multiple (3) monitors using intel iGPU + PCI-e graphics card

Question

I'm interested in purchasing an asrock h55 board that supports the intel integrated GPU. Something like the h55 usb / pro /extreme.

I have 3 monitors and I'd like to know if I connect two monitors via the integrated gpu (which as far as i understand should work fine) then connect a PCI express geforce 8500 to the PCI-e x16 port. I should be able to run a third monitor and extend the desktop amongst all three.

Is this correct? will each monitor be able to show a different application at once?

At the moment I have achieved this using two video cards on an asrock board that has two pci-e 8x slots for video cards. I figure it'd be good to make use of the gpu since i'm getting the i3 560 and from the looks of things, none of the asrock boards come in 8x 8x pci e configuration anymore, they only come in 16x 4x config, which might be too slow? i dont know.

Any Ideas?

(also asked the same question on asrock forum: http://forums.tweaktown.com/asrock/42303-multi-monitors-3-monitors-using-asrock-h55-board-igpu-pci-e-video-card.html#post380135)

Answer 1

I have 3 monitors and I'd like to know if I connect two monitors via the integrated gpu (which as far as i understand should work fine) then connect a pci express geforce 8500 to the pcix16 port, i should be able to run a third monitor and extend the desktop amongst all three.

AFAIK, you can have only the IGP or the external graphics driving the display. Not both.

Answer 2

Is this correct? will each monitor be able to show a different application at once?

Yes. Hardware wise there is nothing stopping you from using multiple graphics cards (build in to the motherboard, on CPU-die or decdicated PCI-e cards) at the same time.

Software wise this used to be different. XP and older did not like graphics from multiple vendors of different cards, but your post is from a year after end of life for XP, so I amssume you are using Vista or windows 7. And Windows 7 handles this just fine.