cheapest way to drive 6 monitors

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digityzed

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Got a nice surprise today when a friend asked if I wanted some old 2008-ish 24" 1920x1200 IPS 60 Hz monitors (each have DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI amongst other ports). I took a dozen and picked up a 6 monitor mount stand on the cheap. I have a Surface Pro 3 with dock (1 x mini DisplayPort, 4 x USB 3.0 ports total) and an old Dell Precision T3500 tower (2 x PCI-e x16 2.0, 2 x PCI-e 8x, 2 x PCI, 525 watt power supply)... which one will be cheapest (yet still yield good performance) to get set up to drive 6 1920x1200 monitors?

P.S. - I'd mainly do light Photoshop and Illustrator work, Office, lots of web browser tabs, YouTubing, but no gaming
 
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digityzed

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Yes, correct, I am asking for the the cheapest, but since $225 (plus cost of "active" adapters) is more than I hoped "cheap" would be, I'm wondering if just spending a little bit more would cover more bases and/or future proof the setup (i.e., maybe I happen to get into some gaming and/or find myself doing heavier photo or video editing work).
 
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giantbucket

giantbucket

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there's a few GT610 / GT640 based cards that can drive 4 monitors each (no DisplayPort). there's some NVS400-series cards too i think, some with DisplayPort and others with DVI (using DMS59 port and a splitter)

go on eBay and search for DMS59 cards, and find one that has two of those connectors (each splits into 2 DVI ports, so you'd get 4 in the end)
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

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$200 is very cheap for a 6 monitor setup. The good video cards for that are about $400 and up.

This is probably the cheapest https://jet.com/product/detail/82bd50f27a16490f9225a2081c86ac8d?jcmp=pla:ggl:gen_electronics_a1:electronics_accessories_computer_components_io_cards_adapters_a1_other:na:PLA_348772140_24231292380_pla-156817658940:na:na:na:2&code=PLA15&ds_c=gen_electronics_a1&ds_cid&ds_ag=electronics_accessories_computer_components_io_cards_adapters_a1_other&product_id=82bd50f27a16490f9225a2081c86ac8d&product_partition_id=156817658940&gclid=CjwKEAjwka67BRCk6a7_h_7Pui8SJABcMkWRHdjtQ5HOorlGv9mixxh4DBpTXE-7bjwQh_ZB4o38CxoC2-Tw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Then we are looking at things like https://www.amazon.com/VisionTek-Radeon-GDDR5-MiniDP-Graphics/dp/B0085O90SQ and https://www.amazon.com/Matrox-Graphic-Card-Half-length-Full-height/dp/B00NJG6K3I/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1466687348&sr=1-2&keywords=matrox

For the workstation cards with 4 GB and higher you are looking at about a grand.
 
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digityzed

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I found a Radeon HD 7850 with eyefinity, but support for 4 monitors on CL for $75... is there another card I can add to that to at least get the remaining 2 monitors to work smoothly with the main card/other monitors?
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

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There is a FAQ for EyeFinity but it does not say how it works with dual video cards http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDEyefinityFAQs.aspx

You may want to contact AMD support and check with them. Normally a second video card will work along with the main card smoothly to go from one screen to the next, meaning you don't have it stuck on one card or the other for monitors, 4 monitors and 2 monitors should be usable as a single display with 6 monitors. But, that is without EyeFinity, that may do something different.
 
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digityzed

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I ended up getting the 7750 Eyefinity 6 $225 + tax. $320 grand total after getting 6 mDP to DP cables. In hindsight, not too bad considering the 6 monitors were free. Penny pinching has its limits.
 
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