3 monitors needed

[ajf]

Is there any way of displaying DIFFERENT content on 3 monitors other than either two graphics cards, or one graphics card with 3 outputs?

I have been asked to do the above and the manager is ADAMANT he has done this with some kind of external splitter previously.

As far as I know these types of hardware would only duplicate the content from one output across the multiple monitors.

Any ideas?

 

[Confused Stu]

I've seen specialist Matrox and (I think) Quadro cards that have special cables for splitting one proprietary output into two DVI/VGA outputs, but not for a long time. You could also use an MFT hub to output to 3 monitors from a single Displayport connector.

Other than that, I'm agreeing with you over your manager - to run 3 screens you need three outputs from the PC, either from 1 GPU, 2 GPUs, or 1 GPU and motherboard output, depending on the hardware involved.

 

[ajf]

Thanks for the reply.
Turns out I was wrong!
As they say, you live and learn
He meant these:
Plugable USB 2.0 to VGA/DVI/HDMI VGA / DVI / HDMI Video Graphics Adapter Card for Multiple Monitors up to 2048x1152 / 1920x1200 Each (DisplayLink DL-195 Chipset)

The Displayport MST hubs look interesting though. Presumably the drivers for these show Windows 3 'graphics' outputs?

Either will do us - it is just to display additional 'monitoring' data for one of our departments.

 

[Confused Stu]

Did not think about using USB to run a display - d'oh!

I'll be the one getting some more coffee to try to wake myself up! Glad you got to the bottom of it mate.

 

[ajf]

Neither did I!
Had no idea these existed.
If we get the USB one I'll report on their performance.

Only had half cup myself yet too.

 

[skaif]

This is exactly what I had, using a DP Hub to take my one output from my 970 and display it across 3 displays. By extending the desktop I have 3 independent displays. Does anyone know if this would work with the integrated graphics on a 4790k?