Looking for yet another Quad Video Card

[Jabba]

So far I have bought the following quad output video cards.

Matrox 200MMS (£420) 1997 2D performance only...totally CRAP but the only choice at the time.

Xentera GT4 AGP...(£450) Excellent card...good 3D performance and can run at 1600x1200 DVI...absolutely perfect for me....one problem...the first one I had lasted about one month...then the output to monitor four failed...colorgraphic sent me a new card...that lasted about two days...before monitors one and two failed....

No idea what is causing the cards to fail...maybe the overclocking from 3.4 ghz to 4.02 ???? maybe a faulty PSU ??? anyway...I am without a main system yet again....

The only other decent card I have seen is the Parhelia HR256 from matrox....£1425.00 though for a graphics card...that needs some serious research before a purchase...

Have anyone got any ideas on two separate graphic cards with dual DVI outputs on the same system...I guess one would have to be AGP the other PCI...or would two PCI cards be better ??

I know XP supports multiple video cards for multiple monitors...but sadly I can find no information on anyone that runs such a system and what performance you could expect from such a configuration....

Any ideas and advice please ???

[cho_888]

i don't know heaps about this, i have an old dual screen matrox card and dad has a matrox dual head 750, which dose three monitors. We havn't had anyproblems with any of them. Never had a screen drop out. what i do know is that the knew range of procesors coming out have the same processing power but with new technology are made faster or something along the lines of that. i am not much help but its a start. how much power do you need?

[Jabba]

2 matrox parhelia's, 1 on agp 1 on pci

Or like i said before, 2 pc's :P

If it would work for sure then its something I am going to consider...

Two PC's....noooooo...think of me loosing that lovely big wallpaper.

[Jabba]

i don't know heaps about this, i have an old dual screen matrox card and dad has a matrox dual head 750, which dose three monitors. We havn't had anyproblems with any of them. Never had a screen drop out. what i do know is that the knew range of procesors coming out have the same processing power but with new technology are made faster or something along the lines of that. i am not much help but its a start. how much power do you need?

Not much power...but the only matrox cards (except for the £1400 one) that offer quad output dont have any 3D performance at all....and are a real bottle neck in the system...as in the previous G200MMS one I used to use.

[cho_888]

but then again, you need to ask yourself do you need 4 screens? i get asked the question about my 2 and i always say yes, i cant live with out two now!!!! i feel cramped with out it. mm i guess what you want dosnt exist. lol yet. someone will find something i bet

[Jabba]

Yes I love four screens....once you have four screens..you cant go back...I use one now for my CCTV programme...so its even more important for me to retain all four.

[cho_888]

i think you need to talk to the produces of the movie sword fish....

[Jabba]

Well I have had it working great...just as I want.....as I am sure you have seen in my recent system pictures....this is something I cant understand though...I cant believe two cards would fail like that....anyway I have sent them back for testing...and hopefully they will be able to tell me what is causing this to happen.

[cho_888]

Matrox G450 mms

With more than 25 years of industry experience, Matrox is an established technology leader of business solutions and dominates over 70% of the premium financial multi-monitor market. The Matrox G450 X2 and X4 Multi-Monitor Series (MMS), with the smallest four-chip graphics accelerator, represents the newest addition to the MMS line of products. the Matrox G450 X2 and X4 MMS offer outstanding multi-monitor support and unparalleled image quality to the financial, medical and industrial markets.

Key features:
Multiple MGA-G450 graphics chip
32 MB DDR memory per output
360 MHz integrated RAMDAC per G450 chip
Ultra-compact board design
Multiple cards supported in same system
Maximum analog resolution per output: 2048 x 1536 24bpp@85 Hz
Maximum digital resolution per channel 1280 x 1024**
High-quality connectors and cables
Multi TV Out capability*
Unified Microsoft certified drivers
FCC, CE, CSA, VCCI certifications
3-year warranty


is this less that you want, our do you want abetter resolution?
i hope they give you another card, and quickly cause it looks cool

[cho_888]

or

Powering four analog or digital displays from a single chip with full OpenGL® acceleration

The Matrox Quad Information Display (QID) Pro display controller brings unprecedented multi-display capabilities to mission-critical environments such as military data walls, simulation and public safety answering points, with support for four analog or digital displays from a single chip. It is also an ideal graphics platform for servers, bringing increased efficiency to IT managers by enabling them to see and work with more information at once across several displays when controlling multiple servers from a single system.

A single-slot PCI solution, the Matrox QID Pro is highly scalable as it can be run alongside other specialized AGP or PCI Matrox display controllers in order to power an extensive amount of displays from a single workstation. What's more, it is fully compatible with the PCI Express architecture. The Matrox QID Pro exhibits trademark Matrox image quality and outstanding stability.


they says its used in the army lol. but no specs

http://www.matrox.com/mga/archive_story/apr2004/media/qid_pro_2x2_small.jpg

to buy it you have to call some number

[Jabba]

Matrox G450 mms

With more than 25 years of industry experience, Matrox is an established technology leader of business solutions and dominates over 70% of the premium financial multi-monitor market. The Matrox G450 X2 and X4 Multi-Monitor Series (MMS), with the smallest four-chip graphics accelerator, represents the newest addition to the MMS line of products. the Matrox G450 X2 and X4 MMS offer outstanding multi-monitor support and unparalleled image quality to the financial, medical and industrial markets.

