20 wall mounted monitors display surface with AMD Eyefinity

[tallyon]

Hello!

I have been doing some research lately as in my company we would like to create 20 wall mounted monitors display surface with as few PCs as possible. The project's goal is to have an HQ of sorts in a sense where on all monitors there are different charts and numbers live updated in some large intervals, probably in the web pages opened in fullscreen web browser windows.

I have been looking for graphics cards with Eyefinity technology as I have read that they have good multi-monitor support. There are FAQs about Eyefinity setup on AMD website where they state that a lot of their HD 5800+ series cards support 6 monitors and HD 5700 along with HD 6700 series support 5 monitors.
(source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151)
But I couldn't find one of those cards with 5 or 6 DisplayPort outputs. Well, there was one or two but they were extremely expensive and I would have to buy four of them to have enough displays runnig.

I have thought about Daisy Chaining: Dell UltraSharp U2414H seems to be affordable, have thin border and supports DisplayPort 1.2 MST so it is possible to Daisy Chain four of them.

The first question comes from two above paragraphs: given that I connect four DisplayPort 1.2 MST monitors together with Daisy Chain and I connect them to Eyefinity ready AMD graphics card that has two display ports can I connect additional four Daisy Chained monitors to the second DisplayPort output on the graphics card? That would give a total of 8 monitors where each 4 are Daisy Chained together and connected to one of two Display Port outputs on the graphics card.

If the above is possible that would make one graphics card able to support 8 displays each as extended display and I would need 3 graphics cards to connect 20 wall mounted monitors each with Display Port 1.2 MST.

I have found ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 256bit with 2 miniDisplayPort, 1 HDMI, 2 DVI-I outputs and this is a card that I thought would be a good choice for double Daisy Chained 4 monitors because of 2 miniDisplayPort outputs if it is possible. If it is not can I connect 4 Daisy Chained monitors to miniDisplayPort, 1 to another miniDisplayPort and 1 to HDMI output and have them all use Eyefinity technology to form an extended desktop? From the FAQ (source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151) it looks like this graphics card can handle up to 6 displays.

What do you think about this project? How can it be achieved to have as many extended displays controlled by as few PCs as possible? This setup would be in the office space so I wouldn't want to have 5 PCs laying around and have all these cables hanging, also controlling the displays would be a pain when there are so many individual computers that drive them. Maybe dual GPU with each graphics card powering 4 Daisy Chained monitors will do the trick? It would make 1 PC run 8 monitors, 4 on each GPU.
(I have just found out that Eyefinity is not supported for each card in Crossfire individually, but only one graphics card can have displays connected to it, so it makes answer to question above false, but I'll leave it there for discussion's sake.)

Please, post your thoughts and experiences on the subject, I would greately appreciate direct answer to my question, but I would like to see a discussion almost as much as the solution.
Thank you!

 

[greens]

Hello!

I have been doing some research lately as in my company we would like to create 20 wall mounted monitors display surface with as few PCs as possible. The project's goal is to have an HQ of sorts in a sense where on all monitors there are different charts and numbers live updated in some large intervals, probably in the web pages opened in fullscreen web browser windows.

I have been looking for graphics cards with Eyefinity technology as I have read that they have good multi-monitor support. There are FAQs about Eyefinity setup on AMD website where they state that a lot of their HD 5800+ series cards support 6 monitors and HD 5700 along with HD 6700 series support 5 monitors.
(source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151)
But I couldn't find one of those cards with 5 or 6 DisplayPort outputs. Well, there was one or two but they were extremely expensive and I would have to buy four of them to have enough displays runnig.

I have thought about Daisy Chaining: Dell UltraSharp U2414H seems to be affordable, have thin border and supports DisplayPort 1.2 MST so it is possible to Daisy Chain four of them.

The first question comes from two above paragraphs: given that I connect four DisplayPort 1.2 MST monitors together with Daisy Chain and I connect them to Eyefinity ready AMD graphics card that has two display ports can I connect additional four Daisy Chained monitors to the second DisplayPort output on the graphics card? That would give a total of 8 monitors where each 4 are Daisy Chained together and connected to one of two Display Port outputs on the graphics card.

