On the hunt for a mobo with lots of video outs for Valve Index

[Kevinmstan]

Long story short, I want to be able to have as many different desktops in virtual space as possible, and was surprised back when I bought the Vive years ago that this was limited to actual ports on the motherboard and or connected GPUs. I picked up an Index and am back to the same quandary.
 

Or are there other solutions? I looked into headless hdmi plugs years ago but had hoped there was a better solution since the Vive years. 
 

Any help in the right direction. Was inspired by the LTT video of the mobo with the ridiculous number of USB ports for what was clearly an industrial solution.

 

‘’Thanks in advance,  

 

‘’Kevin 

[Raz Ghost]

The only port you want to use on the motherboard is a USB 3.0 port not any video outs, if you use the video out on the motherboard you're going to have a bad time.

 

If you need more USB ports you can just get a PCI-e card or use a hub for devices that are not bandwidth or latency sensitive.

 

If you really are struggling for video outs and you dont have enough on your GPU your best option is a second GPU 

[Kevinmstan]

Thanks for the tip Raz. 
 

The Steam VR outputs signal through the discreet GPU (2070 Super). There are a number of display port outs on the card and one HDMI. 
 

The HDMI out connects to a monitor and serves what the OS believes is the only display. Using a multi-monitor setup with NVIDIA control panel allows you to setup something like Virtual Desktop so each additional monitor (in this case all display ports) can serve as a virtual desktop in Virtual Reality that you can stretch, view different programs, etc as per normal multi-monitor functionality. 
 

This does not cause any problems, but unless they are connected to physical monitors, NVIDIA Control panel won’t identify them and you cannot add additional desktops.

 

You can get headless adapters that are essentially a terminated connector that tricks the card into thinking it is attached to a generic monitor, but this limits out based on the limitations of the GPU’s available ports.

 

You can virtualize this stuff, to an extent, but that requires other machines (screen casting, RDP, etc). Essentially the OS needs to know where to route the display data it receives, and this use case wasn’t a thing before. At least when I last looked into it, years ago, there were no good solutions for anything over 3 or  4 desktops in virtual space. 
 

Hoping something has evolved since...

 

I would think NVIDIA’s Gpu and integrated graphics can handle multi-monitor setups like this. I can dedicate 64mb of video ram to just this task in my Bios for normal non-RV use cases.
 

 

[Raz Ghost]

Ah I see what you mean now, I'm not sure if you can use the motherboard video out at the same time as a dedicated GPU or at least on some boards you can't. There is also the question of if your CPU has integrated graphics in the first place

[Kevinmstan]

Intel 10700 current spec, no problem there. Uncertain the chipset on the MoBo, but the ROG Z490 G is also pretty current. 
 

Like, I’d suspect over the last 3 years someone would have created an add on card that solves this very thing. Only problem is it is a VERY specific issue in a niche market. Like those dummy monitor adapters, for example.