How to use 4 monitors from one PC

Question

I have a total of 4 monitors in my house, I require all of them as I program and need a lot of screens for different classes.

I'm getting myself a dedicated graphics card but it only has 3 ports. I know I can enable a setting in the BIOS that allows both the graphics card and on-board graphics to work at the same time.

My motherboard has 3 display connectors (HDMI, VGA and DVI). Will the graphics card still do every thing it should (increase rendering speed/frames on games) regardless on what screen it's connected to?

I really want to use the 4th screen as it will come in handy, but I have to plug one connector into the motherboard, will this affect performance at all?

Solution 1

Short and simple answer: this is a bad scenario. Technically it should work flawlessly, but most times one card will disable the other. It depends on Motherboard and graphic card's model

The proper way to do so is to get a graphics card that supports 4 monitors. VGA/HDMI/DVI will need 4 physical outputs, however, display port supports multiple monitors per connection. The driver behaviour depends on operative system, but unless you have nVidia Optimus technology using both cards is not an easy bet outside Windows.

In my own experience, MOST GRAPHIC CARDS WILL DISABLE ONBOARD GRAPHICS when used. Without further details like motherboard, driver version or graphics card it is hard to give you an answer.

Those are the cheapest 4 monitor video card I could find. I know nVidia, so I didn't even look other brands.

• 4 monitor graphics card, 150 $ - 2x HDMI, 2x DVI
• 4 monitor - 5 port graphics card, 200 $ - 1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort, 1x VGA

If you plan to get a new card, double check it, because there are nvidia 750 versions which only support 3 monitors, so it can be a bit tricky ;)

Also keep in mind that usually, if you buy a card with 2 hdmi, 1 vga and 1 dvi it will not allow you to use vga and dvi at the same time, being a 3 monitor card with 4 different ports!!!

Another option, as I pointed before, is using a single displayport port for multiple monitors, however, it has to be supported by the GPU, which is a more common feature in ATI cards. The downside is that you need an external device that splits your single port into multiple. This is an example:

1 to 3 DisplayPort splitter 140$. StarTech is not a cheap brand, you can surely find it cheaper, however, as you can see, those are expensive devices.

Regarding your specific question: It completly depends on: Motherboard model, Operative System and driver used.

Solution 2

Most ATI cards will support up to 6 monitors through display port, you would just need the adapter to split the connections. I have been thinking of getting a 4 monitor setup and was eyeing up a RX580 to drive them for decently cheap.

Edit apparently I can't comment on responses yet, but nVidia drivers only allow for 3 monitors per card regardless of physical connections, with the occasional exception of their Quadro line. If you want four monitors with one card on a budget, you'll have to go ATI.

Solution 3

I have something similar set up with 3 monitors: I have 2 monitors connected to an NVIDIA GTX 460 GPU (which only supports 2 displays) and a third connected to my onboard Intel HD Graphic 4600 GPU. I've not noticed any performance issues between displays, but the motherboard does have an Intel Z87 chipset which allows me to enable both GPUs. Whether or not you can do this depends on your specific chipset and CPU configuration.

Comments

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

I can tell you that on Linux the graphics card does the rendering and then dumps in into the on-board's buffer. Which shocked the hell out of me the first time I tried it.

[DGoiko]

Ignacio even with latest linux kernels and propietary drivers properly installed? I think it doesnt anymore, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

@DGoiko: Dunno about the proprietary drivers; I run radeon which does everything I could need.

[jaco]

GV-N105TG1-4GD vs GV-N105TOC-4GD the 3 displays one is just cheaper but i guess i gota go with the GV-N105TG1-4GD

[DGoiko]

@jaco remember that your motherboard may support dual graphics card, in which case it may be enough with 3 monitors on the cheaper GPU and one in the motherboard. You can check your motherboard to see if it's chipset supports this, or plug a cheap gpu you have laying around and see if both work at the same time. Keep in mind that your motherboard may not support resolutions as high as your GPU does, so some window layouts may become problematic (some poorly coded software could not resize/redraw properly after being drag from one window to another).

[DGoiko]

@jaco as someone else pointed out, there are cheap ATI cards which support up to 6x monitors per displayport port, but the 1 to 4 display port splitters are not cheap, here startech.com/AV/Displayport-Converters/… a 1 to 3 splitter is 140 $