Need to hockup 5 monitors off 1 computer

[Mr Demon]

I know this may sound weird, but a friend of mine is working with an enterprise and they are looking to hockup 4 display monitors with pictures of they're work, while leaving 1 in the office for normal work. I need to know the cheapest way possible (if any) to do this.

2 solutions so far came to mind. Working an expensive sli computers that will never run more the 5% its usage,
or if possible connecting 2 PCI cards (ex:2 FX5500 with dual screen)... so far these solutions only give me 4 monitors... if anyone has an idea, please let me know.

 

[aweigh]

Ok, get yourself one of those motherboards that features both AGP and PCI-E, as well as 1 or 2 regular PCI slots. Now put in 1 PCI video card, 2 PCI-E video cards in SLI and 1 AGP video card. There, now you have 5 displays.

 

[Mr Demon]

you've actually seen a motherboard that has both sli AND an agp port?

 

[MDE]

SLI is defeating the purpose here. Just pick up any motherboard and use a dual head PCIe or AGP card plus two dual head PCI cards and you'll be all set with support for another monitor.

 

[Mr Demon]

MDE, are you sure that PCI-X can be mixed with pci standart?

 

[MDE]

You mean PCIe (PCI-X is for servers and workstations), and yes they will work together.

 

[Mr Demon]

thanks you guys you've been great help

 

[Bull Dog]

Heres what I would do. Get a motherboard with 2xPCI-e x16 slots (8x bandwidth is fine). Get 2 dual head PCI-e cards. Any brand, it doesn't really matter. Then get a PCI video card for the 5th display. Or find a mobo that has 2 x16 slots and an open-ended x4 slot and purchase three PCI-e cards.

 

[Mr Demon]

but in order to have it as cost efficient as possible, I would like to avoid sli if possible. would 2 pci cards with dual vga work well with either an agp or a pci-e port?

 

[JonnyBlaze]

Originally posted by: Mr Demon
but in order to have it as cost efficient as possible, I would like to avoid sli if possible. would 2 pci cards with dual vga work well with either an agp or a pci-e port?

yes.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: Mr Demon
but in order to have it as cost efficient as possible, I would like to avoid sli if possible. would 2 pci cards with dual vga work well with either an agp or a pci-e port?

You can use an SLI board, just don't enable SLI and you'll have two separate functional video cards.

 

[Mr Demon]

you tellin me I can use a sli motherboard with 2 sli cards without having them in sli???

 

[mwmorph]

this is all a waste of money.
get any cheap motherboard you want. agp is cheaper so lets assume you go agp or pci-e either way.

i am assming you are running 100% just 2d right?
3 of these will fit in any normal no sli pci-e or agp board with 3 pci(normal just pci) slots
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102447

otherwise if you need some 3d,
just throw in a cheap agp or pci-e card.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: Mr Demon
you tellin me I can use a sli motherboard with 2 sli cards without having them in sli???

Yes.

 

[Mr Demon]

yeah that radeon 7000 is a cheap card no arguements there, but it has 1 dvi port and one vga port, all 5 monitors will be LCD and it will be less of a hassel to get 5 identical monitors that all have vga ports and not 2 running of dvi and 2 running of vga... but it is cheap!!!

 

[potato28]

Use a VGA to DVI port. They can be had for a cheap price, and provide the DVI link.

 

[mwmorph]

uh, all video cards come with dvi to vga adapters. effectivel;y, there are 6 vga ports or 3 dvi and 3 vga ports depending on if you use the included adapter. now if you have all the lcds use dvi...

if you dont want ot use the free adapters, this will be fine.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133134
faster and with dx9 support in case you need to run some light but advanced dx9 3d rendering(probably not)

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: potato28
Use a VGA to DVI port. They can be had for a cheap price, and provide the DVI link.

There are DVI --> VGA adapters, but I've never heard of a VGA --> DVI adapter. (Google shows a few, but they are all excessively expensive, would be cheaper to just buy five video cards)

It wouldn't matter though as the signal would have already been converted to analog and its quality degraded.

I second the multiple Radeon 7000 suggestion.

 

[Mr Demon]

I was thinking something more like this one

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...em-details.asp?EdpNo=1071564&CatId=697

its a bit more expensive, but every monitor will be the same, not to mention no adaptors that can sometimes crap on you. Now that I know it can easily be pulled of, this will be a snap.

and yes, they will all be doin 100% 2D.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Mr Demon
I was thinking something more like this one

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...em-details.asp?EdpNo=1071564&CatId=697

its a bit more expensive, but every monitor will be the same, not to mention no adaptors that can sometimes crap on you. Now that I know it can easily be pulled of, this will be a snap.

and yes, they will all be doin 100% 2D.

um adapters will not crap out on yuo either since it is just some wires. the dvi connector naturall carries a digital and analog signal so it jsut transfers the analog signal.

half the price and you dont have to deal with tigerdirect which has some of the worst customer service in the industry.

 

[Mr Demon]

really? thats news to me, I had no idea TigerDirect had difficulty... problem is we are both located in Canada, making the use of newegg a bit more expensive then what you guys pay...

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: Mr Demon
I was thinking something more like this one

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...em-details.asp?EdpNo=1071564&CatId=697

its a bit more expensive, but every monitor will be the same, not to mention no adaptors that can sometimes crap on you. Now that I know it can easily be pulled of, this will be a snap.

and yes, they will all be doin 100% 2D.

I'd rather pay half the price and have half my monitors on DVI than pay twice as much and have them all with a lesser quality signal.

TigerDirect? Yeuch.

There's nothing wrong adapters in my experience

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Mr Demon
really? thats news to me, I had no idea TigerDirect had difficulty... problem is we are both located in Canada, making the use of newegg a bit more expensive then what you guys pay...

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1983.html
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller2121.html
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1991.html
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller_info.pl?seller_id=6374

 

[LED]

I've had 7 going @ once (2-TV's)...easist solution is to acquire a Matrox G200MMS or a G100MMS (th 100MMs is a Looong card) but the 200MMS will handle up to 4 Monitors on it's own and is a PCI card...go @ bay and look around. I got mine for under $100 which is pretty cheap 4 4Monitors from one card...

 

[tuteja1986]

you need gigabyte quad sli motherboard with 3 cheapo dual dvi cards