Sorry if I have missed something obvious, but I have been all over the Internet for a day and a half now and can't find anything that talks about this (perhaps because my google terms are not on the mark).

A department in my organization wants to run 4 large (50+") lcd screens, closely arranged in a large square, off a single computer with a video card that would allow the department to either see the screens as one large super-screen, or as 4 separate screens showing different applications.

Does anyone know if this is currently possible and where one might go to start planning for setting up such a system?

Assuming you will be running the displays at 1920 x 1200 ( 1080p) or below, you should be able to do this with two of any mid to high end graphics cards.

For instance a mid-range card like the 8800 GT can easily drive two displays, put two of them in the box. The key for all of this is the drivers, and Nvidia seems to be more than able to do this.

Or if you want more speed two 8800 GTS cards, or if you have an unlimited budget, you can go with two nvidia Fx 5600 cards.

The mac pro can also run quite a few displays, eight I believe.
Check out the apple site's, Mac Pro graphics page, for a screen shot.

You didn't say if the apps were Mac, XP, or Vista. That would obviously influence your choice.

Thanks for your reply flgomer, I have to assume that for now the applications would run under XP though Vista would not be out of the question. So from what you are saying, it wouldn't be necessary to purchase third-party software? If we were to use LCD's, would Samsung TV's be the best option? Or does Samsung offer 50+-inch vanilla monitors that don't have the TV tuners etc built in?

Thanks for your reply flgomer, I have to assume that for now the applications would run under XP though Vista would not be out of the question. So from what you are saying, it wouldn't be necessary to purchase third-party software? If we were to use LCD's, would Samsung TV's be the best option? Or does Samsung offer 50+-inch vanilla monitors that don't have the TV tuners etc built in?

I am going to jump in. I don't think the the signal goes through a tv tuner but through a HDMI Computer port. Some tv's allow for pc input (which might be VGA) others would need a DVI-HDMI adapater that plug right into the TV. I am not sure anything else is needed. I agree with flgomer, that a Mac Pro can handle this. I am not sure how to setup XP or VISTA running 4 monitors. But boy that would make a great home system!

The three cards I talked about above ( 8800 gt, 8800 gts, Fx5600 ) all have two DVI outs each. Pick up 4 DVI - HDMI cables ( cue the link to MonoPrice.com ) and use them as your cables to the tv's.

The TV's I am assuming are HDTV with at least one HDMI input that does "just scan". For instance my Samsung LNT4081, has one of its hdmi ports identified as the port that you use if you are going to hook up a pc. Most of the current LCD's do this.

This will give you the basic ability to do what you want. How fancy your displays get and what is on them is up to your application. The video drivers for the cards allow you to say if you want a different desktop for each display, the desktop's mirrored, etc.

If you want to do stuff like move your app's display from screen to screen in sequence, then you have a different problem. Let your app developer deal with that. <grin>

As to what monitor to use. 53 inch computer monitors are expensive. I have not done the numbers, because it depends on your sources, but picking up 4 Sony LCD's, or Samsung LCD's would be in the same ballpark. I am not sure that you need the top end tv's, because all you are doing is running them as PC monitors. Sounds like a shopping spree coming up to me. <grin>

And oh yes, one more thing. <grin>

It would probably be best for you to get with whomever builds PC's for your company and talk about the system. There will be power supply requirements that you will need to take into consideration when building a high end system. A pre-built box ordered from vendors like HP, or Dell ( XPS 720 H2C for example ), or Apple (Mac Pro) would probably be the best approach.

They will have already solved any cooling or power issues you would have.

Thanks! It does look a bit of a shopping spree. The department involved doesn't mind spending the money for 4 large Samsung screens and a Dell and the 8800's (they might balk at the $3000 cost of the FX 5600). But I certainly don't want to be responsible for putting together a system like that and have it either 1) not work or 2) overheat and blow up after a short amount of time. Parallel to my inquiry here, I contacted this company called "CineMassive" and asked them for a quote for putting together a system like this. However, I am assuming the quote will be much, much more expensive than if our IT department just assembles the correct components.

