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.

Comments

Re:You can always install HOW many?

[DeadDecoy]

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.

Re:Can You Install Three?

[dave420]

Like this one? It supports 4-way CrossFire (or SLI), and has enough PCIe x16 slots to cope with three of these cards.

Re:Matrox?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Re:Only one problem

[Khyber]

"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.

Re:Only one problem

[Khyber]

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.