Key features:
Multiple MGA-G450 graphics chip
32 MB DDR memory per output
360 MHz integrated RAMDAC per G450 chip
Ultra-compact board design
Multiple cards supported in same system
Maximum analog resolution per output: 2048 x 1536 24bpp@85 Hz
Maximum digital resolution per channel 1280 x 1024**
High-quality connectors and cables
Multi TV Out capability*
Unified Microsoft certified drivers
FCC, CE, CSA, VCCI certifications
3-year warranty


is this less that you want, our do you want abetter resolution?
i hope they give you another card, and quickly cause it looks cool

That is like the last Matrox card I had...no 3D Support and doesnt run at 1600x1200 DVI that I use.

[Jabba]

or

Powering four analog or digital displays from a single chip with full OpenGL® acceleration

The Matrox Quad Information Display (QID) Pro display controller brings unprecedented multi-display capabilities to mission-critical environments such as military data walls, simulation and public safety answering points, with support for four analog or digital displays from a single chip. It is also an ideal graphics platform for servers, bringing increased efficiency to IT managers by enabling them to see and work with more information at once across several displays when controlling multiple servers from a single system.

A single-slot PCI solution, the Matrox QID Pro is highly scalable as it can be run alongside other specialized AGP or PCI Matrox display controllers in order to power an extensive amount of displays from a single workstation. What's more, it is fully compatible with the PCI Express architecture. The Matrox QID Pro exhibits trademark Matrox image quality and outstanding stability.


they says its used in the army lol. but no specs

http://www.matrox.com/mga/archive_story/apr2004/media/qid_pro_2x2_small.jpg

to buy it you have to call some number

I wonder if that is the £1,000 + model

http://shopmatrox.com/europe/home.asp?currencyid=3&cid=224

[cho_888]

nope thats this http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/p_hr256/home.cfm

that other one must be insain!!!!

[evoWalo]

Jabs what does the other 3 monitors do? I think the new Pentium 4 motherboards with PCI-X slots can handle multiple PCI-X video cards. Look up video cards based on NVidia's 6800 or ATI X800 that should have dual DVI ports each. As for displays...

http://images.apple.com/displays/images/specstop06282004.jpg

Specs can be found at http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html fpr the 20", 22" and 30" models and it works with Windows XP.

[Jabba]

Ahhh...I hope we are not all getting confused...I already have the system...and a great graphics card...just that it only lasted one month...
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/802.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/803.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/804.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/805.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/806.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/807.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/808.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/809.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/810.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/811.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/812.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/813.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/814.JPG
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/900.jpg
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/901.jpg
http://www.supercarshowdown.co.uk/swordfish/902.jpg

[cho_888]

hahah the backgrounds are sooo cool. it jsut stuffs up heaps yeah i have hte one with the trees and the river. you should send me some of your lambo and 355 shot so i can make some. well wait till it comes back and if it works keep it, if it faulters again. go nuts.

[evoWalo]

In that case then get a couple of PCI-X based video cards from NVidia or ATI. :)

[Jabba]

Yeh as soon as everything is working again....I will take you up on your offer for come custom wallpapers.

[Jabba]

In that case then get a couple of PCI-X based video cards from NVidia or ATI. :)

Chuck me up a few models for me to investigate....

[nthfinity]

i dont know anybody besides you who is running 4 monitors... but quite a few for 2 monitors... as i have done many times.

the only problem i know about the recomended nvidia, or ati solutions people recomend is that to my knowlege, none offer dual dvi outputs, but rather one dvi, and one vga per card.

a vga--->dvi converter is roughly 25$ in the us... but i doubt the quality would be as good as your looking for

[Jabba]

Nope...or even used to have....

[SFDMALEX]

Jabba are you sure your PCI/AGP speeds are locked at 66/33? Its weird that your cards fry...

[Jabba]

Jabba are you sure your PCI/AGP speeds are locked at 66/33? Its weird that your cards fry...

Thanks for that advice...its something that I can check.

[abbor]

PCI graphics cards they are just coming out and are better then the agp cards. though you need to have a pc that supports pci cards.


every pc supports pci-cards, is it for real that graphic cards for pci can seriously be better than AGP.. I doubt it!

[jon_s]

Jabba, could the AGP voltage be the cause of your problems? Perhaps getting a hardware monitor to keep an eye on it would be wise.

[Jabba]

Yep....I am gonna mention this to them tommorow...

[Jabba]

I now have the answer to why the cards are failing.

The cards have been closely examined and it would seem that there is either water droplets / condensation leaking onto them from my vapochil cooling system...it looks like both cards are un-repairable and I will have to pay over £600 to replace them (my original card plus the replacement)

I am still in a state of shock and feel absolutely sick.

[SFDMALEX]

Oh man, thats not good. :? You should make your PC builders pay for the damage mate. If its their system leaking they should pay for the damage. I know they wont initialy but once you say the word "sue" "lawyer" they will.

[Jabba]

I hope it doesnt come to anywhere near that...as I have always told everyone how great they are.