hardware suggestions for 3 x 1920x1200 (triplehead) ?

[demonseed]

(I originally posted this in the misc. hardware board, but I think this board might be a better place for it - I apologize for posting twice)

Hello,

I am a FreeBSD user who has run a triple-monitor desktop for quite some time. I really like this environment. No games or 3d or even much video playback (although once in a while I do play a clip from the web or stick a DVD in, or run a TV tuner window, but very rarely).

Currently I am accomplishing this with a matrox p750 card, and three NEC 2080ux (20.1 inch 1600x1200) monitors. Obviously kind of a waste, since the p750 card downgrades itself to 1280x1024 with three monitors. Not much I can do about that.

Anyway, due to the very low price of the dell 2405 24" monitor, I am considering buying three of them. However, I do not wish to waste my pixels this time around.

So, what suggestions do you folks have for driving three 1920x1200 monitors at full resolution ? I would be happy to do matrox, but I am not wedded to them and will consider other hardware vendors. Further, because this is X and my stretched desktop does not depend on having all three monitors on one chip, it is possible for me to do multiple video cards as well.

One thought that comes to mind is a very fast modern 3d card for the center screen, and a matrox card capable of 2x 1920x1200 for the two side screens ? That would accomplish it with only two video cards. Obviously I would prefer to do it with just one. Will either of those two new matrox cards perform this ? Doesn't look like the QID can do 1920x1200 (even on one channel), but what about the APVe or the DL256 ?

One other consideration is, does 3x 1920x1200 @ 24bit exceed the bus bandwidth of AGP ? What about pci-express ?

Really, any and all suggestions are well taken - I don't really care much how it gets done, I just want 3 x 1920x1200 @ 24 bit, and if I can do that with 1 matrox card, wonderful. If I can do it with just two cards, great. Three cards ... getting a little sub-optimal...

thanks.

[demonseed]

one thing that I may not have made clear:

I run in stretched desktop mode - that is, all three monitors combine to give me one single large desktop...

Which is what I want to continue doing with the new screens / vid card(s).

[Wombat]

I'm not an expert, but I don't think you'll be able to do this with only two cards. I don't think any card out there has the TMDS bandwidth to drive two monitors at that resolution.

[Mikko]

According to this comparison chart, P750 supports Dual-DVI up to resolution 1920x1200:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/video/products/chart/gseries_pseries_parhelia.cfm

Maybe you should buy "Millennium P650 Low-Profile PCI" (for example) for your third monitor. You can't get TripleHead stretched mode across multiple cards in Windows, but it should work just fine in FreeBSD/Linux.

[demonseed]

That's odd...I could have sworn when I bought my p750 that the max resolution for one or two digital screens was 1600x1200 ... I bought it in mid 2003.

Have the specs changed ? Are there new revision cards out there ? Or am I just confused, and I can do 1920x1200 with my p750 ?

[demonseed]

ok I figured it out.

The p750 can support dual 1600x1200 digital, or dual 1920x1440 analog.

So instead of wasting pixels, I would be wasting the digital nature of the screens themselves.

So I guess a better version of my question is, what collection of hardware would allow me to do three _digitally connected_ screens @ 1920x1200 ?

[Mikko]

Look closely at the link I provided earlier:

Maximum resolutions (P750):
DualHead: Dual 1920 x 1440
Dual-DVI: Dual 1920 x 1200
TripleHead: Triple 1280 x 1024

Here is another chart:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/corp/products/pdf/comparison_enterprise.pdf

Personally I believe that 1920x1200 can only be achieved, if your monitor will support reduced blankings.

[demonseed]

What does "reduced blankings" mean ?

[Wombat]

That's the time allocated for the monitor to get ready for the next frame after it has processed the last one - the "blank" time between screen refreshes. Reduced blankings means that you take time away from this in order to have more data display time.