One video card and 3 monitors, how?

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romeo11523

Limp Gawd
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Jul 20, 2006
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I am in the process of building my home server but for right now I have to use my desktop for school and work. I have dual 17" on one card now, I am looking to hook up my 3 22" monitors to this computer until I get my server built. My problem is my desktop now only has 1 16x pci-x slot, I need one video card that will run 3 monitors. The only video card I have found is a Matrox, but it will not perform well I don't think. Help please!

Thanks,
Ryan
 
Triple display options:
Matrix Parhelia, maybe G550. Low performance, no gaming.
Some dual-GPU cards, like Sapphire's dual Radeon 2600. Decent for gaming, but expensive
Matrix TripleHead2Go. High performance, limited resolutions, all three screens must have same vertical resolution. (Or DualHead2Go plus secondary port off of GPU, cheaper but uglier solution.)
Cheap PCI card. Not for gaming.
 
So maybe get a cheap pci slot to just display for a second card? Will this effect anything when I run 3D Studio Max?
 
I thought if you had a video card with 2 DVI ports of which at least one is dual link DVI you could get a special cable that split the dual link (2 DVI ports in 1) into 2 Single Link DVI connections giving you a total of 3 single link DVI connections. I've never tried it though.
 
JohnleMVP said:
I thought if you had a video card with 2 DVI ports of which at least one is dual link DVI you could get a special cable that split the dual link (2 DVI ports in 1) into 2 Single Link DVI connections giving you a total of 3 single link DVI connections. I've never tried it though.
Click to expand...

i was under the impression dual link dvi meant you could combine 2 DVI ports to run one monitor at a VERY high resolution.
 
lozaning said:
i was under the impression dual link dvi meant you could combine 2 DVI ports to run one monitor at a VERY high resolution.
Click to expand...

Dual link DVi just supports monitors above 1080p, it simply has more pins to transmit more data at once.
 
dual link DVI just uses twice as many data pins to double the bandwidth, it doesn't involve using two cables to connect a single monitor. Wikipedia has pinout diagrams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVI


I've seen quadro cards that would let you break a dual link DVI port into two single link ports, but I don't know if any consumer oriented cards have the same capability.
 
A DMS-59 connector can be split into 2 VGA or 2 DVI connectors. There are a few cards with two of these connectors, allowing upto 4 VGA or DVI off a single card. Nvidia and ATI both have cards with these connectors.

Kevin
 
Easiest solution is to pick up cheap (ha) PCI card to stick in... The GeForce 6200 seems to be the most common (nvidia) at the moment. I got mine for $40ish on ebay recently, they run anywhere from $30 to $100+ for retail versions. Can't comment on 3d studio max compatibility since I don't use it. You can pick up an ATI Radeon 7000 for $30 (64meg ram).

Otherwise look for the PCI-e 16x version of the Quadro NVS 440 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=)... It's $450 @ Newegg right now. The PCI-e 1x is only $410. ATI also has similar cards, but I'm not as familiar with them.

Someone posted a link to a (really) ugly adapter which will split a DVI-I into 2 VGA... See link at bottom of this thread: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1235054

Kevin
 
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