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is there enough room on the back of a standard PCI card for three DVI ports side-by-side? My workstation graphics card has dual DVI outputs, plus an S-Video port. Even if you took the S-Video port off, there doesn't appear to be enough room for a third DVI connector.

Matrox's QID Pro AGP card ($600) product info page shows four DVI monitors connected to a single card using two outputs + dongles. It appears as thought the video card's two outputs are not standard DVI ports (LFH60), but the card includes two LFH60-to-DVI dual-monitor adapter cables.

If you want to see something really trippy, they also offer this product in a low-profile PCIe or PCI card, supporting four displays off a single output.

The Matrox QID Pro graphics card supports up to 4 digital or analog monitors at a time and provides 2D/3D acceleration across all displays.

The big drawback is no Linux drivers (that I know of)

A bunch of games support this and the list grows.

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/offhome/th2go/gamin g/list.cfm

Just to mention it:

http://matrox.com/graphics/extio/

So there is a small PCIe card that plugs into the computer and looks awfully like a PCIe to fiberoptic bridge. The other end is the box with a graphics chipset, multiple DVI ports, and some usb/audio connections. Now the thing to note is

1) This is likely going to have a 4 price tag
2) It's a Matrox video card that runs off a x1 PCIe connection.
3) Enthusiast video cards are likely going to want at least a x4 PCIe connection
4) Last time I looked at fiber interface modules, I got the impression that the raw parts are going to run in the $100's for something that can do x1 PCIe bandwidth (2.5 GBits/sec, full duplex), never mind something that would target a higher end video card.

Add that Matrox triple head to go thingie: http://www.matrox.com/graphics/offhome/th2go/home. cfm

And enjoy 3 times the screens! A video wall running on one computer!

No idea if it would work...

Matrox Perhelia if you want colour accuracy, 2d acceleration, features like 10bit colour channels (native!).

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/cre_pro/prod ucts/home.cfm

It has excellent 3d (in terms of quality) too.

They are still alive in this FPS comparison hell thanks to their focus on features like that.

But there is a growing need for ultra high resolution capabilities. As soon as the mainstream figures out how immersive ultra wide screen games can be, there will quickly be a major demand for super high resolution capable video cards. I don't think the popular 1280x1024 viewing format will remain the norm for much longer. 3084x1024 will be a major driver for graphics cards sales.

For more information on what I mean, visit http://www.matrox.com/
They are releasing an adaptor to turn many video cards capable of rendering a single output over 3 screens.

http://www.matrox.com/mga/theguide/contents/AGPvsP CI.cfm

the suggestion is the Matrox Parhelia
it's been around for ages

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/cre_pro/prod ucts/parhelia/256mb.cfm

google is your friend :

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=neverwinter+night s+multiscreen

matrox has a list of games that support mutliple monitor modes:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/surrgame.cfm

One word: Matrox.

Granted, those aren't gaming-oriented cards by any definition, but they're real workhorses.

Damn reliable too, I'm still using a Millenium II which must be close to 10 years old -- never glitched, through at least 4 computers and as many OSes.

Sounds like you should look at Matrox. I'll warn you in advance though, the kids will keep asking you why the PCB is that boring green color, where all the chrome is, and why it doesn't have a fan. The 2D quality is top notch though.

Well they're still on the cutting edge -
http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_center/press_rel/2 005/millennium_g550_pcie.cfmMatrox announces world's first PCI Express x1 graphics card

Announced 2 days ago:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_center/press_rel/2 005/millennium_g550_pcie.cfm

-PCI-E 1x slot
-You can stick as many in your system as you have 1x slots
-fanless
-fully open source drivers!!

you may want to look at the Parahelia line from Matrox

They do triple-head out of the box, nice cards.

actually http://www.matrox.com/mga/multidisplay/product_cha rt.cfm this shows a breakdown of all their multidisplay cards.

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/qid/home.cfm am i wrong or does this satisfy what you are looking for...

Ummm...... okay. 24 bit LCD, versus 32 bit CRT. Human eyes can distinguish between 16, 24, and 32 bit. (Play a game and wait for smoke and explosions to go off, you'll see what I mean)

That's nice.

Which graphics card are you using which outputs 32-bit colour? The best I can think of in terms of colour depth, the Matrox Parhelia, only does 30-bit. And nobody seems to be buying that...

triple head http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/video/produc ts/parhelia/128mb.cfm

Well, not exactly wrong, but Matrox has a 64 Bit 66MHz PCI card to which PCI-X is very compatible (and it's 4 times as fast as standard PCI): Here It's not PCI-X, but it's pretty close.

See Official Matrox Site for the Parahelia drivers. Seems the latest version (1.4.1) was made available 12 April 2005. Driver README.

The Matrox RT.X10 Suite bundles the Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore, and a few other handy bits of kit with their capture card. Goes for about $1100 for the full Monty, $700 for a more limited set. Worth taking a look at... We use it for cutting and splicing training sessions these days, but if you know the tool it cranks out nice stuff.

But you I suppose you are talking about drivers for that rad game box your mom bought you for your birthday, you know, that awesome deal she got on it from the QVC shopping channel.

But you I suppose you are talking about drivers for that rad game box your mom bought you for your birthday, you know, that awesome deal she got on it from the QVC shopping channel.

Well, they don't have all those bells and whistles, but Matrox has been concentrating on solid 2D performance for years now, and for everyday 2D applications they (at least, last time I checked) consistently outperform the massively expensive 3D cards.

If you work in the financial industry, multi-display 2D video cards by Matrox are the standard. In fact, if you want the highest quality 2D graphics with the added bonus of low heat, Matrox is the best choice. Matrox under X11 is superb, if you're main interest is clear, readable text and graphics, and fast 2D screen updates.

Some of the old kings of consumer graphics cards are still around. Matrox for instance has some decent consumer gaming cards like the Parhelia. They also have many other high end cards specifically aimed at workstations. My ATI card runs two monitors fine. What if you want to drive 3 or 4 monitors? Get yourself a Matrox card.

There are a number of other video manufacturers arounds. Some targeting the low end, but others targeting plenty of high end niche markets.

Some of the old kings of consumer graphics cards are still around. Matrox for instance has some decent consumer gaming cards like the Parhelia. They also have many other high end cards specifically aimed at workstations. My ATI card runs two monitors fine. What if you want to drive 3 or 4 monitors? Get yourself a Matrox card.

There are a number of other video manufacturers arounds. Some targeting the low end, but others targeting plenty of high end niche markets.

ATI and NVidia have no viable competitors.

ATI and NVidia have no viable competitors.

Matrox is simply in a different market. They don't make money from high end gamers because that's not who they target.

Go to the Front Page of the Matrox site and you will see four items. Only one of them is Graphics Cards. And even in the graphics cards market, Matrox absolutely owns when it comes to dualhead and overall 2D picture quality, sharpeness and clarity. When doing high end video editing (i.e. rendering that is done by dedicated hardware that is separated from your video hardware,) a dualhead system with a matrox card and then dedicated realtime capture and rendering hardware owns the day. Matrox is a giant in both of these fields. (Though still I prefer Canopus for RT video hardware.)

And of course I haven't even touched the high end scientific imaging market, where Matrox provides its cameras, frame grabbers, etc. And there's medical imaging too where Matrox makes all kinds of stuff. These last three points (RT Video Rendering, scientific imaging and medical imaging) are areas that ATi and nVidia don't touch. That is why Matrox is not going away. They simply have a diverse line and are big in markets that the high end gaming companies rightfully don't touch.

As for Matrox, sure, they're still in the market ... but barely

Barely in your particular market maybe. But in their own market, multi-head ultra high-resolution graphics, they kick the crap out of everything else. They do have their own ultra-expensive 3D gaming card, Parhelia, but that's really not their bag anymore. I do want to try this card though now that I'm looking at it.

Yes, it is sad what has happened to Matrox. Their G-series of cards are still some of the best supported by Open Source drivers. It looks like they just abandoned Linux and Open Source with the release of their Parhelia (sp?) and P-series cards. I wonder why that happened. Perhaps there was a management change. Or perhaps their recent fall in popularity to nVidia and ATi have caused them to tighten up. They probably saw the code/doc contributions as a monetary and even IP loss. Oh well, there's still lots of second-hand G200, G400/G450, and G500/G550's out there for good prices. I've even seen a bunch of the quad-ouput variant of the G200 in a local computer fair.

From 2002: Matrox continues to support the Linux community and is proud to release an open source driver for its flagship product Parhelia...

Matrox? Don't count on it. They've just "recently" gone from being one of the best supported video card makers, both 2D and 3D, in linux, to one of the absolut worst after they switched to a closed source model of providing their own drivers.

"Worst?", I hear you say, "How can that be? My ATI doesn't work great either!". Well, consider this; It's been almost a year since their last driver was released. It doesn't support Linux 2.6 yet. People are trying to patch things up, but it's a losing battle. It doesn't support SMP either, which means that any P4/HT users are out of luck. And I'm not just talking about not actively enhancing the drivers for SMP, no, it will outright crash and bring the the whole computer down with it if you som much as think of starting an OpenGL application. Oh, and while we're at it, there is of course no support at all for AMD64.

