3 monitor's on a music studio. Best cheap configeration?

[electrodaddy]

Hi,

I am running a recording studio and am upgrading to 3 x analog TFT monitors. Will I encounter problems if I use the G550 with a cheaper PCI matrox card? Since my sound card is PCI based, will I get problems with the bandwidth??

many thanks,
Steve

[UtwigMU]

Unless you have a VIA chipset, which is notorious for PCI latency and conflicts, no.

I was running G400 SH and Millennium PCI with soundcard and NIC on PII 350@467 and didn't have any problems.

Consider that PCI card needs at least 8MB of RAM in order to power 1600x1200@32bit, so old Millennium, Mistique or Millennium II should do it, provided it has enough RAM.

If you don't need colour depth (do mostly text work, such as e-mail on 3d monitor), 2 or 4MB card should do it.

If you want hardware overlay, you'll need G200 PCI or G450 PCI.

The latter will also give you DVI and you'll be able to run 4-head.

[SpiralDragon]

first off what kind of HW do you have... especialy for the sound parts....

filling up your PCI with a VGA card may cause u some problems with the sound HW on the PCIs... OTH you could always get a P650 with the upgrade for 3 monitors (if you want to keep your rig silent) or you could go with a p750 if you are not so woried about the onboard fan.... with a good case and some sound supressors you could also reduce the sound from the box... but IMHO i would not go with the aproch of using an AGP card and a PCI card especialy if you have one of the better HiQuality sound cards with Multi I/O it could cause some latency problems when using it with profetional progarms from cubase and others....

/speculation mode on
if you are in no hury i would sugest you wait for the new mbds with PCI-Ex ... get an M card 16x (when and if they come out) or use the onboard VGA (which IIRC will suport dual out on the grantsdale chipset) and then you can add PCI M card and have all the extra oupts with no wories and i am sure by then we will be seeing the pro sound cards migrating to the PCI-Ex standard....
/speculation mode off

[Goc]

Or you could get an ATI IGP motherboard coupled with ATI 9600 and use their "magical" SURROUNDVIEW" technology...

[electrodaddy]

Thanks,

I have a pro sound card running lots of audio ins/outs so I want to keep the PCI bus free as poss.

Does the Matrox P650 run 3 x monitors? I was under the impression it was only capable of dual head operation.

Thanks,
Steve

[Kruzin]

There is an upgrade kit for P650 to allow it to run triple displays:

http://shopmatrox.com/usa/products/datasheet.asp?ID=436

[SpiralDragon]

Originally posted by electrodaddy
Thanks,

I have a pro sound card running lots of audio ins/outs so I want to keep the PCI bus free as poss

let me guse.. RME?