4 Screens 1 Computer

Platinum

Platinum

New Member
Hello everyone, got a question for you guys.

A friend of mine is paying me to setup a computer for his deli. Essentially, what he wants is to have his menus as monitors instead of a standard menu. Don't know if that's exactly clear. Basically he wants 3 monitors. Each will have a separate menu. Ex: Monitor 1 will have a breakfast menu, Monitor 2 will have a Lunch menu, Monitor 3 will have catering options. A 4th menu will be used for a slide show of images of the food.

What I'm wondering is, is there a way to hook this up to have 1 computer/laptop show the menu on each monitor?

A thought of mine, and I'm not too Mac savvy, but Mac's have 4screens you can switch between. Maybe with a mac, there's a way to have each desktop hooked up to 1 monitor?

Is there a way to do this with only 1 computer? 4 screens, different images on each?
 
I'm not 100% sure on this, but i think you can buy two cheap video cards (ATI or Nvidia) of the same model. BUT you do not enable crossfire/SLI, and this will allow you to run four seperate displays.

Or, with a cheap motherboard with one PCI-e slot. get one PCIe x16 video card for the main display and will support two monitors, then get a PCI video card that supports two displays. And there you have it, four monitor setup.
 
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you can buy a switcher.... you can get them for with two inputs....

you buy 3

1. - Hooked up to 2 computers
2. - Hooked up to 2 computers
3. - Hooked up to 1 + 2 into monitor...

make sence? :o
 
cohen said:
you can buy a switcher.... you can get them for with two inputs....

you buy 3

1. - Hooked up to 2 computers
2. - Hooked up to 2 computers
3. - Hooked up to 1 + 2 into monitor...

make sence? :o
Click to expand...

I only want to use 1 computer.

Essentially I wanted to use a laptop, but from what it seems like, I can only use a computer, because I will need multiple video cards...
 
Platinum said:
Hello everyone, got a question for you guys.

A friend of mine is paying me to setup a computer for his deli. Essentially, what he wants is to have his menus as monitors instead of a standard menu. Don't know if that's exactly clear. Basically he wants 3 monitors. Each will have a separate menu. Ex: Monitor 1 will have a breakfast menu, Monitor 2 will have a Lunch menu, Monitor 3 will have catering options. A 4th menu will be used for a slide show of images of the food.

What I'm wondering is, is there a way to hook this up to have 1 computer/laptop show the menu on each monitor?

A thought of mine, and I'm not too Mac savvy, but Mac's have 4screens you can switch between. Maybe with a mac, there's a way to have each desktop hooked up to 1 monitor?

Is there a way to do this with only 1 computer? 4 screens, different images on each?
Click to expand...

Nvidia 6200 and above work very in multi-gpu settup, the drivers fully support it. Your friend could build a pretty cheap system and put in two 6200 graphics cards. Each card can handle two monitor.

I just tested if you could run more then one Powerpoint presentations and it seems to work as long as you have a shortcut key to move over the presentations to the other screens. I have a program called Ultramon that I used to do that with. That program isn't free though. You could try MultiMonitor TaskBar, mabe the free version has that feature also.
 
Well he said money isn't an issue really. As far as the computer, there's no need to make it expensive. But as far as the programs to do what he wants, he's not worried about it. I actually was googling this topic and Ultramon came up, so you mentioning it is a good thing.

That's exactly what I was thinking, have different powerpoint presentations running, 1 on each screen. That way it'll fill up the whole screen with no taskbar or anything.

Any other advice?
 
Yeah, the DUALHEAD thing powers 2 monitors not one big monitor, and regardless you could just tell it to render a really WIDE screen (that would encompass 2 screens worth of real estate) IE the Nvidia "Span" option.
 
CPTMuller said:
I suppose, the idea of running 2-3 gpus in one computer is somewhat scary in terms of drivers.
Click to expand...

No worries! :) any Nvidia 6200 and above will work fine in a multi-gpu environment. I contacted Nvidia once asking what lowest card would work in multi-gpu systems, they recomended the 6200. I have a 7950GT running along with an 6200 PCI, and it work just fine thanks to the Nvidia software. I can load up the panel and I see both cards and all three monitors, which means that Nvidia fully supports multi-gpus. :D
 
I was checking out the 6200's - they have 3 ports on the card, a DVI, s-video, and VGA. So I'd have to hook up one monitor say... VGA, and the other say... s-video then, right? Or could I just use a vga splitter or something?
 
CPTMuller said:
Neat, how much do the 6200's cost, and how do they work?
Click to expand...

When I bought mine I was trying to get a used one. But no one was offering any, ended up costing 78 bucks for a brand-new one. Could of been cheaper but I'm happy with it.

I bought the PCI version because I only have one PCI-E slot. But I have it setup so that my LCD is driven by the 7950GT PCI-E for gaming, and my side crts are on the 6200 PCI. How do they work? Just fine! Once you have the drivers installed, works perfectly. In fact I had the already had the drivers installed for my 7950GT before installing the 6200. I expected that I would have to re-install the drivers for both cards to work, but in fact it was just practically plug n play, didn't even have to re-install the drivers!

Platinum said:
I was checking out the 6200's - they have 3 ports on the card, a DVI, s-video, and VGA. So I'd have to hook up one monitor say... VGA, and the other say... s-video then, right? Or could I just use a vga splitter or something?
Click to expand...

Ya, you can just use a DVI to VGA adapter (infact I think the card comes with one, if not their cheap). So one monitor on VGA, the other on DVI with the adaptor. (unless your friend uses LCDs, then they could just use the DVI anyway)
 
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Yeah, I think he plans on using LCD's. He's going to have the monitors mounted in the front of the store and have a different menu on each screen. That way he can easily change the menu from the computer, or do whatever it is he wants. It's going to be cool, I can't wait to set it all up for him. Just have to make sure I get long enough cables to reach the monitors to where ever it is he wants the computer to be.

Any suggestions on what kind of parts I should get for this rig?
 
Platinum said:
[...]

Any suggestions on what kind of parts I should get for this rig?
Click to expand...

hmm just get cheap ones, won't take alot of power for powerpoint (eh)

Have a look around start making a list (mabe in another thread) and we'll help you improve it for your needs.

I just wanna show you, something I stumbled upon a while back: AV Manager it might be a more professional solution, oh wow it's expensive... Wouldn't recommend it, to pricey; but still cool :cool:
 
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