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Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
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. |
#2
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
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 |
#3
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
"t" wrote in message
eb.com... 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. Seems to be a common problem with Radeons. I bought a couple of 4650s for different machines & they both displayed the same message. Tried all the drivers I could find, including Omega which were used for gaming, but nothing helped. I thus presumed the problem was inherent & lived with it until I could replace them. -- Regards wasbit |
#4
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
On 8/6/2017 2:24 AM, 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. If the aim is to drive a large but indeterminate number of monitors then Matrox is probably the way to go -- not for gaming but for displaying a lot of 2D data at one time with no problems. They make setups that will reliably drive anything from four monitors to an entire wall of them in a business or theatrical setting. I've never used more than two monitors on a single computer and a few different mainstream adapters have handled it well; most recently it is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 which it is claimed will support four monitors. I've never seen any freezes in any of three different multi-monitor attempts though. I take it that you've done all of the usual hardware checks for power supply stability and heat along with ensuring that the newest drivers are installed. |
#5
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
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. |
#6
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
On 8/6/2017 3:39 AM, 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 Thanks Paul, I appreciate all your detailed advice. I will try using two video cards and hope it resolves the issue. Are there any good graphic cards which would not have this VPU recover and would fit in the 790 mini tower? Perhaps, next time I should get those for such uses. |
#7
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
On 8/10/2017 5:28 AM, Darklight wrote:
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. Thanks, the monitor is 5 years old but was working in another computer. I will try swapping it. I appreciate your advice. |
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
On 8/6/2017 6:04 AM, wasbit wrote:
"t" wrote in message eb.com... 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. Seems to be a common problem with Radeons. I bought a couple of 4650s for different machines & they both displayed the same message. Tried all the drivers I could find, including Omega which were used for gaming, but nothing helped. I thus presumed the problem was inherent & lived with it until I could replace them. Thanks, I hope to find some other card which does not have this issue. |
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
On 8/6/2017 9:41 AM, John McGaw wrote:
On 8/6/2017 2:24 AM, 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. If the aim is to drive a large but indeterminate number of monitors then Matrox is probably the way to go -- not for gaming but for displaying a lot of 2D data at one time with no problems. They make setups that will reliably drive anything from four monitors to an entire wall of them in a business or theatrical setting. I've never used more than two monitors on a single computer and a few different mainstream adapters have handled it well; most recently it is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 which it is claimed will support four monitors. I've never seen any freezes in any of three different multi-monitor attempts though. I appreciate your advice. I will try getting a used NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950. I take it that you've done all of the usual hardware checks for power supply stability and heat along with ensuring that the newest drivers are installed. Yes, I did that. |
#10
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Graphic card for running three 22 inch monitors
t wrote:
Thanks Paul, I appreciate all your detailed advice. I will try using two video cards and hope it resolves the issue. Are there any good graphic cards which would not have this VPU recover and would fit in the 790 mini tower? Perhaps, next time I should get those for such uses. From a technical perspective, I would personally prefer to handle it with a single card. That is, as long as the monitor orientation is panorama 1x3. I understand you can use one of the other monitor outputs as a "random" non-Eyefinity monitor, so if you wanted to arrange the three monitors in the letter "L", you could. Your idea of using two monitors is fine, except for two things. 1) Greater potential for one monitor to update 30ms after the other. 2) Possibility OS will randomly swap the purpose of the two video cards, such that the left monitor becomes the right monitor and vice versa. I wouldn't mention this, except it happened to me. I don't really know how prevalent Display Control Panel issues are with multiple video cards. If you had a 5450, then I'd probably buy a second. If the 5450 was doing VPU reset, I'd buy a couple cheap NVidia cards to replace it. Sometimes you can get cards for $30 to $50. Back-to-School is coming soon, so expect prices to be headed in the wrong direction. A few things for computers are under supply pressure. We're short of Flash. We're short of DRAM. On video cards, the high end cards are being used to mine Ethereum. But that should leave the $30 cards for your experiment. (A 710 with a fan on it. $38) https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16814125900 That one has DVI-D not DVI-I. There are no VGA signals on the DVI connector. You could use a "DVI to HDMI out" adapter on the bottom connector, for 1920x1080. Otherwise, the card may simply not have the resolution options needed for your project. Getting max connector flexibility could cost $200. For that price, you could likely drive quite a variety of monitors. But that card probably wouldn't be that good a choice for a machine with a teeny tiny PSU. As long as you check the specs, you've made sure you have the right connectors for the three monitors (or an adapter or two to cover off that requirement), I'm sure you can whip something together. My main concern then would be with the (1) behavior. Even when you use two heads on the same video card, they could end up out of phase. Whereas with Eyefinity 1x3 panorama mode, they'd be aligned in time (since they're actually coming off a single head just before the crossbar). This doc has a picture of the crossbar. See page 8. It takes a few seconds for the picture on page 8 to render so be patient. https://web.archive.org/web/20061126...Whitepaper.pdf For Eyefinity, you'd be using the top block on the left, and then using three connectors on the right (off the crossbar). A single head generates 5760x1080, and the crossbar does "Matrox triple head" style chopping, to make three 1920x1080 outputs. That's how Eyefinity would differ from the generation in that document. Paul |
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