How to power a 6 monitor setup?

[JRsz]

Hi,

I am wondering for some time now:

How do I set up a 6 (or potentially more) display setup for one desktop PC? I do not need to hear the question "what do you need it for", that is not the point. I can not afford it anyhow, this is just out of pure curiosity (and wishfull dreaming :D)

 

My thoughts so far are that one grpahics card won't be enough since most do not have enough physical output ports.Hence you have to use two graphics card, but do you put them in SLI or Crossfire or can you run them without any of those? And do operating systems like Windows 10 support this natively?

 

Sincerely

JRsz

[Oshino Shinobu]

A single 10 series card can do it, just use DisplayPort MST hubs. If you were using multiple cards, they would be out of SLI as (at least, when I last checked) when in SLI only one cards outputs are active. 

[ProjectBox153]

You can run two GPUs without CrossFire or SLI. Then you'd have a lot of available ports (depending on the card, of course). 

[Paula_The_Butter_Fairy]

5 minutes ago, JRsz said:

Hi,

I am wondering for some time now:

How do I set up a 6 (or potentially more) display setup for one desktop PC? I do not need to hear the question "what do you need it for", that is not the point. I can not afford it anyhow, this is just out of pure curiosity (and wishfull dreaming :D)

 

My thoughts so far are that one grpahics card won't be enough since most do not have enough physical output ports.Hence you have to use two graphics card, but do you put them in SLI or Crossfire or can you run them without any of those? And do operating systems like Windows 10 support this natively?

 

Sincerely

JRsz

if you use an AMD graphics card then you use crossfire and Nvidia uses SLI. as long as the motherboard suppourts it its native also SLI needs a bridge, while crossfire does not.

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, Paula_The_Butter_Fairy said:

if you use an AMD graphics card then you use crossfire and Nvidia uses SLI. as long as the motherboard suppourts it its native

You don't have to run the cards in CF or SLI though. 

[Paula_The_Butter_Fairy]

1 minute ago, Jamiec1130 said:

You don't have to run the cards in CF or SLI though. 

You can to make them more efficient though

[ProjectBox153]

Just now, Paula_The_Butter_Fairy said:

You can to make them more efficient though

True, I'm just saying you don't HAVE to. I would (if I could (I'm looking at you, 9500GT), I most definitely would) run them in SLI, but it's not something that's make or break for me. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, Paula_The_Butter_Fairy said:

You can to make them more efficient though

Only for some applications. A lot of productivity applications don't care or don't work when/if cards are in SLI/Crossfire. It also disables all ports apart from on one card, which is not a good thing for this situation. 

[JRsz]

1 minute ago, Paula_The_Butter_Fairy said:

You can to make them more efficient though

So it is possible to just put in two cards and use all display outputs?! How is the perfomance managed If I were to game. Does every card the calculations for those monitors connected to it?

 

[Paula_The_Butter_Fairy]

1 minute ago, JRsz said:

So it is possible to just put in two cards and use all display outputs?! How is the perfomance managed If I were to game. Does every card the calculations for those monitors connected to it?

 

You can look up EYEfinity technology and see what it does but i'm no expert on it. (thats AMD's technology idk what Nvidia's is.)

[Enderman]

There's literally no point in a 4/6 screen setup when you can buy a tv the same size and resolution and have no bezels in the middle of your screen..

[NumLock21]

2 high end gpus or just 4 cheap gpus.

High end up to 6 with fancy expensive adapters.

Cheap, up to 8 without any fancy expensive adapters.

Eyefinity, surround, or independent.

Eyefinity and surround for gaming

Independent for multitask or stock trading. You can do 14 screens even during the pentium 4 days. 

[JRsz]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

There's literally no point in a 4/6 screen setup when you can buy a tv the same size and resolution and have no bezels in the middle of your screen..

can you name me a TV with a resolution of 3*1920 in width and 2*1080 in height? And the usability would have to be adapted since I want to have one or two windows per monitor and then I would need to be able to have different chunks on the TV where I can snap windwos on and off. Of course, the bezels should be as small as possible but for productive work it is not that bad. For multimornitor gaming it would be, but that is not the application I had in mind. I know that there is a 8k device out there, but spending 5k for the monitor and 5k fir the gpu required to run this is a little too much imho

[JRsz]

5 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

2 high end gpus or just 4 cheap gpus.

High end up to 6 with fancy expensive adapters.

Cheap, up to 8 without any fancy expensive adapters.

Eyefinity, surround, or independent

Does this mean it would only work with AMD cards?

[Guest]

Add several of these to your random cheap GPU, and you can power all 6 of them. (you get the same view on all of them but it's cheap)

 

Want to go moar expencive and keep performance? Get a second (or third) pc, and use that software that makes 1 set of mouse/keyboard work on multiple pc's. Like an extended desktop view etc.

[Electronics Wizardy]

20 minutes ago, JRsz said:

So it is possible to just put in two cards and use all display outputs?! How is the perfomance managed If I were to game. Does every card the calculations for those monitors connected to it?

 

You can put as many gpus as you want it(well max of 48 video outputs on windows) and it will all work. If you play a game it would render on the gpu its connected to, or the main gpu depends on the setup.

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 minutes ago, JRsz said:

Does this mean it would only work with AMD cards?

works with any cards. The pro nvidia cards have mossaic and its nice.

 

If you running lots of monitors, buy a gpu like this, its built for it.https://www.pny.com/nvidia_nvs_810_for_eight_dp_displays

 

You can run 8x 4k/uhd screens off it.

[Zagna]

You could always go with something more "professional" like AMD FirePro™ W600 that has 6 display outputs natively.

It's meant for display walls. Not much gaming.

 

[Enderman]

8 minutes ago, JRsz said:

can you name me a TV with a resolution of 3*1920 in width and 2*1080 in height? And the usability would have to be adapted since I want to have one or two windows per monitor and then I would need to be able to have different chunks on the TV where I can snap windwos on and off. Of course, the bezels should be as small as possible but for productive work it is not that bad. For multimornitor gaming it would be, but that is not the application I had in mind. I know that there is a 8k device out there, but spending 5k for the monitor and 5k fir the gpu required to run this is a little too much imho

To snap windows you can use DisplayFusion which adds more functionality than windows has built in.

There aren't tvs 3*1920 wide but there are 5k tvs which cost $120k and are pretty close to that.

 

A regular 16:9 screen is better than 3x1920 by 2160.

If you need more horizontal room you can add two secondary monitors (to make it 3x1920) or add a second tv and get 4x1920.

 

idk what kind of "productive work" you're talking about, but unless it is stock market management or something, having 6 monitors will not increase productivity at all.

[NumLock21]

16 minutes ago, JRsz said:

Does this mean it would only work with AMD cards?

Works for both. Best not to mixed them.

[Drak3]

58 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

A single 10 series card can do it, just use DisplayPort MST hubs. If you were using multiple cards, they would be out of SLI as (at least, when I last checked) when in SLI only one cards outputs are active. 

Depending on the resolution and use, an Radeon HD 7700 series card can drive 6 monitors. I'd wager that the lower end of the 7700 series can't push past 6x 1080p panels, but then again, some current cards see that psuedo-handicap as far as # of panels is concerned.

57 minutes ago, Jamiec1130 said:

You can run two GPUs without CrossFire or SLI. Then you'd have a lot of available ports (depending on the card, of course). 

@Paula_The_Butter_Fairy

 

You can also daisy chain DisplayPort monitors, or use a DP dock that turns 1 port from the card to 3 DP or HDMI ports to the monitors. Having multiple cards isn't necessary, and running them independently is super unecessary