How to: multiple monitor setup for Dell Optiplex 790

I currently am recommending the Dell Optiplex 790 minitower. (This will work for the desktop configuration as well.) It took me a lot of time and multiple returns to figure out the best way to do dual monitor, triple monitor and quadruple monitor setups (two monitors, three  monitors and four monitors). Here is what I found works the best:

Dual monitors: The simplest and cleanest way to do it is to buy a DisplayPort to DVI (male to male) 6 foot or 10 foot cable. The 790 has the capability of using the DisplayPort jack in the back as a second monitor without buying another video card. Here is an example of the cable. Note: this will only work for you if one of your two monitors has a DVI (white) jack. I have also used a DisplayPort to VGA adapter successfully over the last month (this is the exact adapter). You are able to choose either a cloned view or independent screens using either Windows’s Display settings or Intel Graphics settings (click here for Intel’s instructions) Related Site.

Triple/quad monitors: I found that I couldn’t use my trusty Radeon 7000 PCI cards in Windows 7 machines, so I chose to go with the ASUS Radeon HD 5450 PCI-Express (I’ve since switched to this newer card – the ASUS Radeon HD6450).  I chose this video card because it is reasonably priced (with no need for gaming) and that there is no fan to reduce the chance of failures. In the 790, you can actually buy two of these PCI Express video cards and put them both in! (See this PDF for motherboard card slot info.) I’ve done it and it truly works with three monitors and I’m sure it would for four.

Please comment with your own experiments and successes on the 790 or similar models.

34 replies
  1. Nelson says:

    Woohoo! Bought the same video card (already had an ATI Radeon 5450) and I was finally able to get my 3rd display. Only issue now is that there is some flickering or line noise which is bothering me (could be driver issue). But I’ve got my 3 monitors now and it looks awesome and I’ve got so much more real estate now to work with. THANK YOU for this post. Had you not posted this I would still be fumbling in the dark. Appreciate it a lot!

  2. Paul says:

    In your 2 monitor setup, are the screen 2 copies of the same thing, or are they two independent screens that you can extend the desktop on? Thanks.

  3. brmorris says:

    You can choose either, although with a clone, it is best to have monitors that have the same amount of pixels.

  4. geof says:

    my dell optiplex 380n is failing to run two cards. I added a vga express card and it disabled the integrated card. Any ideas?

  5. Nohra says:

    Has anyone else tried with the cable?
    I have the same question as Paul. Do you get the same view on both? Thanks!

  6. Fred says:

    Can you use a PCI Express video card and the displayport to DVI adapter cable to support three monitors or do you have to have two PCI express video cards? Most video cards indicate that two of them won’t work due to the small power supply in the 790 not providing enough power.

  7. brmorris says:

    Fred,

    I’m pretty sure that one PCI Express card disabled the integrated graphics totally, so the VGA nor DisplayPort work. I added the two PCIe cards in two 790s early in 2012 with no problem so far. A better video card that requires more wattage would obviously be more of an issue.

  8. Ty Brown says:

    I installed a nvidia 265 card on a 790 in the x16 pci slot works fine

    I moved it to the x4 it works fine however when install 2 cards on the x16 slot works but it shows up in the bios. Any thoughts.

    I’m using the same time of card in both slots. And they both work.

  9. Ty Brown says:

    Its been resolved. Still dont know what happened. There are 2 pci-e slots on a dell optiplex 790 one is 4x and the other is 16x for some reason i couldn’t get video cards to work in both slots at the same time. They would be seen in the bios. But not in windows 7 x64 i called del support and when i tried it for him it worked… go figure

  10. brmorris says:

    What is your purpose? A second monitor or to use the VGA jack in the computer to a DVI in the monitor? I don’t think this is what you need..

  11. john says:

    In my 790 I am running Win8x64 and have a dual dvi card installed. I can run 2 monitors off of the one card. I have tried hooking up a third monitor with a display port to dvi adapter. When I do that, non of the monitors will display. I can either leave the 2 port board connected and have 2 monitors, or the display port and get 1 monitor, but never 3.

    I tried working w/Dell support – and the impression I got is that I’d need to wait for a bios update to correctly support > 2 monitors in Win8. I’m running the latest bios, and there has been no updates since then.

    If I can’t get this to work with the card I have now – I may try to do a setup identical to yours to see if I can get it working. Any ideas?

  12. KYoshi says:

    We’re running on OptiPlex 790 sff and tried setting up a dual monitor setup via your initial write-up: (No. 1 Monitor) VGA and (No. 2 Monitor) VGA to DisplayPort. Both monitors are running, but we are only getting cloned desktop on both.

    Current OS is Windows 7 Pro and in the Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Display > Change Display Settings, there is no option to change the display mode from Clone to Extended Desktop. Hitting Detect has no effect.

    Does the extended desktop function require an additional video card to be installed?

  13. brmorris says:

    KYoshi,

    No, I’ve set this up dozens of times now and typically setup extended desktop. Try opening the Intel display setting app instead to configure the video.

  14. Tim says:

    I use a 790 at work w/Win 8-64, an i5 2nd Gen & 8G of RAM. It has a nVidia GeForce 8400GS VC, and onboard VGA & Display Port. (The machine has the latest BIOS version and chipset drivers too, along with the current NVidia software.) I am running 2 monitors from the nVidia card and would like to run 2 more monitors on this machine (as there is a second PCI express VC slot. I have seen this done by a former tech that I worked with who has left (I can’t seem to get up with him for the solution so I am here). Is there anyone out there that can shed some light on this. It would be greatly appreciated and would make work run smoother too. Thanks in advance.

