Hi Guys, Trying to build a rig for monitoring statistics etc that needs to have 6 monitors. I've been doing quite a lot of digging and most people state to just get an eyefinity 6 card that uses displayport which at this time is not really possible. I'm trying to do this on a budget and ideally would like to re-use existing monitors which are DVI/HDMI/VGA mixed (can drop the VGA ones though). Is there an easy / cheap(ish) combo of GPU's that can do a total of 6 monitors? Any thoughts on this appreciated as I'm going round in circles on google without much useful info!
How many PCIe ports do you have available, and does your motherboard have onboard graphics? Any cheap Nvidia or AMD card will support 2 monitors but you have to spend quite a bit to get 3 monitor support. If you have the PCIe slots available then 3 £15 GT210s should work or 2 + onboard if supported. You could cut the end off a PCIe x1 slot if you have any of those free too.
You could also look at a pair of cards that have 2xDVi/VGA/HDMi & 1xDP, & use an *active* DP->DVi adapter. A quick check & the active adapters look to be about £20 a piece, so if you've got 3 spare pcie slots then i guess it's whether you can get a 3rd gfx card that's less than ~£40... ...&/or if having 3 would also involve buying a better PSU.
I would check used market for some quadro NVS cards. Sometimes they can be had for very cheap and the newer series can do 4x monitors per card. Though, I think you will be limited to dvi, dp or vga if you go that way. Multi monitor is a lot easier with dvi and dp.
You don't even need to go the GPU route as you can get USB to DVI, USB to VGA etc, I think if your buying 6 you might be able to get them cheaply down as low as £20 an adapater. the refresh rate is not amazing but if the screen is not updating 100 times a second it should be ok? I have used the star tech usb to dvi pro, its quite good and is still working 3 years later.
I'd just go down the cheap GPU route. You can always get a few PCIe x1 > x16 adapters (I have some available that you can have for cheap!) as you can run a card in every slot, even x1.
Interesting thoughts so far. Do all lower end Nvidia and ATi GPU's only drive 2 monitors at a time then? Some reading earlier indicated that I might be able to use 3 with a GT640 interestingly and without the use of Display Port. Rainbow; good thinking about the USB adaptors, I had a few of these myself but not used them in years. They will only be updating about once every 60 seconds or so as its just for monitoring the status of some equipment and 60 seconds is the poll rate on it. As for the board, it's not been selected yet so plenty of choice at my feet on this one. Not looking to spend a fortune as it just needs to be "functional" really
Radeon HD4000 and older - 2 monitors per GPU Radeon HD5000 and newer - 3 monitors per GPU (more via DP multistream) nVidia GTX500 and older - 2 monitors per GPU nVidia GTX600 and newer - 3 monitors per GPU + 1 utility monitor (effectively 4 2D monitors) Radeon cards will need AMD adapters. nVidia cards can use any. You can have the following passive adapters: DVI-->VGA DVI-->HDMI HDMI-->DVI You can have any combination of active adapters. For which I see the likely use of them on the DP connector to whichever output type you desire. Some manufacturers of GPU boards will allow you to use a passive adapter on the DP connector because they have built an active adapter onto the board. Check with the GPU board manufacturer specification for what video output configurations are possible. Additional output via onboard is motherboard manufacturer and chipset dependant. Check specs or board functionality. USB to video devices are an option. Pretty cool things. Get and bit and frame rate is low as aforementioned. Probably better now with USB3 but expect $$.
From the research I've done it's GT640 and up that support 3 monitors and Radeon cards have to have a Displayport connector to support more than 2 monitors so you couldn't use a HD 5450 for example.
That's why I referred to GTX. The GTs tend to be re-labelled previous generation GPUs. The GT640 and its siblings are likely to be GTX500 chips in disguise. I wonder if the same applies to the HD5450 too. EDIT: The GT640 is a rebranded GT545
