760 w/fullsize DisplayPort driving a Samsung UD590 in fullblown 4K, 3840x2160 @60Hz. The card has only one DisplayPort. Can I use this hub to drive a second UD590, also at 3840x2160@60Hz? The 'Maximum Supported Resolutions' table implies not, but it's hard to tell. If not, I'd use HDMI (@30Hz) or get a 'chained' monitor. Right?

Accepted Answer

Hub would not work, there's only enough bandwidth for one. Chained monitor will not help either, that's functionally equivalent to a displayport hub. HDMI at 30 Hz should work. Since you're buying nice monitors, perhaps it's time to upgrade your video card?

Question 9

I just purchased the Asus ROG750 laptop from Newegg with a GTX870M graphics card.  I want to connect it to my three Dell E2214H monitors which only have DVI and VGA inputs.  I'd like to minimize the number of cables and adapters I'm using.  Can I run a mini-DP to DP cable to the hub, then run DP-DVI adapters to each monitor?

Accepted Answer

You can run a mini DP to regular DP connector to this unit and it works; I've been using it in that way for a few months already now.  Mine, however is connected to a desktop Radeon HD 6970 GPU which this hub spans my primary desktop accross 3 1080p displays.  I am using AMD eyefinity technology but there was a bit of finaggling that had to be done to get my triple portraite setup to behave just the way I wanted it to when I added two different additional displays directly to some other output ports directly on the gpu.  You should know that all of may displays are using DP to DVI active adapters so the signal remains digital.  I haven't attempted using it to convert to vga and I don't know for certain that conversion step wouldn't give you issues.  Also, i can't speak for the gpu you are using, but i would recommend more research even though it probably should work if it has a DisplayPort 1.2 spec output.

Bottom line:  Use DVI and three Active DP to DVI converters.  Avoid VGA; its an analog signal.
Does that help?

Question 10

I also have a MacBook Pro Retina Early 2013 and heard the thunderbolt port is the same as a mini display port. So would I just buy a MiniDisplay Port to DisplayPort Cable?

Accepted Answer

Specific to your question, a mini DP to DisplayPort cable should be fine because the signal is not being converted in anyway. A bit more on the MBP before you commit to buying this...

I was unable to get this to work with my 2013 MBP using OSX, however, I had the need to convert my end display adapters to DVI. EVGA responded to a thread I had on their forums and they said it should work provided I had 'active' DisplayPort to DVI connectors. When all was said and done, I could not get the screens to do anything but mirror the output, which is not what I needed.

Even though the thunderbolt 2 connectors should support high enough resolution on their own, I think this issue stemmed from underlying kernel not yet supporting MST (Muti-Stream Transport). When plugging this into a Windows laptop with an available DisplayPort, an Intel display screen popped up that helped adjust the displays (Not available on OSX, even with Intel video). With this in mind, I would say if you're using Windows this will most likely work, however, on OSX being that the kernel does not yet support MST, don't hope for much other than mirrored displays. MST support in the Linux kernel is was recently pushed back, here's a quote from a recent article published on 6/6/2014, "Intel DisplayPort MST support is most likely too late to make it for Linux 3.16 but we can hope this DisplayPort improvement will make it for the Linux 3.17 kernel." At this time, the 3.15 kernel is soon to be released mainstream, so it's still a ways out.

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