Xp supports 64 monitors... how about 7?

[onesmartidiot]

i was reading on wikipedia (i know everyone hates it but shut up lol) and it says xp supports up to 64 monitors. that being said mine barely supports two (because it is a heap of junk) but lets say i had a real computer.

for example... id go all out on quad core, 3gb barrier on xp (vista is not an option until MS has something better) and of course some sweet video cards.

my question is, how would one go about using 7 montiors?

i know this is completely unnessisary but i could see this helping with programs like maya or photoshop.

i would need at least 4 video cards im assuming... figureing the big monitor would be dual link (use 2 dvi plugs... whatever the term is im looking for)

and the other 6 (3 cards) would be for the rest

does nvidia support this? notice... nvidia lol

it would have to be an indepentant span.. if that makes any since

meaning the desktop will span over all monitors but when clicked a window will go full screen only to the monitor its on.

 

[Daveskater]

You probably could do this with multiple graphics cards but I don't think you'd need two connectors for the big screen, not as far as I know anyway.

I also don't know how you'd get a motherboard that you could fit 4 graphics cards to You can get the new nForce mobos with 3 ports for SLI but other than that I don't know I don't know the exact ins and outs of SLI but from what I can tell, you plug a monitor into the top card and the other one(s) lend their processing power and memory to the top one.

 

[onesmartidiot]

i thought the bigger high end monitors used dual link which i thought was dual monitor links or plugs.. but i dunno

does anyone make a new pci card worth looking at? cause i could do a bad-to-the-bone 8800 in the pci-x16 slot and 3 pci-normal graphics cards.

assuming the 8800 would control the main screen and house the taskbar and all opening windows. what would be more important (noticable) with the side screens,

1) memory size
2) clock speeds
3) memory type

 

[Daveskater]

Maybe they do use two links, I'm not sure I'm still on a CRT

I suppose it's possible but then they would be receiving two pictures and that's what I can't quite work out - i.e. why they'd need to picture inputs.

There are a couple of ok PCI cards out there, I can't remember the exact models, but it says about them in this thread: So you only have PCI slots and want to game?

It's not necessarily a case of what spec would be most noticeable, it's more of a case of how good the card performs. If a card has a higher GPU clock speed than another card, it doesn't necessarily means it'll be a better one. It depends on a few things like pixel pipelines, stream processors and the RAM type and data rate.

 

[MetalX]

Only 30" Monitors, or those which run at the native resolutions of 2560x1600 or greater need 2 plugs. You could do that easily. I'd recommend using 8800GTs because they are I think the only card in the 8800 family that uses a single slot cooler. OF course you'd need about a 1000 watt PSU, and an extremely large and well ventilated case. I can't stress that enough. The case must be large and well ventilated if you are going to do this.

I think the 64 monitors is more for servers with tons of PCI slots and add-in card slots that are just running XP, and not Windows Server 2003/2007.

 

[onesmartidiot]

oh maybe they were saying 64 monitors on xp server like they meant 64 terminals on server?

i dunno, id be happy with 7 lol.

next pc i build will be in a custom case im building that hangs on the wall

with about 10 fans and probably 2 psus for something like this

600w for video cards and 600w for board and cd-roms

 

[Nodsu]

Matrox makes true quad-output video cards, so you would only need two of these 3D performance wouldn't be that stellar of course.

 

[guitto]

I have a 30' apple screen and it only requires 1 DVI plug @ 2560x1600 / 60 hz. If you have 2 30' screens or one of the new moniters that has 3690x2500 or some sort, you'd be good to go.

 

[onesmartidiot]

I have a 30' apple screen and it only requires 1 DVI plug

thats the screen i had in mind for this. it makes me wonder what dual link means because when you design a mac online the 30 incher requires a dual link card... i just always figured that meant 2 plugs.

 

[vnf4ultra]

Dual link being dual DVI connections is a common misconception. A dual link connection is a single DVI connection, but it has more pins that a "single link" dvi cable. Here's a link that has description and pictures. Look especially at the DVI connector Guide.
http://www.datapro.net/techinfo/dvi_info.html

If you want to be a DVI whiz, then read up on DVI-A(analog), DVI-I(analog and digital), and DVI-D(digital) too .