5 monitor configuration question

[bco1]

We have a system that currently is using 2 NVIDIA Quadro boards for 4 monitor display. Now we need to add a 5th monitor to the system. We have 1 PCI slot left in the computer and several free USB ports...

I've thought about some of these options:

- Replace 1 Quadro PCIe board with a video adapter that supports 4 monitors (instead of the 2 supported by this Quadro)
- Use a USB-to-DVI adapter solution such as

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/products/C...mp;sku=A2134773

- Add in a simply PCI video adapter

We are using a CAD-like application, and the fifth monitor will be for auxiliary spreadsheets, not the application itself.

Any thoughts on what seems like the preferred solution for maximum video performance of the CAD-like application?

Thanks,

 

[Nelviticus]

The Matrox DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go dongles are expensive but get pretty good reviews. Performance might suffer though because the card has to drive a larger resolution. If your graphics cards aren't stressed by the CAD application at the moment they should be fine.

You can now get monitors which connect over USB. They don't perform well enough for video-intensive applications like gaming or CAD due to the amount of data that needs to be passed over USB but they'd be fine for spreadsheets. One down-side is that there's some (minor) additional CPU load.

For maximum video performance a third card in the PCI slot would probably be best as you're not placing any extra load on existing cards and you aren't tied to a special USB monitor, although I don't know how well (or if) nVidia's drivers work with three cards.

Regards

Nelviticus