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One Video Card, 12 Monitors
Jamie found a story that might make your jaw drop if you happen to have some need to put 12 video cards in your machine. Although if that isn't enough, you can always install two of these. I don't think I'm kidding.
The summary is poorly worded. ATI's Powercolor HD5970 video card supports 12 display outputs. If you have two, you go up to 24 display outputs. At that point, you could monitor the whole of the matrix.
Or...six good quality projectors. No more bezel issue, and six times the resolution!
Like this one? It supports 4-way CrossFire (or SLI), and has enough PCIe x16 slots to cope with three of these cards.
In terms of number of outputs, Matrox has indeed been doing it for years. The difference is that their gear tends to be fairly expensive(particularly when you consider its brutally tepid performance) niche stuff. According to their price sheet, their 8-head will run you $2K. Their cheapest quad-head is $330. And these are for display controllers that are basically suited for 2D applications.
By contrast, the ATI stuff, with vastly superior GPU peformance, and typically more RAM, is cheaper. 5-heads will run you $220. 6 will run about $500; because you can't seem to get 6 without a 5870, which isn't a cheap chip.
This 12-head monster, since it is probably a relatively short-run enthusiast catcher, may well land in the ~$1000-~$1500 zone; but that will still make it cheaper, faster, and with more heads and RAM than the Matrox equivalent.
From the article you linked: "The GA-X58A-UD9 has seven physical PCIe x16 slots." That's "only" enough for two of these - they take three slots, not just two.
"And every 500 hours (aka 20.8 days at 24x7) all the projectors will time out and refuse to display anything but "time to change the bulb!""
Bypass the UHP ballast and toss a 100w LED in there. No more bulb display notice, at least 15,000 hours lamp life.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The problem with Linux saving money in schools is this: The guys that really REALLY know Linux, the real gurus that could wrap their head around what you are suggesting and set up and maintain a good working solution, would end up costing your more $$$$$ than the solution would be worth. Because I have known a few gurus in my day, and they get paid the big bucks. The chump change and belly button lint that the average public schools offer IT wouldn't even get those guys to show up for an interview.
Like it or not, a GPO locked down Windows really isn't hard to admin. Hell with the easy GUI of WinServer I could probably teach my oldest boy in less than a month everything he would need to manage a group of desktops with GPO. With Linux you better know your way around bash, have good CLI-foo, be good at problem solving and trawling forums for when you get "update foo broke my hardware" and generally be a hell of a lot more knowledgeable on the in and outs of your chosen distro to really get the most out of it. And the guys that can do that with ease are already booked to the eyes and simply don't have the long hours for low pay that school IT guys have to deal with.
So in the end you would be penny wise and pound foolish because any money you saved on desktops would be gone and more on the Linux guru to maintain it. But on the plus side I'm sure the Linux gurus here LIKE getting paid a hell of a lot more than the Windows guys, so I'm sure it all evens out ;-)
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I can get single-chip multi-emitter Quantum Well LEDs all day long at 100w, all single-package.
I mean, look at my signature. I do *WAY* more than just that with LED, that just happens to be what I chose to do professionally.
http://www.ledssuperbright.com/100w-white-high-power-led-p-226
There you go. I'm actually waiting for the manufacturer to be able to do the entire package in a customized color blend so I can provide a fully-functional horticultural light in a single ultra-small package.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.