Quad Displays

djdrastic

Senior member
Dec 4, 2002
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Hi guys I have a customer that wants 3x displays hooked up to the same Windows XP based computer.She'd liked to avoid using a pci card as the secondary card due to the high resolutions that they will likely use on the displays (21 " LCD).I'm looking at purchasing a SLI capable Core 2 Duo motherboard and using 2 Nvidia SLI/w Dualview capable cards to hook up to the 3 displays.3D Performance isn't really important as it will only display 2D graphs/bargraphs , so I can live with myself if I have to disable SLI to achieve this task.


Is my assumption correct on how this should be set up ?

Thanks
djdrastic
 

rstrohkirch

Platinum Member
May 31, 2005
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Convoluted

We use ATI Firemv 2400 cards at work for quad dvi out and they only run about $385 shipped.
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
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i suppose if you were willing to go with an AMD based setup, you could buy 2 dual dvi ati card, and get a board that has an hdmi 690g and run the 3rd monitor off that.

i am not sure if similar functionaliry exists with the Nvidia 7050 / 7150 series.

onboard video is so fast now that it is fine for 2d work. there are a few x1 pci-e cards out there also that could work, so you dont necessarily need an SLI board.
 

fleshconsumed

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2002
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Yes, you can buy motherboard with two PCIe slots and use two videocards (NON SLI'ed, this is important) to run up to four monitors. Or you could buy one with 3 slots and run up to 6 monitors. Sky, or rather expansion slots is the only limit.

Just don't SLI them, SLI'd cards can only output on a single monitor.


As previous posters mentioned it, some motherboards also have onboard video that can be used along with the external video card, but the motherboard manufacturer must explicitly state that this feature is supported (on older motherboards you couldn't use integrated video at the same time with external videocard).
 

djdrastic

Senior member
Dec 4, 2002
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Ok so the cards have to be non-SLI compliant ? I always thought SLI can be turned off through BIOS / software means.Ah well it will probably save a little money that way.
 

cboath

Senior member
Nov 19, 2007
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I believe the cards can be SLI compliant, and, on the nvidia side, you'd be looking for an SLI capable board (i.e. a board that has two pcie16 slots), it's just that you don't enable SLI in the bios and do not connect the cards with the SLI bridge. Connecting the cards via the bridge puts them in SLI mode and they'll only output to one card.
 

fleshconsumed

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2002
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Originally posted by: djdrastic
Ok so the cards have to be non-SLI compliant ? I always thought SLI can be turned off through BIOS / software means.Ah well it will probably save a little money that way.

As previous poster said, you can still use SLI compliant cards, you just don't run them in SLI mode, i.e. do not connect them with SLI bridge.
 

aka1nas

Diamond Member
Aug 30, 2001
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There's nothing special to not running them in SLI, just don't enable it in the NV control panel.

If the board does have a BIOS setting for SLI, you would probably want it ENABLED as all the BIOS will do is reconfigure PCI-E lanes for cheaper boards that can't do two full x16 slots.

While you probably won't need very much PCI-E bandwidth, some of those boards will run the two slots as 16x/1x in non-SLI mode. That means the second slot is barely faster than PCI(150MB/s vs 133MB/s), which is what you were trying to avoid. SLI mode on such boards would reconfigure the slots for x8/x8 operation.
 

bigi

Platinum Member
Aug 8, 2001
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Have you considered Matrox? - Especially if you don't need 3D power...
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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You /can/ use SLI capable cards and a SLI enabled mainboard - but you'll pay quite some licensing money for something you're not going to use.

Alternatives to the obvious (using two "normal" cards) come in ATI's MV series of quad-display cards, as well as from Matrox. The latter also happen to have a couple of three-display cards. The advantage is in power, noise, and obviously slot usage.

And finally, some of the recent ATI chipsets can keep their integrated graphics unit running even if a card has been added - that'd give you three displays with any normal PCIE card.
 

djdrastic

Senior member
Dec 4, 2002
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Thanks for the considerations guys . Unfortunately my suppliers don't stock Matrox , as they'd be the ideal way to go.I'll have a look at some of the supported onboard cards that can function even if an add-on board has been added.I'm still awaiting ATI MV prices from my suppliers.