If the above is possible that would make one graphics card able to support 8 displays each as extended display and I would need 3 graphics cards to connect 20 wall mounted monitors each with Display Port 1.2 MST.

I have found ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 256bit with 2 miniDisplayPort, 1 HDMI, 2 DVI-I outputs and this is a card that I thought would be a good choice for double Daisy Chained 4 monitors because of 2 miniDisplayPort outputs if it is possible. If it is not can I connect 4 Daisy Chained monitors to miniDisplayPort, 1 to another miniDisplayPort and 1 to HDMI output and have them all use Eyefinity technology to form an extended desktop? From the FAQ (source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151) it looks like this graphics card can handle up to 6 displays.

What do you think about this project? How can it be achieved to have as many extended displays controlled by as few PCs as possible? This setup would be in the office space so I wouldn't want to have 5 PCs laying around and have all these cables hanging, also controlling the displays would be a pain when there are so many individual computers that drive them. Maybe dual GPU with each graphics card powering 4 Daisy Chained monitors will do the trick? It would make 1 PC run 8 monitors, 4 on each GPU.
(I have just found out that Eyefinity is not supported for each card in Crossfire individually, but only one graphics card can have displays connected to it, so it makes answer to question above false, but I'll leave it there for discussion's sake.)

Please, post your thoughts and experiences on the subject, I would greately appreciate direct answer to my question, but I would like to see a discussion almost as much as the solution.
Thank you!

MST Hub plus an R9 280x will give you 6 monitors with one GPU.
3 GPUs can fit into a standard ATX motherboard with at least 3 PCIe 8x lanes

That means you could potentially run 18 monitors on a single PC.

Close enough?

Here is an MST Hub in case you were curious.
https://www.amazon.com/Club3D-Mini-DisplayPort-Multi-Display-CSV-5300A/dp/B00PB8FB4G?ie=UTF8&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&tag=mmcct-20

 

[tallyon]

Hello!

I have been doing some research lately as in my company we would like to create 20 wall mounted monitors display surface with as few PCs as possible. The project's goal is to have an HQ of sorts in a sense where on all monitors there are different charts and numbers live updated in some large intervals, probably in the web pages opened in fullscreen web browser windows.

I have been looking for graphics cards with Eyefinity technology as I have read that they have good multi-monitor support. There are FAQs about Eyefinity setup on AMD website where they state that a lot of their HD 5800+ series cards support 6 monitors and HD 5700 along with HD 6700 series support 5 monitors.
(source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151)
But I couldn't find one of those cards with 5 or 6 DisplayPort outputs. Well, there was one or two but they were extremely expensive and I would have to buy four of them to have enough displays runnig.

I have thought about Daisy Chaining: Dell UltraSharp U2414H seems to be affordable, have thin border and supports DisplayPort 1.2 MST so it is possible to Daisy Chain four of them.

The first question comes from two above paragraphs: given that I connect four DisplayPort 1.2 MST monitors together with Daisy Chain and I connect them to Eyefinity ready AMD graphics card that has two display ports can I connect additional four Daisy Chained monitors to the second DisplayPort output on the graphics card? That would give a total of 8 monitors where each 4 are Daisy Chained together and connected to one of two Display Port outputs on the graphics card.

If the above is possible that would make one graphics card able to support 8 displays each as extended display and I would need 3 graphics cards to connect 20 wall mounted monitors each with Display Port 1.2 MST.

I have found ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 256bit with 2 miniDisplayPort, 1 HDMI, 2 DVI-I outputs and this is a card that I thought would be a good choice for double Daisy Chained 4 monitors because of 2 miniDisplayPort outputs if it is possible. If it is not can I connect 4 Daisy Chained monitors to miniDisplayPort, 1 to another miniDisplayPort and 1 to HDMI output and have them all use Eyefinity technology to form an extended desktop? From the FAQ (source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151) it looks like this graphics card can handle up to 6 displays.

What do you think about this project? How can it be achieved to have as many extended displays controlled by as few PCs as possible? This setup would be in the office space so I wouldn't want to have 5 PCs laying around and have all these cables hanging, also controlling the displays would be a pain when there are so many individual computers that drive them. Maybe dual GPU with each graphics card powering 4 Daisy Chained monitors will do the trick? It would make 1 PC run 8 monitors, 4 on each GPU.
(I have just found out that Eyefinity is not supported for each card in Crossfire individually, but only one graphics card can have displays connected to it, so it makes answer to question above false, but I'll leave it there for discussion's sake.)

