Want to drive 5/6 displays at once

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
I

imported_scoobydoo

Member
Feb 5, 2005
43
0
0
Hi,

I have a little project to work on and it involves driving a minimum of 5 displays at once, possibly 6.

- Four displays will be at 1366x768 I believe (they are LCD TVs) (all connected vi DVI -> HDMI)
- One will be your bog standard monitor (anything up to 1650x1050 / 1600x1200) (connected via DVI -> DVI and if there are two displays, would prefer 6th display to be powered by DVI also).

There won't be anything very intensive running on all the screens (short of maybe HDTV content playback), but mostly 2D stuff. No gaming.

I need some recommendations for graphics cards and possbily a motherboard that would take this setup. I think that I'm right in saying that NVidia offers better support for multi-displays - with ATI, while it works can be a bit fiddly. However, I'm open to opinions - especially if anyone on here has a tried and trusted setup.

At this stage, no graphics cards have been purchased yet, although I do happen to have an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe available. Looking at the internal slot specifications:

2 x PCI Express x16 slot with NVIDIA® SLI? technology support, at full x16, x16 speed
1 x PCI Express x4
1 x PCI Express x1
2 x PCI 2.2

Although the PCI-E x4 and x1 won't take a graphics card, so I'm thinking 2 PCI-E 16x cards (non-SLI) and a PCI gfx card of some sort. One thing I'm wary of is that NVidia have un-unified their drivers fairly recently, so I'd want the best amount of compatibility and least mucking about with drivers if at all possible.

Budget is also a consideration, so the lower the cost the better.

Thank you all for your time.
 
X

xtknight

Elite Member
Oct 15, 2004
12,974
0
71
2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130287 (PCI-E X16, $141 total AR) these should support all the PureVideo features (and plus they seem like a good value)
1x http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814161079 (PCI-E X1, $140)
or
1x http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814161074 (PCI, $100)

That's what I'd do. I'm sure there's a cheaper way to go. Sadly, the only x1 cards are very expensive. But the cheapest PCI card with dual-DVI that I could find on Newegg was also $100. Maybe you don't want dual-DVI but personally I would as it generally implies better DVI drivers on-board. I would get the x1 myself since it's more likely to be supported in the future. I'm not sure how drivers will work with all these, but ideally you shouldn't have any trouble installing both NVIDIA and ATI drivers on the same machine.

If you want cheaper, then:
2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125055 ($67 x 2 = $134) [ this is the cheapest dual DVI card I could find in x16)
1x http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814161074 (PCI, $100)

You save only about $7 with the second solution compared to the two Purevideo NVIDIAs+PCI. I would be getting the NVIDIA cards as they have lately had better video quality for HDTV.
 
S

SickBeast

Lifer
Jul 21, 2000
14,377
19
81
A couple of points:

- if you can find a motherboard with integrated graphics, that could help
- I've read something about new USB monitors that don't require a graphics card
- just get some cheap graphics cards that will drive 2 displays each
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom