Slashdot Mirror
Dual-Headed DVI Flatpanels?
NP-Hard asks: "My organization has recently come into a Lot of Money for new hardware. We're a Linux shop, we code a lot, and we're drooling over the prospect of dual DVI-driven flatpanels. Believe it or not, Linux-friendly dual DVI solutions are thin on the ground. Anybody know of a good configuration for under $7k?" I'll be able to afford one of these, someday.
DVI and OpenLDI are not directly compatable. You can get the multi-link adapter from SGI that will convert DVI to OpenLDI. However, you can't run the wide resolution (1600x1024) because of limitations with DVI. I believe the best you can get is 1280x1024, which loses the advantage of the SGI 1600SW in the first place.
There's been some previous discussion of the pros and cons of digital flat panels on Slashdot, try searching.
If you can live with a system that has a video card designed by a company that has gone bankrupt (so no manufacturer driver updates), then the SGI + RevIV is a good setup. I use it every day. Be warned that the RevIV is only good for 2D applications, 3D ain't so hot.
Does XFree86 support multiple #9 cards? Since #9 support is dwindling all over (I think they are out of business...), drivers would be a large issue. I think I would approach this from choosing an X server, and then purchasing supported DVI cards. The LCD panel is up to user taste from there.
Matrox. Scroll down that link to the very last section titled MMS, short for Multi-Monitor Solutions. Price for a dual-G200 card with 8M per card is $500 US per card, quad-G200 is $700 per card, or quad-G200 w/ TV tuner is $800 per card. You'll need one split-DVI cable per pair of DVI monitors at $60 US per cable, so for a dual-DVI setup you'd be spending $560 US roughly before tax, for a quad-DVI setup you'd be spending $820 US roughly before tax. Assuming you could find decent LCD screens for $1500 each, you'd still be under your target price of $7k per full rig if you got quad-head per rig instead of the originally-mentioned dual-head.
You can buy them in a package with a PCI Number 9 revolution IV and the whole kit can be found for less than $1400(US).
Almost all computer have a couple PCI ports open, and unless you're doing fast texture writes it's really not much slower than AGP.
We're really thinking about rolling these out as the standard dual-head setup at my workplace to cut down on eye strain and electricity costs.
Digitial Video Interface. No analogue. Most flat panels are designed to use analog outputs from your video card. The resulting digital -> analogue -> digital conversion potentially introduces a lot of noise into the picture. It's better to get a special video card (a DVI card) that outputs a digital signal directly. SGI's wide aspect ratio LCD panel used a DVI video card from Number Nine, for instance.
--Be human.
Why do you want flat panels so badly? Is it because they're "cool", or because they don't require as much disk space. Personally, I think a nice high-end monitor is a better deal. They're cheaper, bigger, and sharper; you could very easily get 3 of them for less than the price of the 2 flat panels. Plus CRTs usually run at higher resolution, so you'll get more screen real-estate.