How can I drive around 8 monitors from one CPU?

[willstay]

I am doing R&D on multi display hardware. There are few VGA cards like Matrox QID which support 4 display outputs. Many of them are still AGP.

What I need is around 8 different monitors connected to one CPU. I need to display different information on all of those individual monitors.

First I need to find out how to get 8 outputs from one CPU box. Next, I need to find if OSes like XP support them. Third, how do I uniquely address different information to different windows (well, if XP arranges them in one row as extremely long display, screen positioning of windows could solve my problem).

Please suggest me links, info, places to search.

Thanks in advance.

PS: If you are all too curious what I am up to - well, my boss asked me to find out if my team can build digitized casino desk where cards are all virtual and appear on desk embedded LCD monitors.

 

[Googer]

The CPU does not process video, that is the job of your video card (aka the GPU). You cannot connect a monitor directly to your CPU.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

this might help

 

[willstay]

Yes I know that I need VGA cards.

Well most of those multi output VGA cards are AGP. Since there is only one AGP slot, I am restricted to only one AGP card. If I go with 4 output dual SLI mode, I may be able to get 8 outputs. But unluckily, I couldn't find any NVidia cards with 4 output which can work in SLI mode.

The only option I can see as of now is I try my hands on PCI vga cards. Now I can physically connect two PCI VGA card where each has say 4 connectors. But now I don't know if two PCI vga card will work simutaneously. (On top of that, I even don't know whether there are 4 output PCI vga cards in the first place).

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
this might help

They are recomending quadro. I might disagree and say that matrox is the better choice for muti-monitor 2d setups, it is their forte. Matrox has products designed just for this and they have a lot more experience in this field than nvidia does with quadro.


EDIT: They did mention Matrox, I did not read the whole thread.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: willstay
Yes I know that I need VGA cards.

Well most of those multi output VGA cards are AGP. Since there is only one AGP slot, I am restricted to only one AGP card. If I go with 4 output dual SLI mode, I may be able to get 8 outputs. But unluckily, I couldn't find any NVidia cards with 4 output which can work in SLI mode.

The only option I can see as of now is I try my hands on PCI vga cards. Now I can physically connect two PCI VGA card where each has say 4 connectors. But now I don't know if two PCI vga card will work simutaneously. (On top of that, I even don't know whether there are 4 output PCI vga cards in the first place).

Then why did you say the CPU?

 

[Fox5]

A few possible solutions.....
1. Multiple PCI graphics cards. 1 4 port agp card plus 4 PCI cards, or heck, you could use integrated graphics too.(that way you could go cheaper, integrated graphics + 2 monitor vid card + some pci cards.....or you could use a vivo card and use the component output through a component to vga transcoder to drive yet another monitor)

2. Multiple pci-express graphics cards.

3. You just go for two computers, and write some kind of program to share information if necessary. There's also ways to make one computer control another.

 

[willstay]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
this might help

Thanks for the link. I found another link from that thread and finally found this unique graphics card. This single card got 8 VGA outputs. This will definitely save lot of time mixing, matching and configuring cards and drivers.

http://www.colorgraphic.net/newsite/products/xentera_gt8_models.html