Hey all, how are you doing? Need some light here. Here at work we need to setup a multiple screen machine. We'll use 5 screens, each one running different apps (no mirroring). Question is: how can we do that and what's the best (aka cheapest) method? Can Windows handle it all alone or a third party software would be required? Thanks!
using multiple graphics card is the easiest way, although some ati cards suport up to 6 screens off 1 card aslong as your using active display port adaptors
I believe a few do exist but I cannot comment on how well they work. Seeing as you're in Brazil and that latest and greatest hardware is typically expensive and hard to get you could get away with using PCI video cards with a dual or quad head AGP card. Or if PCI-E cards are available you could use an SLI motherboard (or crossfire) with multiple PCI-E cards. They all should get along as at one point I ran onboard Intel 810 with a voodoo3 and it ran just fine. Windows 98 was able to handle it well with XP handling it better and Windows 7 handling it VERY well. No additional software is needed but you might desire it if there are features you want. The only thing I'd be worried about using PCI cards is that the PCI bus shares bandwidth with all PCI devices and depending on the resolution you're going to run it you may demand too much from each card. PCI-E would solve this even if you ran each port at 1x.
There are many solutions that are cheap. Quite a few old Nvidia Quadro cards support 4 displays. Get two of them. Note though, that they work in pairs -- probably easier to set up 6 rather than 5.
I'm pretty sure there is a way to activate onboard graphics on some motherboards as well as gfx cards, so get 2 cards with dual output and activate the onboard and bam you've got 5. Do some googling, I have no idea how to do it.
I think a lot of modern videocards have at least 3 outputs. Mine does. Just get 2 of those puppies. If you don't care about performance, just get 2 cheap ones. A used GPU might be a good idea, or just a low-end one. There's a huge range of prices in GPUs.
A lot have 3 outputs but many only allow 2 of the outputs to be used at any one time. I run 2x PCIe (460GTX and a 7600GT) cards for 3 displays, a 4th if I use the TV. The 460GTX has 2x DVI and 1x HDMI, but only 2 of the 3 can be used at a time. Look into Eyefinity, it might be able to do what you want in two cheap cards.
You can use the DVI port on your MB and on your graphics card to have dual screens, but for more as others said you need multiple paired graphics cards.
It highly depends on what motherboard you have and how many open pci slots its got. If your lucky enough to have 3x spare PCI ports get and want the absolute cheapest rock solid method: 3x Radeon 9200 (1x DVI and 1x VGA) $24 Each and you wont need many convertors or cables to get it to work with your monitor,just normal DVI to VGA adapters,be sure to use VGA throughout as DVI on these cards arent digital. If your using a Mini-ATX and only have 1xPCI-E and 1xPCI open get yourself a: 1x SAPPHIRE FleX HD 6770 1GB GDDR5 (3x Display port + 1x HDMI) 1x ATI Radeon 9200 PCI (1x VGA + 1x DVI) This will cost a lot more and you need special adapters like Display port to DVi or VGA What ever you do stay away from USB to VGA adapters, they slow the PC down becouse it compresses the output video on the fly for it to stream over the slow 480mbit usb, and are generally limited to a resolution below 1280x720
Hey, thanks for all the input! In the end, the IT managed to put 2 computers with offboard video cards, summarizing 5 outputs. Thanks!
