What's the fastest single graphics card that supports 6 displays?

[ZombiePhysicist]

Would appreciate any pointers to a single video card that works in the Mac Pro (5,1) and can support 6 displays. Thanks for any help!

I have a 6 screen setup and am currently using this card (works great and stable but not exactly lightening fast):

http://www.amazon.com/VisionTek-Pro...F8&qid=1423615829&sr=8-1&keywords=eyefinity+6

The fastest 6 display card I found is this (although I'm not sure if it will work in a Mac Pro):

http://www.amazon.com/VisionTek-Pro...F8&qid=1423615829&sr=8-2&keywords=eyefinity+6

I did see this liquid cooled (single slot!) card, that looks awesome, but seems it 'only' supports 5 displays.

https://www.visiontek.com/graphics-cards/visiontek-cryovenom-r9-295x2-detail.html

 

[brand]

There is the Matrox M9188 that supports 8 monitors via 8 mDP ports. Not sure if it is Mac compatible or any faster or slower.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

There is the Matrox M9188 that supports 8 monitors via 8 mDP ports. Not sure if it is Mac compatible or any faster or slower.

Thanks Brand. Yea, that looks like a pretty cool card for setting up video walls, but not sure if it works on a mac, but doesn't seem like it's any peppier speed wise than my current card.

 

[Pressure]

Well, the AMD FirePro W9100 has 6 Mini DisplayPort connectors...

Otherwise I think only the Radeon HD 5870 and the Radeon HD 7870 has Eyefinity 6 editions.

But you can run 6 displays by daisy-chaining 2 x DP1.2 connectors through a hub (Multi-Stream Transport) with any modern AMD GPU.

Check out this MST hub.

 

[MacVidCards]

I have that exact 7870, was trying to develop an EFI for it.

I was able to turn on PCIE 2.0 but never got boot screens android personality right for it.

If you want a test run on it let me know.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Well, the AMD FirePro W9100 has 6 Mini DisplayPort connectors...

Otherwise I think only the Radeon HD 5870 and the Radeon HD 7870 has Eyefinity 6 editions.

But you can run 6 displays by daisy-chaining 2 x DP1.2 connectors through a hub (Multi-Stream Transport) with any modern AMD GPU.

Check out this MST hub.

Thanks pressure. Has anyone ever gotten one of the MST boxes to work on a Mac Pro?

I'd love to get that water cooled 295x card and just one MST box and be done with it. Would be epic.

----------

I have that exact 7870, was trying to develop an EFI for it.

I was able to turn on PCIE 2.0 but never got boot screens android personality right for it.

If you want a test run on it let me know.

Heck yea. I guess I'd first like to know if the MST hub has been made to work with a Mac Pro, because then I could get a way faster video card and still have 6 screens...

BTW, have you ever tried one of the MST hubs MacVidCards?

I asked this once before but got crickets here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1753416/

 

[DigitalVT]

Well, the AMD FirePro W9100 has 6 Mini DisplayPort connectors...

Otherwise I think only the Radeon HD 5870 and the Radeon HD 7870 has Eyefinity 6 editions.

But you can run 6 displays by daisy-chaining 2 x DP1.2 connectors through a hub (Multi-Stream Transport) with any modern AMD GPU.

Check out this MST hub.

Has anybody got any of these MST boxes to work?

I emailed Startech earlier in the week about there's and they were saying that currently OS X does not support MST, hence it will not work.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Ok, well after suffering for I don't know how many releases with apple clobbering non apple card support, and being stuck with two 5770s driving my 6 screens, I found a card that works!

It's this:
VisionTek Products AMD RADEON HD7870 Eyefinity 6

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085O90SQ?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00


Unfortunately upon some back and forth MacVidCards cannot flash this bad boy, but it works, just without a boot screen. Sometimes the boot up is finicky in that only 4 or 5 of the screens come up after boot. This is fixed either with hitting COMMAND-OPTION-EJECT a few times, or actually unplugging and replugging in the 'out' screens.

So of course this is far from the state of the art, but none of the state of the art cards support 6 displays. So this is as state of the art as you'll get to support 6 30" or 4k displays off a single card (thereby leaving slots open for fast SSDs, USB3, etc.).

Because it seems this card supports metal (haven't confirmed, but it's way way way way faster so I'm assuming the 5770s didn't support metal acceleration and this does), it seems orders of magnitude snappier.

So, if you need 6 displays with better performance, likely you're not going to do better than this card on a classic mac pro.

BTW, it uses both the stock 6 pin power cables. I think PowerColor and club 3D also made versions of this card that you might find floating out there...

 

[MacVidCards]

Sorry we couldn't figure out a good EFI for it. You might encourage Florian, he has made some serious progress on AMD cards recently. He sent me some stuff to try but it was no better then what I worked on with Netkas. FWIW, I can turn on PCIE 2.0 on the card, but that may not be of much help.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Thanks MVC. At this point I'm not really trying to squeeze out performance. Unless you think I'd see a big speedup? As is, it's got to be a pretty big boost over the 5770s, I would think?

I just wish I could find a more modern card that supports 6 displays.

That said, if Apple ever gets their act together, I might get the next garbage can mac pro as 6 screens should work for me now. In the past I needed 10 displays and really there was no substitute for the CMP in that regard.

 

[Fl0r!an]

I didn't get any further than what I've written in the 'Radeon Port Mapping' thread over at netkas.org.
I'm pretty confident that boot screens could at least be enabled on passive DisplayPort adapter connections (means max. FullHD), but I think that's it.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Not sure I understand that, but Im driving this with 6 30" Apple cinema displays, each using an apple mini display port to dual link DVI converter; which I think makes all the displays active.