Quad Monitor???

[Guest]

Heres a challenge for you all to try and solve...

I am looking to getting a quad monitor setup for general everyday use. I am currently running 2x 17" TFT's with a 7900GTX powering them on a MSI Neo2-FR P35 chipset motherboard. My primary OS is Vista Ultimate.

What I would like to know is.....

Is it possible to have a quad montior setup with the desktop streched across all four in a 2x2 (displaied below)

X X
X X

setup? If so how difficult is it to do. All monitors would be matched and on a deddicated monitor stand, im wondering about the graphics driving it and the configuration. Each 17" would need to run at 1280x1024. 32bit. 60-75Hz

Many thanks,

Edd

 

[thently]

Well if you mean to have the start bar all the way across the bottom two and make the rest basicly one big monitor then no. I have a 4 monitor system set like x where the top one is a TV so I can drag movies up and watch them xxx
Task bar will be on the main monitor and rest will be blank except background... There is a program I use to put a task bar on every screen also... Hope this helps if you still have ?'s be more spacific and I will try and help.

Thently

I Like the three accross the bottom so I have a center screen .. (Now i just need two more for 6 )

 

[blackened144]

That can be done with very little work and a little bit of money. Your board has 2 PCIe slots and the easiest way would be to get a very cheap PCIe card to power the other 2 monitors. Since your first card is Nvidia, I would suggest another Nvidia card, as I doubt the ATI and Nvidia drivers would play nice together. I think the cheapest you can find for PCIe would have the power to run everything at the specs you mentioned.

 

[truromeo4juliet]

Matrox DualHead2Go
http://www.google.com/products?q=dualhead2go+digital+edition&btnG=Search+Products

get 2 digital or 2 analog editions, then use nVidia's control panel to span the image from the top 2 down to the bottom 2...

as for holding them all in place... Ergotron's got you covered (don't settle for less, these guys make GOOD products)
http://www.ergotron.com/Products/MultimonitorMounts/tabid/159/ctl/Product/mid/545/PRDID/196/language/en-US/default.aspx

Nobody said this would be cheap... but obviously, you're not looking for cheap, or you would've stuck with 1 monitor, a 7600GS, and Vista Basic... However, the advantage to using this setup as opposed to blackened144's suggestion is simple: using the DualHead2Go's allows you to maintain the performance of the 7900GTX, rather than dropping down to other cards... It's also all external...

The advantage of the Digital over the Analog is "Bezel Management" is that it makes the image line up across 3 screens, by forcing the image to 'render' in the space where the bezel is... the disadvantage is that it gives you vertical black bars on the outside left edge of the left monitor, and the outside right edge of the right monitor...

a pretty good review can be found here at [H]ardOCP
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM5MywxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Good luck to you

 

[blackened144]

The Matrox item will get your system working but its more expensive than its truely worth, IMHO. This item here would allow you to use 2 extra monitors, assuming that one VGA and one DVI will work. For the price its hard to beat. If you need 2 DVI you will have to spend a little more but you can get an extra card for much cheaper that the DualHead2Go.

http://www.pacificgeek.com/product.asp?c=221&s=1095&ID=55837&P=F