Recommendation for Multiple Monitor System?

[Tearren]

Hey,

I am going to be upgrading to a multiple montior system in the near future. I am looking to buy four (4) 19" flat panel monitors. Someone suggested I use a PCI Colorgrapic card (Xentera GT 4 Part #612514). I know very little about LCD monitors. Are there any suggestions you may have for monitors and/or cards to use? Anything I should watch out for?

Are these any good?

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Dell-UltraSharp-1905FP-19-Flat-Panel-LCD-Monitor_W0QQitemZ8739...QQcmdZViewItem

Thanks in advance,
Tearren

[Tearren]

<Bump>

[Faustus]

I've never done more then 2 so I'm not sure where to start.

When you get your hardware all purchased and setup though I have a suggestion for you software wise.

Ultramon. After 24 hours you will not want to live without it.


I will also add that the Dell LCDs seem to be pretty well recieved by just about everyone and I know the 20" wide screen looks like a dream.

[JSB1]

Are these any good?

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Dell-UltraSharp-1905FP-19-Flat-Panel-LCD-Monitor_W0QQitemZ8739...QQcmdZViewItem

Thanks in advance,
Tearren

My mom got a Dell 19" UltraSharp.... It looked kinda... grainy, almost to sharp. Then I intalled M$ Cleartype and life was all good. It is a very nice monitor. Just for reference I use a Viewsonic 21" at work and a 19" Dell branded Trinitron at home.

BTW I got a "SlickDeal" for that UltraSharp for like $325 shipped.... from Dell. Good luck on your E-bay auction.

JSB

[ViRaL1]

The big question is, what are you going to be using the monitors for? If it's just general business stuff, Matrox has some decent multi-monitor cards. Or you can always go the SLI route and get two PCI-Express cards that run dual monitors.

Here are some options and , albeit rather expensive ones. You can also buy a multiple arm LCD mount and provide your own LCDs. DELL usually has some pretty good deals on LCDs if you look around on the web.

[Tearren]

Wow, thanks for the responses and great info. Ultramon looks like a really useful program, I have 2 CRT monitors now and am going to try it out. The mirror bar seems fantastic. Its really frustrating having to scroll across 2 monitors to switch programs. I'm not much of an alt-taber.

I would use the monitors mainly for general business application. I was looking at the Colorgrapic Xentera, b/c I wanted one central point to run everything through.

Are the LCD montiors the, displays where you have to worry about "bad pixels" burning out or turning green? This would be something I would want to avoid. A few years ago, when I was looking at flat screens, I remember this being a problem. I think there where some manufaturer's to avoid, b/c they had an acceptable number of "bad pixels" as a standard before they would accept a product for return?

Thanks,
Tearren

[thevoelk]

NOt all flat panels are the same, and I would second the Dell Flat Panels. I'm not sure now, but they used to be made by Samsung. I have one that's over 4 years old (1702FP) that work let me have for free. It's not the prettiest, but haven't had one issue with it. I will say this, if you see one on some ad that shows it being much cheaper than the rest of the equivalent sizes, there is probably a reason, such as the fact the thing is probably a piece of shit.

I think the industry standard is 6 dead pixels, it probably varies by one or two each way for manufacturers. If you only have one dead pixel, gently massage the area the dead pixel is on and you may get it to come back to life (for a lack of better term).

[rallynavvie]

We have loads of 1905FPs at work (Dell 19" LCDs) for layout design and they're OK. We also have a few 19" Sony LCDs which look about the same as the Dells. However we still have big 21" FD Trinitron CRTs for the color-critical design applications since I'm still not pleased with the color spaces you can set up for LCDs. Maybe that new tech that delivers better blacks from an LCD will remedy that.

As for the card I've never worked with anything that has that many outputs on a single card. Personally I wouldn't want to load a card down with that, though I'm sure such a piece of hardware cost a small fortune. If it doesn't I don't think I'd trust it. I'd use multiple graphics cards.

The caveat to using an SLI system for this is that you aren't running SLI, you're running two PCI-E video cards in tandem. I haven't heard yet of anyone trying to run the two cards in an SLI machine as seperate entities or if SLI does allow for using them independently. I guess you'd need to research that first. However at least with that option you'd have a very wide range of video cards to choose from so you can choose the quality/cost you want and get two.