  15. chuck says:

    I had a similar problem awhile back, trying to run a ppt show on two monitors–one of which was remote and connected via ethernet (hdmi/ip). “Extending” the displays worked, but not “duplicating” them. No success until I discovered that the two monitors must be set to the same resolution.

  16. brmorris says:

    Right, and Windows 7 generally will handle dropping both monitors to a highest common denominator resolution.

  17. Tiffany says:

    Will the Asus HD6450 provide the same results? I contacted Dell and they recommended that one and the ATI Radon HD4550.

  18. brmorris says:

    Tiffany,

    I think either would work ok — I like that they both have no fan to fail. The only thing I’m not sure of is what the limits are of the second PCI Express slot and what types of video cards will and won’t work in it.

  19. Worker123 says:

    Can I use a VGA connector with no issues. I want to clone the display using the DP using a DP to HDMI but nothing appears on the screen I have checked the setting in display but only the VGA monitor shows up. I have tried pressing the identify button but still only the VGA connected monitor? I have tried pressing the windows logo +P like on a laptop but nothing happens? The second screens HDMI slot works fine with everything else please help

  20. GV says:

    Hi,

    I have installed GeForce 8400GS graphics card and connected via HDMI to my 50 inch LCD screen. For some reason I am not getting stable display. The display goes on and off as if it cannot get the right resolution to stay stable. Please advise.

    Thanks.

  21. David McKinney says:

    I’m running Windows 8.1 64-bit and had some issues trying to get this running yesterday. My group bough NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 610 video cards to accomplish this.

    The two monitor setup worked perfectly fine since I got here. I had one in the onboard VGA and the other was using a DisplayPort to VGA adapter connected to the DisplayPort. When I added the additional card I figured I could just plug another monitor into it without issue. The thing gave me some error about unsupported configuration when I did that. I monkeyed with it for a while until I finally found some other video card that I had salvaged out of an old machine. I installed that and everything is working.

    I have a DVI and VGA connection to the NVIDIA card and then a DVI connection to the other card. I left the onboard display options completely unused.

    Any ideas on that scenario? It sounds like I should be able to make three monitors work with the NVIDIA card and the onboard video, but for whatever reason I couldn’t seem to get it going yesterday.

  22. David McKinney says:

    Disregard all of that. It was a matter of not reading the error message thoroughly. I moved the NVIDIA out of Slot 1 and into Slot 4 and I’ve got all three monitors on correctly.

  23. carl says:

    I found you can set up 2 video cards up on the OptiPlex 790 and use 4 displays but if I try to access the display port or the VGA connection I get a black screen that advises the system is not equipped to run using the video setup. It lists a 4 fixes in order to correct the issue but none of those are to use the display port or VGA connection. Is there a way without spending the money on a card to make the 790 work. I also tried using an Active Display port cable with no luck.

    I work for the government and of course we are versions behind on Microsoft Windows. Currently we use Windows 7 Pro with service pack 1.

    Any solutions?

  24. brmorris says:

    That was the point of this post. I found that you cannot use the integrated motherboard video and PCIe card at the same time in this model. In the newer Optiplex models, you can if you change a setting in the BIOS. This was the only way I could figure to do three or four monitors.

    In this setup that I am recommending, you don’t use any VGA or DisplayPort jacks in the motherboard, only jacks in the PCIe video cards.

    Most businesses are still on Windows 7 SP1, BTW 🙂

  25. Eddy says:

    Hi I have a Dell optiplex 790 and VGA port not working.I don’t have monitor with display port.How can I make the PC to change over to the VGA output port?

  26. brmorris says:

    If your VGA port isn’t working, you may have deeper issues. If the port is damaged, you could try a DisplayPort to VGA adapter from Amazon.

  27. LDSLVPPK says:

    Hey brmorris,

    “I found that you cannot use the integrated motherboard video and PCIe card at the same time in this model”

    I successfully got both ports on the motherboard working along with PCIe video card in W7 SP1 and W10. I got 3 DVI + 1 VGA monitor going on my O-790. It’s a bit tricky but works. I believe the processor has to be based on Sandy Bridge.

    First, load the latest BIOS.

    Second, remove the video card(if present), boot into Windows with a VGA monitor and properly install the Intel video driver for the on-board video.

    Third, physically install the video card. Attach a monitor ONLY on the video card and boot into BIOS. You will now see the video option to enable dual monitor. Enable, save and shut down.
    The BIOS menu setting says valid only for Windows 7, but ignore that. Windows 10 wasn’t around when it was written.

    If you do not exactly follow the above steps in the exact order, you’ll get stuck or get an error message. .

    Attach a monitor to card, a monitor to VGA and power up. Load the video card driver in Windows environment.

    Once the driver is loaded up, you will be able to extend desktop. You can shut down and start back up with all four monitors connected. The monitors will act chaotic until Windows is loaded because the multi-monitor capability is provisioned under Windows environment.

    You use a $5 DP to DVI passive cable to get DVI from the DP port.

    NVIDIA GeForce 9300 GE 256MB worked good for me. This is a basic fanless video card from a previous generation Optiplex. You use a $10 DMS-59 Y cable to get two VGA or two DVI. This card gives great pictures and works well with different monitors. I recommend Nvidia as I found they maintain drivers available for discontinued cards longer than AMD.

    Assign the default display to the monitor attached to the better video card. It will be the default video card used for hardware acceleration.

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