I guess Apple again beats PC when it comes to multiple monitors, but this system is going to be used to train people to use software that is PC-based, and it seems a little kludgey to me if we try to set up a Mac Pro to run like a PC while showing multiple monitors...

I really don't understand these video cards. The 8800 gt and gts appear to be around $300 while the FX 5600 appears to cost around $3000. Reading about the FX 5600, it seems to be geared toward 3-D rendering. Is that a capability that really wouldn't be that useful for simply directing PC output to monitors?

Check out the Panasonic Professional models. I'm pretty sure they can do this. Possibly without any special video card.

It own a IT firm and I would recommend you stay away from most of the cards mentioned here for your application. The Geforce series of cards are designed for running 2 monitors and gaming and they do both very well, but they are not good for running 4 monitors. You NEED a card designed for running 4 monitors. My techs build custom systems for clients looking to run 4 monitors for QCharts. We always use a PNY Nvidia Quadro NVS 440 card. It's a good entry level 4 head card, and can be had for about $400. These cards are meant to run four monitors and do it well. We have used 2-2 head cards in the past and alway ran into problems ranging from stability to just not being able to get it to do what you want. Matrox also makes good 4 head cards.

Thanks Dan and djPositive - our Dell representatives also recommended 3 possible quad type cards from Nvidia -- with 256, 512, and 768 memory options. Dan, if these aren't going to be used for hard core stuff like rendering, will the memory make much difference?

I will take a look at the Panasonic Professional models and try to figure out how they work...

You want to look at commercial plasmas from Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung or NEC. All have this capability. There are also third party boxes and software to do this. Do not try to do this with consumer level stuff, its just not designed for it. Plus, the commercial panels are designed with small bezels that will minimize the 'seams' between the panels. If you ysed consumer LCDs or plasmas, you would never have a decent looking 2x4 display used as one large display.

Google for 'digital signage' or 'video wall' something like that. This is a very common application. There are probably several companies near you that specialize in this type of thing.

It seems to me that it would be cheaper and easier to set up a front projector for 100"+ screen and simply resize the images as needed to either be full sized or 2-4 smaller boxes because that's pretty much what you'd be doing anyway.

guity, as long as you are not doing any hardcore 3d stuff you will not notice much performance difference in the memory, so go with the 256MB card.

Alimentall, that's exactly what I thought at first, but it turns out this department is geting the projection screen for the wall that the trainees' seats face, while the screens will be on the wall to the side.


Fletch, great point about the small bezels. My hands might be tied in that respect however, because the end-users seem dead-set on LCD's. I will try to find out if there is any over-riding reason for that. (Maybe they need extra screen-brightness or they are worried about screen burn-in.)

Dan, thanks, that is what I hoped.

Check out the Panasonic Professional models. I'm pretty sure they can do this. Possibly without any special video card.

I was going to mention the same thing - I have the 42" commercial model (10UK), and I remember seeing in the manual built-in support for multiple grid setups - I don't remember which actual configurations, but like 3x3, 2x2, etc. - no need for a PC in this case, to display spanned across the monitors, but not sure about switching between grid and individual mode.

Thanks! It does look a bit of a shopping spree. The department involved doesn't mind spending the money for 4 large Samsung screens and a Dell and the 8800's (they might balk at the $3000 cost of the FX 5600). But I certainly don't want to be responsible for putting together a system like that and have it either 1) not work or 2) overheat and blow up after a short amount of time. Parallel to my inquiry here, I contacted this company called "CineMassive" and asked them for a quote for putting together a system like this. However, I am assuming the quote will be much, much more expensive than if our IT department just assembles the correct components.

I guess Apple again beats PC when it comes to multiple monitors, but this system is going to be used to train people to use software that is PC-based, and it seems a little kludgey to me if we try to set up a Mac Pro to run like a PC while showing multiple monitors...

I really don't understand these video cards. The 8800 gt and gts appear to be around $300 while the FX 5600 appears to cost around $3000. Reading about the FX 5600, it seems to be geared toward 3-D rendering. Is that a capability that really wouldn't be that useful for simply directing PC output to monitors?

You don't need high end video cards to be able to drive LCD TVs IF you don't care about 3d rendering.

