Quad Monitors

[Peter Arremann]

On Tuesday 13 September 2005 18:03, Brian D. McGrew wrote:
> I want to take four LCD flat panels and mount them in a square on the
> wall and run 1280x1024 across all four of them.  This would be 640x512
> on each screen using a Matrox card.
>
> Has anyone done this before?
Yes - quite often... financial markets require these setups - a few thousand 
dollar are nothing compared to the cost of a single mistake cause the wrong 
window was covered up :-)


> Is Matrox the best choice or do you recommend a different card?
I can recommend matrox on linux but only with their older G450/550 based 
cards. 
There are other options though. I would really recommend going with an appian 
card if you want to use only one slot. Other than that, you can run a dual 
head AGP card and you can also find dual head PCI cards - you can run i.e. 
one ATI AGP card and a GeForceFX PCI card. That's what I run at home.

If you want to spend a little more money, dual PCI Express cards will work 
well. Matrox also has a G550 with a PCI Express 1x. That way you can run 
multiple matrox cards without having to have a SLI cabable board. 


> What kind of 'usability' have you seen with this configuration?
Can't recommend it for working. The borders are annoying if you have anything 
that spans screens. If you have separate things, its hard to keep track on 
more than 2 screens if you run random apps. Dual 24" panels will be your 
better choice. If you want anything else, you can get cheap plasmas for the 
same cost of this setup with a VGA in. 

Also, run the panels at native resolution will give you much much better 
clarity of the picture. 

Peter.