6 Monitors, 1 Computer

[philipV]

Big Edit TWO:

Okay fudge that whole idea with the evgas, I'm getting 3 graphics card and will not crossfire/sli them, and be done with it, thanks for the help everyone

 

[AKM880]

You might be able to get two cheaper cards in SLI/Corssfire and use something like Matrox Head 2 go to split it into 2/3 monitors.

 

[kingnoobe]

It doesn't work that way. At least I'm pretty sure you just don't add resolutions together. It would still actually only be that resolution, it'd just be bigger.

As far as 6 monitors pushing that resolution, I'm not exactly sure what you would need. For gaming you probably would need pretty powerful cards to push all 6. For videos I'd say you probably get something like a switch I've seen them on newegg I think it was for multimonitor setups.

 

[boudy]

Corsair 1000W (Is that enough?)

That will be plenty.

I'm just going to throw this out there, but maybe a 4850X2 and 4850 Crossfire setup? It really does depend on what you will be using this for.
If you aren't going to do anything graphics intensive, then you might as well do what AKM880 is suggesting.

 

[philipV]

Sorry for not including this in the first post. Well I don't play games that much, sometimes when I get bored I'll play Counter Strike or WoW. I use Photoshop regularly, and I also burn movies. If I went ahead and bought 3 4890s or 3 GTX 285s, do I need to get the matrox stuff? Also if I did get that many graphics card I would probably need a bigger power supply, right? I was looking on newegg and they had dual head to go and triple head to go matroxs'. I guess for 6 monitors I would need two triple heads or three dual heads. Is that the only current way to get a 6 monitor set up on one PC?

Oh and I plan to gaming even less once I update.

 

[philipV]

Sorry for the double post but I did some research - it seems that I can't run 6 six monitors if I crossfire. I am not sure why not but that's what I read so if it is possible please post here. [strike]Okay through common sense this is how it works - a crossfire bridge uses a DVI port to connect the cards, right? So since a 4870x2 has 4 DVI ports, and two would mean 8 DVI ports, so I can crossfire them right? I would use two of the eight dvi ports and that would allow me to have 6 dvi ports left for the 6 monitors. Damn ati and its darn crossfire making it complicated. Just give me 20 dvi ports and be done with it.[/strike]

Oh wow I'm an idiot - the 4870x2 only has 2 dvi ports, the only card with 4 dvi ports is the 4850x2. >.<... Okay back to square one.

 

[garpizzle]

You cannot run your video cards in crossfire with a dual card setup unless you are using a matrox product. You CAN use sli in dual monitor setup with nvidia cards with the 180 series of drivers. I used to run a 3 monitor setup with CRT's and only needed 2 video cards.

With a matrox triple head2go you would be plugging in three monitors into one head on your vid card. The way the matrox works is that it gives each monitor a standard resolution of like 1200 x 1080, then it combines them and forces your OS to see it as only 1 monitor. Thats why you are able to use sli on the 3 monitor setup.

The good news is that with 2 of the matrox products, you should be able to run 6 monitors off of just 2 video cards in SLI so long as you use nvidia. With dual monitor sli, your computer will only be seeing two GIANT monitors instead of 6. I would strongly suggest making sure that you are using at least a gtx 285 in each slot for that since your rez is going to be like...7200 x 1080....or 3600 x 1080 for each monitor cluster. The matrox 3head2go does not allow any res per monitor higher than 1200 x 1080 I believe...I'm at work though, so you might want to check that out for yourself.

Not to hijak this thread or anything..but i made a similar post yesterday. I'm running a 24 inch dell ultrasharp now and want to go with two other monitors. I was thinking of 2 20 inches to flank the 24...or should I go with 3 24's?

 

[philipV]

Damn those matrox triple head 2 go's are pretty expensive - $300 for one. Oh you said that the my resolution would be 7200x1080, it's not possible to have 3600x2160? Also why wouldn't the matrox run my monitor at its native resolution of 1680x1050? Well then I guess I need to wait a while before I can end up getting my six monitor set up.

Looking at newegg, here is the matrox triple head to go digital edition:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815106011

"and triple-monitor configurations with a maximum resolution of up to 3840 x 1024 (3x 1280x1024)". That is really dumb - are there any other (maybe cheaper?) products that allow for higher resolutions?

 

[garpizzle]

yeah...it would be 3840 x 1024 for every three monitors...so you would either be pushing that resolution per card w/o sli or you would be pushing 7680 x 1024 with sli since it combines the two giant monitors it see's into one resolution.

 

[garpizzle]

As far as the matrox goes...I believe they are the only company offering that kind of part. There are other kinds of switches and dongles that can get you the monitor support you need...but none will grant you SLI.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Are you gonna run 6 independent monitors or use them as one monitor? I don't understand the thread because you say you're not a hard core gamer, and more into photo editing then why the suggestions for high end 3D GPUs which will need huge PSU?

 

[philipV]

Big Edit TWO:

Okay fudge that whole idea with the evgas, I'm getting 3 graphics card and will not crossfire/sli them, and be done with it, thanks for the help everyone.