I'm writing this message from my office machine which is a Dell Dimension 9150. It's equipped with a Radeon X800 XL PCI Express card which has two DVI outs and a PCI Radeon 9100 card with one DVI and one VGA out. I power three screens from the current system. My main screen is a Sharp 46D64U LCD (46" 1080p model) connected via a HDMI to DVI cable (MonoPrice) to one of the X800 outputs. This screen is flanked on both sides by Dell 24" LCDs rotated to portrait mode, one connected via DVI to the X800 and another to the Radeon 9100.

Once the displays are detected by Windows XP (or Vista), you just use the Display control panel to activate each one, set the resolution independently and then place them relative to each other. I've attached a screenshot of my Display control panel to this message.

The trick to getting the video cards to play nice together is to make sure you use video cards from the same core chip manufacturer AND which all use one driver series. In my case, my two cards use the ATI Catalyst drivers (even through technically they are from two different OEM vendors). Mixing cards from different manufactures and with differing drivers is an invitation for trouble.

I would stick to LCDs if I were you because 1080p ones tend to have the 1:1 pixel mapping mode REQUIRED to get sharp text and will cost less than a 1080p Plasma. In 1:1 pixel mapping mode, overscan is disabled and the LCD acts like a monitor rather than a TV. On the Sharp 64U series LCD, I hit the View Mode button on the remote to switch to Dot by Dot mode (1:1 pixel mapping) and it's perfect doing 1920x1080@60Hz.

Since I was never really concerned with 3d rendering on my system, I went with solid ATI based cards. You should probably take a look at the ATI X1600 series, X1900 series, HD 2400 series, and HD 2600 series cards. The nice thing about many of the ATI boards is that they have twin Dual-Link DVI outputs. Meaning with two of them you can drive 4 of the high res Dell 30" LCDs (2560x1600), but more importantly their is an independent TDMS chip for each DVI port so you can run each at high res. Some of the older twin DVI out boards used one TDMS for two ports meaning one of them would be high res but the second got stuck at low res. The twin Dual-Link DVI ATI boards can be had for less than $100 each.

The other thing to worry about is video. If you need to run multiple hardware accelerated video clips in different windows on different monitors, you'll need multiple monitor overlay support. This can get dicey unless you have a professionally multi-monitor card such as the Nvidia NVS and Matrox cards. On my setup, I can run two overlays simultaneously, one per card. You can test this with VLC's video wall feature.

Finally, if you want to use a pair of cards to drive the 4 monitors and are planning on PCI Express video cards, they are pretty much universally x16 lane cards. So the motherboard of whatever PC you choose must have two x16 slots. Most PC motherboards only have one x16 lane slot, but thanks to dual video card gaming, there are quite a few board available with two x16 slots. Check out the Dell Precision T3400 line which offers two PCI Express x16 slots as well as a beefed up power supply (in case you need a pair of high power 3d rendering graphics cards.) And those Precisions also have standard options for a pair of Nvidia Dual DVI cards for your four monitors. A pair of Nvidia NVS 290's is only a $80 upgrade over the single one. And a pair of FX570s only costs $280 over the base config of one NVS 290.

Your best bet is a panasonic 50" pro model th50ph10uk. Its what I've got and it really cheap besides being a great plasma. All the other pro models from samsung and pioneer are way more money and just not worth it. It does 1:1 mapping so you can use its native resolution with what your doing to get the best picture possible. I think you can use six or more of them at once to create a giant display and it's really easy to do and all you would need is one video card instead of many. The price is a little of over a thousand bucks a piece from visual apex site sponsor above. I know it's not lcd but you shouldnt have any problems with burn in as long as your job doesn't leave them on over night, even them they wont burn in but it's just a precaution.

I wanted to thank you guys again for all the helpful information you provided: most recently gr689, and especially Telamon, who wrote down a lot of detailed useful advice.

When it was all said and done, it seems to have been the end user department that backed down from its original intent, rather than a technical inability to give them what they wanted. They were trying to win a large training contract and I guess they envisioned gaining a wow-factor advantage with a set-up like this, but I guess they had to re-arrange their plans...

Thanks again to all!