Building 32bit XP machine with 8 monitors

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Last response: March 13, 2012 5:31 PM in Systems

March 13, 2012 4:35:48 PM

Hey Everybody - need help selecting motherboard & video card pair

I'm looking to build from scratch a relatively high performance machine for active daytrading. I need 6x 24" monitors..though 8 would be preferable. I trade global macro...so the amount of execution systems, charts and trade blotters just takes up a lot of room..and I need to be able to see it all, all the time..hence all the screens.

I had my amazon shopping cart ready to go with the Intel P67 Extreme motherboard and 2 ATI FirePro 2460 video cards ..and then i realized...dope...windows XP only supports 2 monitors per video card.
For older execution software compatibility reasons, I am stuck with 32bit windows XP

So, what motherboard will support 4 PCI Express video cards, as well as the i7 core chip and 16GB of RAM
I was looking at the Intel Corp. Single Pack DX79SI LGA2011
(yes, i know that XP only supports 4 GB of RAM...but i'll be running Windows 7 on another hard drive and will boot switch between the 2 when I want to use the setup for A/V editing and game stuff on the weekend)

This DX79 motherboard has 3 PCI Express slots...So i could put in 3 Radeon HD3450 512MB video cards..and support 6 monitors (1 DVI, 1 HDMI..and ignore the VGA port...per video card)..This is closer..but doesn't support 8 monitors...just 6

Does anybody know of a similar motherboard that has 4 PCI Express slots...or....can I use the P67 Extreme mother board with 2 PCI Express Video Cards and 2 old school PCI video cards (that would be preferable)? If so, can anybody find a dual digital output (DVI and/or HDMI) video card that is old school PCI? (i haven't had much luck on amazon)

I already have the monitors w/stand....so i'm just builing the PC now. It was looking to be around 1500 so far. I don;t mind spending a couple hundred bucks more...But i'm having a hard time finding the right combo of motherboard and video cards.

Any ideas?

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Raiddinn

Graphics card Expert

Monitor Expert

Motherboard Authority

March 13, 2012 5:02:40 PM

You won't be able to use 16 GBs of RAM with Windows XP 32. 32 bit OSs can't recognize more than 4GBs at the most. The other 12 would be completely worthless to you.

If you need all that RAM, you have no choice but to go with Windows 7 x64. Well, you do have some choices but they are all worse.

Do you really have to use 16 bit software for what you are doing? That is Windows 95 level stuff.

Windows 7 x64 supports 32 bit programs natively, which most XP programs are. However, you can only go 1 step backwards, so 64 will go back to 32, but not to 16. If you really have to have a 16 bit program that is one step back from 32.

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Jim_L9

March 13, 2012 5:03:54 PM

Go to the following link for PCI video cards:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=E...

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macrotrader

March 13, 2012 5:07:13 PM

Unfortunately....the software does not in wondows 7 (not even in Win7 XP mode). So, I'm stuck. And yes, i'm aware that XP only supports 4 GB of RAM....but i'll be putting in a 2nd hard drive and installing windows 7 on the 2nd drive. Then...when i want to do A/V editing...i'll boot into windows 7 from the 2nd drive. But that doesn't solve my issue with my trading software and windows XP. Any help with the PCI video cards?