Quite frankly, Matrox has remained so apathetic to the Linux crowd that I'm now convinced that they tricked us all just to get our money, and deep down inside they just hate us.

Matrox? Don't count on it. They've just "recently" gone from being one of the best supported video card makers, both 2D and 3D, in linux, to one of the absolut worst after they switched to a closed source model of providing their own drivers.

"Worst?", I hear you say, "How can that be? My ATI doesn't work great either!". Well, consider this; It's been almost a year since their last driver was released. It doesn't support Linux 2.6 yet. People are trying to patch things up, but it's a losing battle. It doesn't support SMP either, which means that any P4/HT users are out of luck. And I'm not just talking about not actively enhancing the drivers for SMP, no, it will outright crash and bring the the whole computer down with it if you som much as think of starting an OpenGL application. Oh, and while we're at it, there is of course no support at all for AMD64.

Quite frankly, Matrox has remained so apathetic to the Linux crowd that I'm now convinced that they tricked us all just to get our money, and deep down inside they just hate us.

Matrox? Don't count on it. They've just "recently" gone from being one of the best supported video card makers, both 2D and 3D, in linux, to one of the absolut worst after they switched to a closed source model of providing their own drivers.

"Worst?", I hear you say, "How can that be? My ATI doesn't work great either!". Well, consider this; It's been almost a year since their last driver was released. It doesn't support Linux 2.6 yet. People are trying to patch things up, but it's a losing battle. It doesn't support SMP either, which means that any P4/HT users are out of luck. And I'm not just talking about not actively enhancing the drivers for SMP, no, it will outright crash and bring the the whole computer down with it if you som much as think of starting an OpenGL application. Oh, and while we're at it, there is of course no support at all for AMD64.

Quite frankly, Matrox has remained so apathetic to the Linux crowd that I'm now convinced that they tricked us all just to get our money, and deep down inside they just hate us.

Matrox? Don't count on it. They've just "recently" gone from being one of the best supported video card makers, both 2D and 3D, in linux, to one of the absolut worst after they switched to a closed source model of providing their own drivers.

"Worst?", I hear you say, "How can that be? My ATI doesn't work great either!". Well, consider this; It's been almost a year since their last driver was released. It doesn't support Linux 2.6 yet. People are trying to patch things up, but it's a losing battle. It doesn't support SMP either, which means that any P4/HT users are out of luck. And I'm not just talking about not actively enhancing the drivers for SMP, no, it will outright crash and bring the the whole computer down with it if you som much as think of starting an OpenGL application. Oh, and while we're at it, there is of course no support at all for AMD64.

Quite frankly, Matrox has remained so apathetic to the Linux crowd that I'm now convinced that they tricked us all just to get our money, and deep down inside they just hate us.

Matrox? Don't count on it. They've just "recently" gone from being one of the best supported video card makers, both 2D and 3D, in linux, to one of the absolut worst after they switched to a closed source model of providing their own drivers.

"Worst?", I hear you say, "How can that be? My ATI doesn't work great either!". Well, consider this; It's been almost a year since their last driver was released. It doesn't support Linux 2.6 yet. People are trying to patch things up, but it's a losing battle. It doesn't support SMP either, which means that any P4/HT users are out of luck. And I'm not just talking about not actively enhancing the drivers for SMP, no, it will outright crash and bring the the whole computer down with it if you som much as think of starting an OpenGL application. Oh, and while we're at it, there is of course no support at all for AMD64.

Quite frankly, Matrox has remained so apathetic to the Linux crowd that I'm now convinced that they tricked us all just to get our money, and deep down inside they just hate us.

Matrox? Don't count on it. They've just "recently" gone from being one of the best supported video card makers, both 2D and 3D, in linux, to one of the absolut worst after they switched to a closed source model of providing their own drivers.

"Worst?", I hear you say, "How can that be? My ATI doesn't work great either!". Well, consider this; It's been almost a year since their last driver was released. It doesn't support Linux 2.6 yet. People are trying to patch things up, but it's a losing battle. It doesn't support SMP either, which means that any P4/HT users are out of luck. And I'm not just talking about not actively enhancing the drivers for SMP, no, it will outright crash and bring the the whole computer down with it if you som much as think of starting an OpenGL application. Oh, and while we're at it, there is of course no support at all for AMD64.

Quite frankly, Matrox has remained so apathetic to the Linux crowd that I'm now convinced that they tricked us all just to get our money, and deep down inside they just hate us.

