Triple-Head for Business

[agressiv]

At our business, users are now asking for triple head.

With modern systems, you can't use onboard video as well as a PCI-Express card. This leaves us with two options:

1) A PCI card
2) A true triple-head PCI-e card

No matter what, we don't want to spend more than $100 on a card, preferably in the $50-$70 range. So, Matrox is out of the picture, and we don't have multiple PCI-e x16 slots in any of our systems. PCI cards are hard to come by and most vendors aren't making newer chipsets in PCI. I'd just assume keep it as AMD since all of our onboard is AMD and we've had problems mixing nVidia and AMD in the past in the same system.

We tried a Radeon HD 5450 (bought the wrong one, needs a DisplayPort for Eyefinity, our 3rd port was HDMI) - but Eyefinity is very picky about the DisplayPort - DVI dongle you use, and our reseller doesn't stock any of their supported ones. Plus, the supported dongles are fairly expensive, starting at $35 or so.

Our big thing is that we want 3 distinct displays - we do NOT want a single 3840 x 1024 monitor, for example. While they didn't directly state it wasn't possible, they made it seem like the "one big monitor" bit was the only choice.

Can anyone verify this? Anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks -

Greg

 

[SolMiester]

Well, only AMD AFAIK is able to drive 3 screens off one card..., other than that their is Rextron USB to VGA\DVI adapters. You will want the DVI unit for HD

http://www.rextron.com/product_detail.php?class3_id=121&class1_type_id=4

We have some unit where they dont even have a PCIs slot, so when the users wanted dual screen, we just got these, work a treat!

You can use with your existing cards, and just use windows for display mode

 

[Wreckage]

Some NVIDIA Quadro cards support up to 4 monitors. They have for years actually.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-273-_-Product
Matrox makes a triple head adapter that works with most cards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-014-_-Product
EVGA makes a handy little device that turns a USB port into a video port
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...mily=USB&sw=10

Finding a PCI card might be tricky. You may have to search eBay. You might be able to run 2 PCI cards with dual head.

 

[waffleironhead]

Depending on your systems, the onboard IGP can be used at the same time as a add-on card. I believe amd calls it "surroundview". Supposedly you can drive two monitors with the onboard and then run 2 from a discrete card enabling up to 4 monitors.

 

[agressiv]

The Quadro card you linked is only 2 monitors. None of the affordable Quadro's can do 3.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_580_us.html

http://mark.koli.ch/2010/12/tri-monitor-configuration-with-an-hp-z600-workstation-and-dual-nvidia-quadro-fx-1800s.html

This guy did 3 monitors, but with 2 cards, which defeats the purpose. I searched the lowest 5 or 6 Quadros, all of them are dual only. Not going to consider the high-end, our PS's wouldn't handle it and the cards would cost more than the desktop.

We've used the TripleHead2Go from Matrox, it doesn't do 3 distinct displays. So, in that sense, its the same as Eyefinity. Not sure on the whole USB dongle bit, one guy here said he had really bad luck with that too.

agressiv

 

[busydude]

Maybe you can try this instead:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-780g-chipset,1785-5.html

 

[gorobei]

Some NVIDIA Quadro cards support up to 4 monitors. They have for years actually.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-273-_-Product
Matrox makes a triple head adapter that works with most cards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-014-_-Product
EVGA makes a handy little device that turns a USB port into a video port
http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...mily=USB&sw=10

Finding a PCI card might be tricky. You may have to search eBay. You might be able to run 2 PCI cards with dual head.

way not to read the OP's budget/price limit.

@OP:
Yes Eyefinity is the cheapest/only way to do 3 monitors on a single card <$100. The default is extended windows desktops(3 separate displays) while an Eyefinity cluster will function as a spanned "single large surface". So it will do what you want by default.

As for dongles, your 1024 res suggests you are working with older monitors? Newegg has active dp->dvi for 25$(saphire and powercolor).
Another option if you arent going to upgrade your monitors anytime soon is to get dp->vga dongles, people have had better luck with Eyefinity compatibility on vga and lower resolutions. The downside is it will be a large expenditure on a deadend format, most future monitors wont support vga ports.

 

[SolMiester]

The Quadro card you linked is only 2 monitors. None of the affordable Quadro's can do 3.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_580_us.html

http://mark.koli.ch/2010/12/tri-monitor-configuration-with-an-hp-z600-workstation-and-dual-nvidia-quadro-fx-1800s.html

This guy did 3 monitors, but with 2 cards, which defeats the purpose. I searched the lowest 5 or 6 Quadros, all of them are dual only. Not going to consider the high-end, our PS's wouldn't handle it and the cards would cost more than the desktop.

We've used the TripleHead2Go from Matrox, it doesn't do 3 distinct displays. So, in that sense, its the same as Eyefinity. Not sure on the whole USB dongle bit, one guy here said he had really bad luck with that too.

agressiv

We have been using the USB dongle solution for about a dozens units for about 6 mths...All of those have been on XP SP3...I have tried it on my W7 Pro system and had no issue running 3x22"LCD's...For what its worth, I believe its a cheap ($55USD), easy solution to try until such time as a better method comes along....

 

[agressiv]

Depending on your systems, the onboard IGP can be used at the same time as a add-on card. I believe amd calls it "surroundview". Supposedly you can drive two monitors with the onboard and then run 2 from a discrete card enabling up to 4 monitors.

YES! This was it. Enabled this, and I could use both at the same time. Only catch, and its an easy one, is that it must be an AMD/ATI card. No problem there.

Thanks much, this will work just fine for our needs.

agressiv