Six Monitor Vid Card Solution? WWYD?

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one swell foop

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What would you do given the following?

Around mid 2011 I built a stock trading rig for my dad that had three monitors and the following specs:

Case: Silverstone Raven RV-02
PSU: Corsair TX650
CPU: Intel i5 5200 (overkill, I know. I suggested a lower power CPU but he wanted the system to last longer before needing to upgrade so went with this)
MoBo: Gigabyte Intel Z68 ATX DDR3 2133 LGA 1155 Motherboard GA-Z68A-D3H-B3
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL
Vid Card: SAPPHIRE FleX 100289FLEX Radeon HD 5670 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card with Eyefinity
Hard Drive: 2x Toshiba Spinpoint F3 hard drives in raid so if one goes down there is a backup.

He wants to do a six monitor solution now. I would just tell him to get another one of the same cards, but the card with Flex like his current card has was unavailable pretty quickly after he ordered the parts and we have been unable to find one since then.

He has two matching monitors currently and a center monitor that's pretty old. He will likely wait to purchase six matching monitors when he finds a deal good enough (though two of the ones he has are pretty new and I may have him keep those rather than selling them). In any case, the monitors he will buy in the future can be chosen, in part, on what inputs they have so they'll work with the cards and not need a lot of adapters.

What would you do as far as a video card to give the above rig the capability to run six displays? He uses the machine to trade stocks and surf the internet, do research, etc. nothing that requires a high powered video card.

Can I just pop another ATI card that can output to three monitors in there and have it work with the card that's in there now? I'm woefully uneducated about the current state of multiple video card solutions and workstation video card solutions.

Thanks in advance for any input.
 
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You have lots of options to achieve 6 monitors, thanks to the case and motherboard you have chosen. But you have left out one crucial detail - what resolution(s) will the monitors be? That's extremely important because past 1080p it gets a bit complicated getting 6 identical monitors going on one computer.

Assuming you will be going 1080p, you could do the following:

1). Buy a video card like a HD7750 and install it in the second PCI-E x16 slot. The 7750 supports 3 displays and is about $100 CDN.
2). Remove your current video card and install one that supports 6 displays, such as the Powercolor or Club3D Radeon 7870 Eyefinity 6 for $370. If your monitors don't support DisplayPort you'll need single-link active adapters for each monitor ($30 apiece). Availability of Eyefinity 6 cards could be dicey.

If you are getting 6 monitors all greater than 1080p then option 1 won't work. Option 2 will, but if the monitors are not native DisplayPort you'll have to spend $80 *PER MONITOR* for dual-link active adapters. The adapters are touchy and not extremely reliable so I don't recommend you go that route at all - what you pay extra upfront for DisplayPort monitors will be more than compensated by the headaches avoided later.

The only other thing to consider is that the HD5xxx chipsets are getting a bit long in the tooth. The HD4xxx are already legacy, it won't be long before the HD5xxx go there too. That could mean driver problems for you with option 1 in the future as you will be trying to run both legacy and non-legacy AMD cards in the same computer. If you don't want to risk that anytime soon, get 2 HD7750's (your power supply can handle it) or go option 2.

Are you sure you only want 6 monitors? 7 can be quite useful:


7 monitors close up by rtangwai, on Flickr
 
rtangwai said:
You have lots of options to achieve 6 monitors, thanks to the case and motherboard you have chosen. But you have left out one crucial detail - what resolution(s) will the monitors be? That's extremely important because past 1080p it gets a bit complicated getting 6 identical monitors going on one computer.

Assuming you will be going 1080p, you could do the following:

1). Buy a video card like a HD7750 and install it in the second PCI-E x16 slot. The 7750 supports 3 displays and is about $100 CDN.
2). Remove your current video card and install one that supports 6 displays, such as the Powercolor or Club3D Radeon 7870 Eyefinity 6 for $370. If your monitors don't support DisplayPort you'll need single-link active adapters for each monitor ($30 apiece). Availability of Eyefinity 6 cards could be dicey.