Matrox? Don't count on it. They've just "recently" gone from being one of the best supported video card makers, both 2D and 3D, in linux, to one of the absolut worst after they switched to a closed source model of providing their own drivers.

"Worst?", I hear you say, "How can that be? My ATI doesn't work great either!". Well, consider this; It's been almost a year since their last driver was released. It doesn't support Linux 2.6 yet. People are trying to patch things up, but it's a losing battle. It doesn't support SMP either, which means that any P4/HT users are out of luck. And I'm not just talking about not actively enhancing the drivers for SMP, no, it will outright crash and bring the the whole computer down with it if you som much as think of starting an OpenGL application. Oh, and while we're at it, there is of course no support at all for AMD64.

Quite frankly, Matrox has remained so apathetic to the Linux crowd that I'm now convinced that they tricked us all just to get our money, and deep down inside they just hate us.

The best graphics card for dual monitor is http://www.matrox.com/

ahh - but it was in 1993, I believe, that I actually purchased a $15K graphics card... not for a PC though. :) It was an SGI Z-buffer card that I don't recall the exact ID of.

The most expensive graphics card for a PC I actually purchased (work related - CAD station) was $2500.

So, it's not hyperbole for me, even today. Actually, you can still buy these super expensive cards, not that they're especially geared towards running Doom 3 @ 300 fps: Matrox's HR256 for a mere ~$2500.

You can use a Matrox RTMac PCI card, and output it to whatever you want. But as has been mentioned elsewhere, you are really looking for something else, you just don't know it.

Fortunately we don't all have the same needs. The diversity of the marketplace means that there is room for both approaches. This also results in a greater number of choices for us.

BTW, I am under the impression the Matrox still makes some kick ass OpenGL cards for the HIGH END.

LK

Don't know about a list, but regarding videocard manufacurers, I have to mention:

Matrox , oh baby.

The only manufacturer I know that provides a full-blown XFree86 configuration utility, quality drivers, and open specs.

That, plus the original display required a four-head graphics card (or cards w/ four total outputs) to drive it. Looks like the newer Viewsonic uses four separate DVI-D connections.

Aggregating DVI channels is pretty extreme, but I wonder how high a resolution LCD manufacturers could produce using (multiple) PCI express? Decent frame rate as well?

I can certainly confirm that X.org, Matrox G550 and DVI output can be achieved. Currently running a dual LCD set-up under Fedora Core 2 with said card.

What you need to do is grab a beta driver from Matrox's site. Although it says it is for XFree86 4.1, 4.2 & 4.3 it works under X.org 6.7. Be aware that there is a bug in the driver that causes X to hang for 30 seconds or so when it first starts up.

Matrox also have a forum to discuss all things Linux and their graphics cards.

I can certainly confirm that X.org, Matrox G550 and DVI output can be achieved. Currently running a dual LCD set-up under Fedora Core 2 with said card.

What you need to do is grab a beta driver from Matrox's site. Although it says it is for XFree86 4.1, 4.2 & 4.3 it works under X.org 6.7. Be aware that there is a bug in the driver that causes X to hang for 30 seconds or so when it first starts up.

Matrox also have a forum to discuss all things Linux and their graphics cards.

What you can do is to download the latest 'beta' (or is that 'alpha') of the G400TV Windows 2000 drivers and video-tools and install these. They can be found on the "Latest Matrox Drivers" page. Unfortunately, a few features, such as MJPEG support, and the ability to record from the remote-control app are not available. However, someone has figured out how to get a Marvel G400TV to use MJPEG with Windows 2000. This site explains it (it's in Italian use Google language tools to translate), and offers a patch or two that can be downloaded. Also, you should be able to record video with a 3rd-party video-editing app (but I've not tried that yet from Windows 2000).

Incidentally, has Matrox abandoned the video-editing/TV-tuner/graphics card all in one market, or is it just hopelessly late in bringing one out? Back in 1999, the G400TV seemed like the best option at the time, and I went for that (and I'm still using mine). At that time, I became fond of Matrox, but due to the lack of a more modern replacement (the latest offering in that line, the G450eTV is hopelessly out of date), I'll have to switch over to ATI All-In-Wonder or NVidia Whatever-The-Hell-The-Equivalent-Is-Called. One of the things I've heard about Matrox cards is that they have a reputation for the best screen-clarity. As I'm used to pushing my monitor's rez as high as it will go before my eyes explode, I'm a bit concerned that I may be forced to use a lower rez if I go with an ATI or NVidia.