Need to run 5 Monitors... Need help.

Hey guys! My work set-up, I have three Dell 27" widescreens. Well we have two more lying around, and I would like to add them to my work PC. (i5 Sandybridge, 16GB DDR3). My work PC has onboard DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. The video card (9400GT) has 2x DVI and 1 SVIDEO.

Right now, The three monitions are connected like this:
9400GT>DVI>Monitor
9400GT>DVI>Monitor
Onboard>DVI>Monitor

When I go to Windows 7 Screen Resolution, It is detecting an available port for another monitor, but its on the 9400GT, which would be SVIDEO. So that's not an option.

The chipset drive is up to date.

I tried adding an Nvidia FX5200 PCI card to the PC, but it would never detect both video cards.

What do I need to do to add two more monitors to my system? It only has one PCIX slot, and its being used.

Anyone?

I thought windows 7 played fairly well with PCI and PCI-X cards running together, but if you say it didn't detect then I don't know what to say about that. Maybe the PCI card is dead.

With that not an option, you have two possibilities.

You get one of these, or one of these, and expand your desktop with that. Keep in mind though, your 9400gt probably can't support resolutions that high and overall it might not work.

Or get something like this, and 5 active adapters. This should work no problem, but its going to be /expensive/.

Let us know how it goes. May I ask what you do for a living that requires 5 monitors?

you can't mix and match cards, and surprised you could run 2 off the card and one off the onboard. But i know (if you upgrade the psu) 2 5770 or 6770's can run up to 6 monitors, and i know if you look around enough they have a hew special edition versions of some cards that can run like 6 off of one card.

jonnyp11 said:

you can't mix and match cards

Click to expand...

You certainly can...


Back to the OP, just because you have 3+ video outputs that does not mean you can support that many displays simultaneously. The first step would be finding out if your board supports dual displays, it almost certainly will not support 3 on the onboard GPU.

Ok, lets start again.

Answer this:

1. Do you need to be able to drive the 5 monitors as one desktop, or a mirror of yoru desktop? This effects GPU grunt required.
2. What motherboard do you have (model and make) - this effects what GPU can be installed to solve the issue
3. What PSU do you have (look inside) - this effects what GPU can be installed
4. Do you have a budget to buy new stuff? This effects everything
5. Do you require 3D applications to work across 5 screens? This is massively important. Are you gaming?

Then and only then can one provide a proper answer.

There is a video card series meant just for this. It supports up to 5 monitors. I will post it when I find it.