3-5 Display Output Card Recommendations

[PinkFloydEffect]

Hello, can anyone recommend a PCI-e card for under $200 that will support 3-5 digital video outputs that is stable for a work computer? No gaming, just browsing and monitoring.

I started looking into the Radeon RX 570-590 lineup but I read mixed reviews about the cards being overclocked and unstable. Can anyone clarify stability or another model?

If I have to just run 3 monitors off a PCI-e card I can always use a USB3.1 to HDMI/DVI adapter for the other 2 monitors I use for monitoring as those two displays are much less demanding. I need all 5 connected with digital connections though and running at 1920x1080 resolution.

Thanks!

 

[L&LD]

https://matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/

Not sure if your budget can be met with Matrox though? As far as stability? These are considered at the top.

 

[PinkFloydEffect]

Those seem out of the budget, they don't offer what I need anywhere close to $200

 

[L&LD]

Is that budget arbitrarily set for the performance you are expecting?

 

[RMerlin]

Anything above 3 monitors is considered niche, and won't be available within the budget you've established. You will have to consider buying two cards, or look at using USB3 adapters (which is the solution generally used by my customers who need 3-4 monitors).

 

[PinkFloydEffect]

The P1000 can be found around $200 on eBay so that's an option, and the RX580 looks perfect for what I need it for too.

I have been looking at another option as well, I currently run an Optiplex 990 MT at work with a 3.3GHz i5 and 16GB of RAM which does the job well and it has dual PCI-express slots but one is only wired for x4. I was wondering if two cheaper cards would work since I have dual slots...I would assume I can pull two 1080P resolution desktops on a x4 bus and three on the x16? However I do a lot of I/O transfers so the fact the 990 only has USB 2.0 is a huge issue...to the point I bought a PCI-express USB 3.1 card a few months back and have been running it in the x4 slot so I would need to upgrade the PC now if I planned on using dual cards.

The USB 3.1 card only has a single USB connector so I have a hub connected to it...the USB-to-HDMI adapters do not like the card/hub. A single HDMI converter gets glitchy sometimes, and when I connect a second HDMI adapter to the hub both screens become unstable and blink on and off so I literally have to drop their resolution from 1920x1080 to just 1280x1024. I am not sure if its the USB 3.1 card itself or a bandwidth restriction with only x4 channels on the secondary PCI-express bus. Both the HDMI converters are USB 3.0 and I specifically purchased a hub that was marketed as USB 3.1 (which was hard to find, they all seem to be marketed as 3.0) I am not sure there is any difference in wire quality or hub logic's between 3.0 and 3.1 I believe the 0.1 difference is all in the USB chipset itself. I assume however there IS a difference in wire quality/shielding or logic's between USB 2.0 and 3.0 right? I even made sure to get a 3.1 hub that supports external power to remove any variables, which I have connected to a 2A USB wall charger but it does not seem to make any difference because when I unplug the external power there is no change in stability (aka it does not get any worse or more unstable). However even with just one HDMI adapter plugged in the display gets completely unstable when I plug a USB 3.1 flash drive into the hub...any file transfers render the screen completely unusable. So I am basically trying way too hard to get these rigged solutions to work and its time to start at the core of the problem.

I did some research being happy with the Optiplex 990 MT over the years and came up with the Optiplex 7040 MT as a good replacement @ $300 on eBay without drives/OS but I can swap over my drives. This would give me six USB 3.0 ports and a 3.4GHz i7 processor with 8GB of RAM. The same setup applies to the 7040 MT with two PCI-express slots, one 16x and one 4x so I have the option of running a second video card for just two monitors...but with six USB 3.0 ports I might as well just try running the HDMI adapters I already own. The 7040 MT has onboard video with an HDMI and dual DP but historically I have never been able to run onboard video and a PCI-express card simultaneously, the card always disables onboard video unless this has changed? My current video card only supports two digital outputs and it will be hard enough trying to get my employer to approve the 7040 MT purchase so I need to use as much of my existing hardware as I can, I need to figure out if I can use all three of the 7040's onboard digital outputs simultaneously (1x HDMI / 2x DP). If I can use all three I will not bother trying to run a PCI-express card at all, and just try the two USB-to-HDMI adapters with onboard video. This link claims it natively supports three digital onboard outputs: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/optiplex-7040-desktop

 

[RMerlin]

The P1000 can be found around $200 on eBay so that's an option

Older/used Quadro cards might indeed be an option, however they are generally limited to four video outputs in that price range. It might also be running short on video RAM if you intend to run any intensive workload on these.

 

[PinkFloydEffect]

Older/used Quadro cards might indeed be an option, however they are generally limited to four video outputs in that price range. It might also be running short on video RAM if you intend to run any intensive workload on these.

Hmm, maybe a standard 3-output card and two USB adapters will work better. Nothing resource demanding will be happening on this machine, low frame rate work mostly monitoring graphs that update every 5min. Only one screen may play video from time to time. I am going to start with onboard video on a 7040 MT and go from there.

 

[RMerlin]

Hmm, maybe a standard 3-output card and two USB adapters will work better. Nothing resource demanding will be happening on this machine, low frame rate work mostly monitoring graphs that update every 5min. Only one screen may play video from time to time. I am going to start with onboard video on a 7040 MT and go from there.

Or if you can find an older Quadro on the cheap with four output, you will only need to add one single USB adapter. Or if your CPU has a built-in video (like a typical Intel i7), then use the on-board video for one display, and the Quadro for the remaining four.

Or onboard + USB + basic card with three outputs (double check that the card supports simultaneous outputs on all three, sometimes two of the outputs are shared).

 

[PinkFloydEffect]

Or if you can find an older Quadro on the cheap with four output, you will only need to add one single USB adapter. Or if your CPU has a built-in video (like a typical Intel i7), then use the on-board video for one display, and the Quadro for the remaining four.

Or onboard + USB + basic card with three outputs (double check that the card supports simultaneous outputs on all three, sometimes two of the outputs are shared).

The issue with the USB adapters is that the saturation/colors look slightly different than a card or onboard so being that I have a row of 2 monitors up high and a row of 3 down low means I need the quality of the rows to match. So I would prefer run the top monitors both on USB, and the bottom row all off the same GPU. Seeing how the 7040 MT supports onboard video simultaneously with a PCIe card in use means I can run all 3 of my bottom row onboard, and my top two on a cheap PCIe. Onboard has two DP and one HDMI, says it supports all 3 simultaneously as well so the output quality should match.

 

[PeterT]

Could you use Display port multi chaining?

See https://www.dell.com/support/articl...isplayport-multi-stream-transport-mst?lang=en or https://www.displayport.org/cables/driving-multiple-displays-from-a-single-displayport-output/

 

[PinkFloydEffect]

Could you use Display port multi chaining?

See https://www.dell.com/support/articl...isplayport-multi-stream-transport-mst?lang=en or https://www.displayport.org/cables/driving-multiple-displays-from-a-single-displayport-output/

We already covered this in this thread...no Display Port.