Does AMD’s AM1 platform support triple monitors natively? No.
Kabini only supports two simultaneous displays
If you plan on using AMD new’s AM1 platform with a Kabini Athlon or Sempron, be aware that triple display output is not supported. I tried it on my MSI AM1I motherboard just to make sure and sadly only two outputs were usable at a time 🙁
So even if your motherboard has DVI + HDMI + VGA, like mine does, you can only utilize TWO of those outputs at once. Not three.
Kind of a bummer, as I would love to drive three displays off of a tiny system drawing very few watts.
QHD etc. on AMD Kabini
I tried connecting my 30″ Dell to my MSI AM1’s DVI port and it definitely does NOT support dual-link DVI, the supported resolutions maxed out at 1280×800 (exactly half of 2560×1600). As far as I can tell, none of the Kabini motherboards have dual link DVI support. 🙁
So if you are planning on using a greater than 1080p display that uses dual-link DVI, like an older 2560×1600 monitor 30″ LCD, you will NOT be able to do it with Kabini unless you have a motherboard with displayport and you utilize an active displayport to dual-link DVI adapter.
On the other hand, if your monitor supports the latest HDMI specs for high-res then Kabini will be able to drive those 2560×1440 displays etc. via HDMI 🙂
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athlon 5350 + asus am1 itx
if i use VGA integrated + HDMI integrated
+ 1 adaptor USB 3.0 —> VGA
can run 3 monitors simultaneous?
thanks
Hey Luca, sorry for the late reply! As the post explains, the Kabini platform only supports two simultaneous displays natively. Adding a USB 3.0 to VGA adapter would in theory give you a third output via DisplayLink, and DisplayLink adapters do work independently of the GPU’s native output count. I haven’t personally tested that exact combination on Kabini, but DisplayLink-based adapters are generally how people add a third (or more) monitor to hardware that doesn’t natively support it.
Not neccesarily. That’s what they said for ordinary ( non-Eyefinity cards) too, but I’m using ordinary HD6850 with triple monitor setup – on Linux. After some headaches,s earching and a bunch of tests with elcheapo adapters.
At least with ordinary AMD GPUs bottleneck are PLLs. When using non-DP output, ( so VGA, DVI or HDMI or even DP in non-native mode – that is with passive adapter to HDMI/DVI slot) PLL is needed for precise timings that are generated for particular monitor. There are only 2 PLLs, so can have up to 2 independent non-DP picture sources.
I use 3 monitors in such setup becaue:
1. All my monitors are the same and use exact same timings, so just one PLL can generate timings for all.
2. I use relatively fresh linux radeon driver, which takes care of that.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m pretty certain that it would work even with 4-th monitors, if I added another on now unused DP port. SInce monitopr doesn’t have DP input, I’d have to use passive elchapo DP-DV adapter ( basically two connectors ). DP would then generate DVI signals from the same PLL.
Hi Brane212, thank you for the great info!
Very cool to know that AM1 on Linux can support triple monitors 🙂
A couple questions:
+Do you have any recommendations for specific motherboards and monitors?
+Any chance of this working on Windows?
Thanks again for sharing!
-J.D.
I’m not saying it does, just that it could, given that I have exactly the same problems with discrete GPU AMD card and have managed to solve them on Linux. Apply with the pinch of salt.
Wrt to motherboards, Asus seem to jump out of the pack, at least pricewise.
I like the both – mATX one AM1M-A and mini-ITX version AM1-IA. Former is crazy cheap in EU – less than €30 for quite nice board. I’m tinkering a lot, so I like the fact that you have 2 extra USB3.0, LPT and 2 COM ports. LPT is great for improvising a chip programmmer on the spot, COMs are great for communication with microcontrollers, hacking and debugging.
One interesting thing of AM1 platform is ECC DDR3 support. Rumours are that quite a few MoBos have extra traces for ECC bits, but only those Asus boards actually support it in BIOS ( at least mATX one does, they say that mini-ITX one will officially support it soon).
Since one of the ideas is to wrap-up mini fileserver that punches highly above its weight, ECC is great feature. Modern Linux filesystems like BTRS or one that we stole from BSD – ZFS have great features that address data security, but they need to rely on reliability of RAM, that’s why its great to have ECC. Even though those sticks are more expensive, they are well worth the money, att least for fileserver.
One thing that I don’t like about those boards, is that they use a bit tweaked SuperIO chip that is undocumented. I tried to persuade Coreboot to boot instead of closed source BIOS, but in stumbled on that damn ITE IT8623 chip and I’ve managed to get to rescue console, but no screen.
On top of that I managed to burn it. Ebay trip later, I ordered new one and a few empty BIOS chips, co I can play some more. Hopefully, if/when package from HongKong arrives.
In the meantime, I’m ordering a few more boards – of both kinds, a few CPUs and sticks. This thing is cool. ;o)