If you are getting 6 monitors all greater than 1080p then option 1 won't work. Option 2 will, but if the monitors are not native DisplayPort you'll have to spend $80 *PER MONITOR* for dual-link active adapters. The adapters are touchy and not extremely reliable so I don't recommend you go that route at all - what you pay extra upfront for DisplayPort monitors will be more than compensated by the headaches avoided later.

The only other thing to consider is that the HD5xxx chipsets are getting a bit long in the tooth. The HD4xxx are already legacy, it won't be long before the HD5xxx go there too. That could mean driver problems for you with option 1 in the future as you will be trying to run both legacy and non-legacy AMD cards in the same computer. If you don't want to risk that anytime soon, get 2 HD7750's (your power supply can handle it) or go option 2.

Are you sure you only want 6 monitors? 7 can be quite useful:


7 monitors close up by rtangwai, on Flickr
Click to expand...
You like your setup a little too much, lol :cool:
 
Is that 3 30" screens with 4 20" above?
Thanks for the advice. It sounds like the cheapest option is to go with an HD7750. I particularly like the XFX Double D FX-775A-ZDP4 Radeon HD 7750 Black Edition with 2 DVI, 1 HDMI, and 1 DP output, but can't seem to find it in stock anywhere. We'll nail down what monitor setup he'll be using and go from there.

Edit: Seems to be easier to find a 7770 at a reasonable price like the one here: XFX Radeon HD 7770 Core ED 1GHz 1GB 4.5GHZ GDDR5 though I am not sure what the difference is between the core edition and the black cards.
 
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Walkthru screens? Tried thinking about it for a bit but not sure what you meant
 
one swell foop said:
Is that 3 30" screens with 4 20" above?
Thanks for the advice. It sounds like the cheapest option is to go with an HD7750. I particularly like the XFX Double D FX-775A-ZDP4 Radeon HD 7750 Black Edition with 2 DVI, 1 HDMI, and 1 DP output, but can't seem to find it in stock anywhere. We'll nail down what monitor setup he'll be using and go from there.

Edit: Seems to be easier to find a 7770 at a reasonable price like the one here: XFX Radeon HD 7770 Core ED 1GHz 1GB 4.5GHZ GDDR5 though I am not sure what the difference is between the core edition and the black cards.
Click to expand...

FYI, in order to use the third monitor port on most AMD cards, you still need a monitor that has displayport or have a displayport to DVI/HDMI adapter.

Also, the Sapphire FLEX cards are stilll available. The cheapest of which is only $64:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102960

With that said, Nvidia may give you a more flexible option. The GT 650 supports three digital monitors right off the bat AND doesn't require a displayport adapter:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00966IU4M/?tag=extension-kb-20
 
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rtangwai said:
Cheat sheets for games like Star Wars The Old Republic.
Click to expand...

Ahhhhhhh, I see now, thanks for the clarification.

If I had 7 monitors though, I'd just run TV/movies on the top ones while I game on the bottom. No idea if that's possible without windowed mode though
 
Xinmosni said:
Ahhhhhhh, I see now, thanks for the clarification.

If I had 7 monitors though, I'd just run TV/movies on the top ones while I game on the bottom. No idea if that's possible without windowed mode though
Click to expand...

I've tried that, tends to stutter a lot. I have a laptop set up as a HTPC client to my NextPVR server to play TV and movies on a 46" TV. Being a completely separate box avoids funny conflicts with other programs and my network is completely gigabit to help avoid bottlenecks.
 
Just make sure you avoid displayport adapters, i cant seem to have one last more than a year before it fails (eyefinity)
 
Single-link or dual-link? I use 4 adapters (2 single, 2 dual) - the only problem I had was one of my dual-link was very fussy (bought it used for $20) which was fixed by flashing the firmware to 2.0. I've been using adapters for over 2 years now and not one has failed yet. The dual-link ones are touchy at times which is annoying.
 
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