Best option for 3 displays?

[LibertySand]

I need to run 3 monitors off one Powermac G5 7,3.
I have-
-3 Dell 23" E228WFP (1680X1050) 32 bit monitors.
-1 ATI Radeon 9600 XT (1 DVI, 1 ADC)

I realize I can get 2 displays functional at this time by using the DVI port and ADC (w/adapter) but what's the best way to get 3 displays running? Add a card? and if so what kind? Is the http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/ the way to go.

I will be using all 3 diplays for work. I primarily will be using Adobe InDesign, Phoshop, and Illustrator also Xcell and Outlook.

Suggestions very welcomed...

 

[MacForScience]

I need to run 3 monitors off one Powermac G5 7,3.
I have-
-3 Dell 23" E228WFP (1680X1050) 32 bit monitors.
-1 ATI Radeon 9600 XT (1 DVI, 1 ADC)

I realize I can get 2 displays functional at this time by using the DVI port and ADC (w/adapter) but what's the best way to get 3 displays running? Add a card? and if so what kind? Is the http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/ the way to go.

I will be using all 3 diplays for work. I primarily will be using Adobe InDesign, Phoshop, and Illustrator also Xcell and Outlook.

Suggestions very welcomed...

I would buy a decent AGP 8x GPU like a Radeon or Nvidia card and use that. The non-gpu option you listed I find those tend to be better in theory then in practice.

Cheers

 

[el-John-o]

You can find a Radeon X1950 Pro for CHEAP, I have the slower X1650 pro 512MB in a PC that was driving 3 1920x1080 displays. Actually, most of the time it was driving one CRT monitor, but for grins I hooked it up to see how well it would worked, was smooth as butter! I would make sure you've got at least 512MB of memory on the card, many of the cards have multiple editions with as little as 64MB, the more pixels your pushing, the more memory is needed. You could boot 3 HD displays on 64MB, but fire up anything GPU intensive, and you better make a pot of coffee cuz it's gonna be a while! It's BARELY a cost difference, if at all, so I would look into it!

By the way, www.newegg.com has a nice selection of refurbished (and even NEW) AGP 8X cards, and I believe they stock the X1950.

Edit: Also be careful, the X1650 can come in different configurations, one is DVI, VGA and S-Video, another is what I have, 2x DVI and VGA, which would work for your purposes. Best solution would be 3x DisplayPort or DVI (I am pretty sure the X1950 has a configuration thats 2x DVI and 1 DisplayPort), a DP to DVI adapter is cheap. ATi Just makes the actual GPU, not the entire card, so different manufacturers (Sapphire, HIS, XFX, etc.) configure them differently, FWIW I've had great luck with MSi and Sapphire, but they're all good, go with one that is configured best for you, again, 512MB of memory or more, and an all-digital output setup if possible. (NO S-Video, though VGA will work, but DVI/DP would be better.)

-John

Edit2: I just checked newegg, doesn't look like any 3 display configurations, but you still might find some used. However, if you are adding ANOTHER AGP 4x/8x Card, there are some solutions there that run from $30 to $80. Otherwise the Matrox would work, but it seems like there must be a more inexpensive solution for you. It would probably be better than a PCI (as opposed to AGP) Graphics card. I'm not familiar with the PowerMac G5, so another AGP Card would only work if you had integrated video, because AGP by design is only one slot per motherboard, except for some high end server motherboards with special controllers (but you know Apple, screw convention we'll do what we want, it could have 4 AGP slots for all I know.) But a PCI Graphics card is bound to be too slow to function at those resolutions like you'd need them to.

Good luck! Let us know what you end up doing.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

He only has one AGP slot so the only other option is using a PCI graphics card to get the third monitor.

 

[el-John-o]

He only has one AGP slot so the only other option is using a PCI graphics card to get the third monitor.

Right but the performance of ANY PCI Graphics card would be ATROCIOUS, the bus speed of PCI is too slow to drive that many pixels with ANY efficiency, even his design software he is using would run poorly.

But it might be worth a try, I mean PCI Graphics cards can be had for under $30, but any serious rendering won't happen.

 

[chrismacguy]

Right but the performance of ANY PCI Graphics card would be ATROCIOUS, the bus speed of PCI is too slow to drive that many pixels with ANY efficiency, even his design software he is using would run poorly.

But it might be worth a try, I mean PCI Graphics cards can be had for under $30, but any serious rendering won't happen.

The PCI Graphics Card only needs to handle a single display, which the PCI bus can handle fine (As an example, I had a Yikes PCI 400 G4 for a while - that could power a 1920*1200 display just fine with 16MB VRAM, certainly not saturating the Bus with that - and with a 32MB VRAM card it was perfectly okay for everything, including Final Cut Pro and InDesign.

 

[666sheep]

I need to run 3 monitors off one Powermac G5 7,3.
I have-
-3 Dell 23" E228WFP (1680X1050) 32 bit monitors.
-1 ATI Radeon 9600 XT (1 DVI, 1 ADC)

I realize I can get 2 displays functional at this time by using the DVI port and ADC (w/adapter) but what's the best way to get 3 displays running? Add a card? and if so what kind? Is the http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/ the way to go.

I will be using all 3 diplays for work. I primarily will be using Adobe InDesign, Phoshop, and Illustrator also Xcell and Outlook.

Suggestions very welcomed...

You can replace 9600 ADC DVI with Dual DVI version: like this one and add PCI Radeon 9200: like this one.

 

[LibertySand]

Sounds like the best bet is to get another PCI Rad9200 for my main monitor and still use the apples DVI/ADC for the other two but will 128 MB keep up with mild use for two monitors?

 

[chrismacguy]

Sounds like the best bet is to get another PCI Rad9200 for my main monitor and still use the apples DVI/ADC for the other two but will 128 MB keep up with mild use for two monitors?

Easily. Ive used Dual Monitors on 32MB (1 1440*900, 1 1280*1024) and Ive had Dual 1920*1200 on 128MB, so you should be fine

 

[666sheep]

It should work OK, like Chris said. When you'll get PCI card, test other possible card + display(s) setups to find the best performance one. I've never used three display setup more than just for cards outputs testing purposes (once I had even quad display setup for a while).

 

[LibertySand]

I have two running now, both off the macs DVI/ADC PCI card and so far so good. Most of my work is in InDesign so it's just print work. The reasoning behind my want for 3 displays is all the crap I need visually to pull from to make catalogs, flyers and newsletters for my company. Not alot of moving images (movie's,flash or games) so I shouldn't run into to many problems....I hope.

 

[chrismacguy]

I have two running now, both off the macs DVI/ADC PCI card and so far so good. Most of my work is in InDesign so it's just print work. The reasoning behind my want for 3 displays is all the crap I need visually to pull from to make catalogs, flyers and newsletters for my company. Not alot of moving images (movie's,flash or games) so I shouldn't run into to many problems....I hope.

You shouldnt run into any problems