Section 2 – Setting-up your Multi-Display System
You might be surprise as to how easy it is to build or upgrade a PC to yield multi-display abilities.
Video Card roundup
Most modern video cards have dualhead which means each can handle two monitors. However older cards and some cards without dualhead can only handle one monitor. Two create your multi-display beast it’s as simple as putting in the amount of cards you need to run all of your monitors. Most motherboards only has one or two PCI-E1.0/2.0 or one AGP slot, however you can add more video cards in other expansion slot like PCI, or PCI-E x1/x4/etc. Once your video cards are installed, all you need to do is plug-in your monitors and ready to go. It’s even possible to use integrated video cards as a secondary video card.
However as simple it is to insert video cards and go, you must be aware that
not all cards are compatible with each other. This is especially true if you mix chipset brands (example Nvidia with ATI). As well, beware of Old PCI cards, they don’t always work due to resource conflicts, however it might be possible to fix the problem by changing the primary card (see below), or primary monitor (see
section 4 or
Ultramon’s Multi-Monitor FAQ).
New cards work just fine in a multiple gpu system*, and it’s unlikely you’ll encounter problems. For Nvidia, anything higher than the GeForce 6200 will work fine in a multi-gpu environment. Both Nvidia and ATI drivers now fully support multi-displays and multi-gpu systems.
*Multiple GPU System: System with more than one graphics card
The primary video Card
The primary video card is the card on which bios will post on (your secondary graphics are not active until windows activates the secondary monitors). You can change which card is primary via the BIOS menu.
Gaming PC VS Workstation
The most cost-effective Gaming PCs with multi-display capabilities are with one powerful card (or two in SLI) for gaming with cheap secondary cards to run secondary screens. This configuration allows for fast gaming, and multi-display desktop. Or you could simply get one powerful card and run dual-screen. The gaming performance will not be impaired by the extra monitor (see
section 6), and you’ll have the capability to span games across both screens.
Multi-monitor workstation can be accomplished by simply adding many cheap video cards, and presto, you have increased productivity at a relatively cheap price.
There are many possible configurations; you simply need to decide what’s best for your needs.