Does anyone know of the card/cards that support 3 monitors? (1 Viewer)

[Mark Giles]

I went to CompUSA a year or so ago and saw a setup where they had three flat screens up and running some FPS. Forget which one. May have been Tribes or UT. Anyway, does anyone know of the cheapest way to accomplish this? Thanks.

 

[Jordan_Brulotte]

The only 3 monitor AGP card capable of running games of that kind that I know of is the Matrox Parhelia. It it somewhat old now, and will not be capable of playing the newest games.

However, that card is designed for 3d applications. If all you need is 3 screens for desktop, multimedia, photoshop etc, then you can do it much cheaper. Most AGP and PCI-E video card already have dual monitor output, so thats 2 screens. for a third screen just add a PCI video card on top of that. You can run 2 video cards without any problem. If you wanted you could use a Matrox G450 Dualhead, or similar, for your 2nd card and have capability for 4 monitors.

You are only limited by the number of expansion ports on your motherboard, and the number of outlets you have near the computer for all those monitors .

 

[Tekara]

I've gotten some good use out of my dual head pci 5200, though for most games I still stick with running them exclusively on the primary monitor which is driven by the agp card.

In theory the AGP 2.0 spec supports two agp slots and the new pci express supports multiple video cards. With SLI (combining two cards to drive one monitor) becoming a little popular you could probably find a dual pci express motherboard somewhere and run miltiple dual head cards.

The biggest problem your going to have in the end is getting the games to actually run on multiple moniters. Like for flight simulator I have to run the program in multiple window mode and place the windows on the appropriate screens.

 

[Mark Giles]

Ok, I just bought me a PCI Nvidia 5500 128 mb card. Strategically, should I hook up the 2 monitors thru my main AGP card (cause it's more powerful) and the PCI card for the third monitor? Or does any of this matter?

Is one going to have less response time or resolution? The response time or refresh rate for the actual monitors are identical cause they are exactly the same.

 

[Jordan_Brulotte]

Mark, it depends on your application... are you intending on playing 3d games, or just desktop use? If you are planning on playing 3d games then the pci card most likely will not work, as it wont have enough power to keep up.

 

[Mark Giles]

it's for 3d games. I havnt opened the box yet either. I plan on purchasing an AGP card that supports 2 DVI's but how would I get the third one connected?

 

[Jordan_Brulotte]

To be honest I'm not sure if it'll work. You would need a PCI card powerful enough to keep up, and for the most part they do not exist.

What games do you intend on playing on 3 monitors? I ask because only a small percentage of games can be played over 3 monitors.