2nd Video Card in a Pro Tools 10/11 rig?

[rtcstudio]

I'm on a Pro Tools HDX (single card) rig. Signature is up to date.

Although the Mac Pro I have (June 2012 2x2.4 GHz 6-Core, 64 GB RAM) has an ATI RADEON HD 5770 card that is supposed to support 3 monitors, I can never get reliable use from 3 monitors.

I have a Sony Bravia 42" Monitor that is being fed by the HDMI output and I have an ACER 24" monitor that is being fed with a VGA adapter. It has the Digital input, but again, the most RELIABLE monitor set up with this Mac Pro is the one Sony HDMI monitor and one VGA monitor.

Whenever I try to hook up the 3rd Acer 24", it will work sometimes, and then sometimes it will not activate at startup, or it will go dark during use after an initial successful start up.

I've been on the Apple site, and this card seems picky if you are using the HDMI output. They for sure recommend that you do NOT use the Digital output for additional monitors. Seems like it is supposed to work with HDMI and 2 VGA, but I don't see that here.

AVID used to say DO NOT use a 2nd Video card in a Pro Tools rig. I was wondering if now, it might be okay to have an additional video card in my rig with the one HDX card.

If so, does anyone have a recommendation for a good yet inexpensive video card for this rig?

OR does anyone have any wisdom on how I might get this current rig happy with one HDMI and 2 VGA monitors?

THANKS!

[musicman691]

I seem to remember reading somewheres that this card even though it has 3 outputs that it's really only 2 discrete data channels and the third output mirrors one of the others. IOW 2 outputs output the same signal and a different signal on the remaining one. So I don't know that you'd even be able to get 3 discrete outputs with this card.

[rtcstudio]

Originally Posted by musicman691

I seem to remember reading somewheres that this card even though it has 3 outputs that it's really only 2 discrete data channels and the third output mirrors one of the others. IOW 2 outputs output the same signal and a different signal on the remaining one. So I don't know that you'd even be able to get 3 discrete outputs with this card.

Thanks for the reply, but actually, it does support 3 diff monitors (according to Apple) and I've had it working with 3 different views (no mirroring). It's just that it does not reliably keep 3 "going" IF one of them is HDMI.

The posts I read at Apple indicated that if you use HDMI, that puts more strain on the card, thus, if you are using HDMI, they say you won't reliably get two Digital video outputs, they recommend using 2 VGA ouputs (if you're using HDMI as one output) This is one of their recommended configurations.

But I'm not getting 2 reliable VGA's either. It works great with 3 VGA's, because of less overhead I guess.

[rtcstudio]

I've uploaded a small pic of my rig. The middle monitor and the two top monitors come from the main Mac Pro 12 core. The two bottom monitors come from (left) a Mac Pro 8 core and a (right) PC 8 core. This is what it looks like when it works....