ATi Surround View and 3 HDTV's

[lord_farfig]

ATi Surround View. Who has used it?


I've been tasked with coming up with a plan for my job, and I wanted to get some feedback from the [H] community.

We're tossing the idea around to put 3 HDTV's on the wall in our monitoring office so we can keep tabs on our equipment/servers/services.
I though I could build a system with an AMD 785G chipset and pair it with an HD3450 and enable surround view. Everything I've researched so far leads me to think this should work, giving me (up to 4) the 3 displays we are contemplating.

I was thinking we could do 3 HDMI cables from the computer to each of the TV's. Onboard HDMI, HDMI on the card, and DVI>HDMI on the card.

So let me know what you guys think. If there are any better ideas, or any known solutions I'd love to hear them!

Thanks!

 

[WBurchnall]

What's the budget you have to try to meet with your plan for your workplace? Is price no object or a limitation?

 

[lord_farfig]

What's the budget you have to try to meet with your plan for your workplace? Is price no object or a limitation?

I don't know they have a specific number they want to keep it under, but I'd assume rather low. Assuming we can get 3 TVs around ~$400, and mounts and cables and all that good stuff, I think under $2,000 would be reasonable.

I was able to piece together a system for about $350 shipped from the 'egg with everything we'd need to run the screens.

Gigabyte 785G board
Athlon II X2 240
ATi HD3450
2GB PC-6400
250GB HDD
DVD+/-RW
Antec Case + PSU

 

[inotocracy]

Eyefinity is only supported on the 5XXX series.

 

[lord_farfig]

Eyefinity is only supported on the 5XXX series.

Yes, it most certainly is. However, I do not ask anything about Eyefinity.
I am asking about Surroundview, which allows you to use both an Integrated chip and a Discreet card in conjunction with one another for output on up to 4 displays.

This is similar to Eyefinity, but not the same.

 

[Sikkyu]

Yes, it most certainly is. However, I do not ask anything about Eyefinity.
I am asking about Surroundview, which allows you to use both an Integrated chip and a Discreet card in conjunction with one another for output on up to 4 displays.

This is similar to Eyefinity, but not the same.

eyefinity references playing games across up to three (or six) monitors from a single card. using mulitple videocards to run muliple monitors is just standard tech.

the intagrated graphics of the mobo will only do one vid card even if it has more then one port unless it states otherwise.

otherwise its 2 screens per card max unless stated.

 

[GotNoRice]

I was thinking we could do 3 HDMI cables from the computer to each of the TV's. Onboard HDMI, HDMI on the card, and DVI>HDMI on the card.

Yes this would work, you would be out of luck for a 4th however.

 

[lord_farfig]

Yes this would work, you would be out of luck for a 4th however.

Yep, since (from what I've read) the onboard can only output 1 digital and 1 analog.

I thought this route would be easiest to build to power 3 HDTV's. I haven't looked into the cost of multi-head cards (nVidia Quadro NVS 240)... plus I've been extremely please with the motherboard I'm thinking of for this build - Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H.
Put one in a system for my Mom and I was surprised by the power and responsiveness of the 4200. So I figured I'd couple that with an HD3450 and BAM 3 HDMI's for 3 HDTV's.

Thanks!