Paul wrote:

t wrote:

A user in our office has a Dell Optiplex 790 Mini Tower with two 22 inch
Dell monitors and wants an additional 22 inch Dell monitor.

We got a VisionTek Radeon 5450 SFF 1GB DDR3 3M (DVI-I, DP, VGA) graphic
card from another office, which had a spare graphic card, for another of
our users a while ago who needed a third monitor. That user mentioned
that he
saw some freezes, then a message that your graphic card recovered from a
serious error. The user does not lose any files/data but that message
scares him when his three monitors go blank for 2-3 seconds.
Two of the monitors are Dell 22 inch monitors and third one was a HP 22
inch monitor.
I checked his computer, he had the latest driver updates for Radeon
5450, firmware updates for his Optiplex 790. I also ran anti-virus,
malware scans and the computer was clean.

The user who needs an additional monitor now and the other user who got
the Radeon 5450 SFF 1GB DDR3 3M (DVI-I, DP, VGA) graphic card few months
ago have Dell Optiplex 790 Mini Tower.

Both users are typical office users who have Outlook, Excel, Word and
web browsers open most of the time.

1. Can getting a Gigabyte GV-N730D5-2GI (rev. 2.0) graphics card - GF GT
730 https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Ca...-2GI-rev-20#ov be a
better option to
avoid the freezes and other issues, the first user was facing who had
Radeon 5450 SFF 1GB DDR3 3M?

2. Or, would any other graphic card work better for such usage?

Any advice would be appreciated.

What you could be seeing is a "VPU recover".

That's where there is a watchdog timer on graphics,
that detects if the video card stops responding. The
system can then reset the card and reload it. The idea
behind this was specifically so system state would not
be affected.

Before this improvement, if a video card froze up, so did
your session, and then it was reboot time. You're trading
a black screen for a second or two, versus needing a reboot.

This could be a hardware issue or a driver issue. I would
normally blame the driver.

*******

You could try mixing video solutions. It's hard to say
why the VPU recover was happening in the first place.
Like, one ATI card, one NVidia card, three monitors.
Two drivers.

*******

The 790 MT accepts full height cards. This doc doesn't mention
length. The power supply is only 265W. One slot is x16,
one slot is x4. The x4 slot probably won't have room
for a double-width card.

http://clascsg.uconn.edu/download/specs/O790.pdf

Your 5450 would be a good card from a power perspective,
as it's only 15W flat out or so. If the card was passively
cooled and in the lower slot, I suppose it could
overheat. But the user probably isn't gaming, so it
should be drawing around 3W or so idle.

*******

There are a few ways to do this.

1) Look for a $$$ Matrox or similar, one that could drive
four monitors from its two onboard GPU chips. These are
generally gutless cards, used for stock trading display.
The monitors can have any orientation you want in the
display control panel. I think PNY may have made some
dual NVidia quad display cards like this too.

2) Do what you've done already. Use two video cards. Each
card supports dual head. Giving enough drive for four
monitors, and your user is using three. The only problem
I've had with this concept, is if using two identical video
cards, windows will suddenly decide to "swap" the role of
the cards, screwing up the display control panel orientation
of monitors. If the cards were different brands, it might
not do that (swap Nvidia for ATI).

3) Another solution is Eyefinity. Normally video cards
are dual head (three connectors, use any two). With
Eyefinity, three monitors have a fixed relationship,
suited to a panoramic orientation. For example, three
1920x1080 monitors with Eyefinity, becomes one
5760x1080 surface, and likely only consumes one "head".
Apparently Eyefinity can support six monitors in a 2x3
array, and maybe that consumes dual head as a result.

The problem with Eyefinity (and yes, NVidia has their
own solution for this), is the feature of having a ton
of connectors on the faceplate, tends to be on high
end cards. There just doesn't seem to be a market
niche for stock traders in this. I.e. a user who
wants a low power card, that can drive a ton of
monitors.

For example, this card is $150, but has two 2x3 power
inputs, which the little 265W power supply could not handle.
You'd need a Fortron 12V booster box to get enough power.
The fan noise from the Fortron and the video card,
would mean an upset customer. The card only actually draws
a ton of power, if you're gaming. Or maybe opening a
LibreOffice Calc window with OpenGL chart or graph.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16814137185

Eyefinity is basically an instance of the Matrox
monitor spanning tech, but implemented in the GPU
output crossbar block.

This loony article mentions doing Eyefinity on a 5450.
The only problem with that, is a typical 5450 has
DVI, VGA, HDMI, and the res limits on some of those
will compromise the ability to drive three big monitors.
I look for DisplayPort cards, in the hope of finding
sufficient resolution capability for the monitors.
And DP can be converted to other formats (VGA requires
an active, powered adapter).


https://techcrunch.com/2010/02/04/th...like-50-cheap/

4) You could try a Matrox converter, but I don't know
if the resolution choices would be high enough for
your application. This can do things like take one
video card output, and drive two monitors. Two
1920x1080 monitors require the video card to be set
to 3840x1080 on one port, then the Matrox box splits
the image into two 1920x1080 outputs. Matrox made
DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go as examples of this.
Naturally, driving large surfaces like that, on
something as weak as a 5450, would suck, so the
user would have to be really really tolerant. The
advantage of this method, is allowing a wider range
of dual-head card designs to solve your problem.

This one is discontinued.


http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/pr...o/displayport/

This is the main table. To use this product, you start
with the monitor resolution choices, and make sure both
the video card and the Matrox box, supports what you
want to do.

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/

Even though this is a triple head box, you might
want to run it as 2 x 1920x1200, due to the res of the
monitors. The BH site lists this at $300! The USB
port provides +5V for the internal FPGA and junk.

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/pr...o/displayport/


https://static.bhphoto.com/images/mu...IMG_357212.jpg

Depending on the output options on the Matrox box, you might
need some sort of passive DP to DVI adapter if the monitor was
only DVI. And the two monitors off the Matrox would have a
fixed (panoramic) relationship to each other. Whereas the third
monitor could be place on either side, top or bottom with respect
to them, in the display control panel.

3840x1200
videocard ---- DP ------- Matrox triplehead2go DP --- 1920x1200
--- 1920x1200
---- DVI ---------------------------------- 1920x1200
1920x1200

*******

Paul

One thing the user did not mention how old are the 22in monitors. Speaking
from experience i had the same problem, that he is speaking about with one
monitor, every so often the above problem would happen to me.

The monitor has since been changed and the problem has stopped.