Please, post your thoughts and experiences on the subject, I would greately appreciate direct answer to my question, but I would like to see a discussion almost as much as the solution.
Thank you!

MST Hub plus an R9 280x will give you 6 monitors with one GPU.
3 GPUs can fit into a standard ATX motherboard with at least 3 PCIe 8x lanes

That means you could potentially run 18 monitors on a single PC.

Close enough?

Here is an MST Hub in case you were curious.
https://www.amazon.com/Club3D-Mini-DisplayPort-Multi-Display-CSV-5300A/dp/B00PB8FB4G?ie=UTF8&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&tag=mmcct-20

Won't three or four monitors Daisy Chained to DisplayPort output on r9 280x instead of MST hub do the trick? If the monitors have DisplayPort 1.2 in and out they shouldn't need MST hub, right?

 

[greens]

Actually i think any of the newer AMD GPUs can do a 6 monitor eyefinity assuming they have the connectivity for it.
You could use TWO MST hubs, so you'd only need two compatible Display ports, but buying 2 adapters for three cards would be super expensive.

If you can find a GPU with 1 DP for the MST Hub, then another 3 ports, you'd save yourself some cash by only needing one MST hub per card.

I'm thinking that right now your best bet for this would actually be

3 x R9 380
3 x MST Hubs

 

[greens]

Hello!

I have been doing some research lately as in my company we would like to create 20 wall mounted monitors display surface with as few PCs as possible. The project's goal is to have an HQ of sorts in a sense where on all monitors there are different charts and numbers live updated in some large intervals, probably in the web pages opened in fullscreen web browser windows.

I have been looking for graphics cards with Eyefinity technology as I have read that they have good multi-monitor support. There are FAQs about Eyefinity setup on AMD website where they state that a lot of their HD 5800+ series cards support 6 monitors and HD 5700 along with HD 6700 series support 5 monitors.
(source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151)
But I couldn't find one of those cards with 5 or 6 DisplayPort outputs. Well, there was one or two but they were extremely expensive and I would have to buy four of them to have enough displays runnig.

I have thought about Daisy Chaining: Dell UltraSharp U2414H seems to be affordable, have thin border and supports DisplayPort 1.2 MST so it is possible to Daisy Chain four of them.

The first question comes from two above paragraphs: given that I connect four DisplayPort 1.2 MST monitors together with Daisy Chain and I connect them to Eyefinity ready AMD graphics card that has two display ports can I connect additional four Daisy Chained monitors to the second DisplayPort output on the graphics card? That would give a total of 8 monitors where each 4 are Daisy Chained together and connected to one of two Display Port outputs on the graphics card.

If the above is possible that would make one graphics card able to support 8 displays each as extended display and I would need 3 graphics cards to connect 20 wall mounted monitors each with Display Port 1.2 MST.

I have found ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 256bit with 2 miniDisplayPort, 1 HDMI, 2 DVI-I outputs and this is a card that I thought would be a good choice for double Daisy Chained 4 monitors because of 2 miniDisplayPort outputs if it is possible. If it is not can I connect 4 Daisy Chained monitors to miniDisplayPort, 1 to another miniDisplayPort and 1 to HDMI output and have them all use Eyefinity technology to form an extended desktop? From the FAQ (source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151) it looks like this graphics card can handle up to 6 displays.

What do you think about this project? How can it be achieved to have as many extended displays controlled by as few PCs as possible? This setup would be in the office space so I wouldn't want to have 5 PCs laying around and have all these cables hanging, also controlling the displays would be a pain when there are so many individual computers that drive them. Maybe dual GPU with each graphics card powering 4 Daisy Chained monitors will do the trick? It would make 1 PC run 8 monitors, 4 on each GPU.
(I have just found out that Eyefinity is not supported for each card in Crossfire individually, but only one graphics card can have displays connected to it, so it makes answer to question above false, but I'll leave it there for discussion's sake.)

Please, post your thoughts and experiences on the subject, I would greately appreciate direct answer to my question, but I would like to see a discussion almost as much as the solution.
Thank you!

MST Hub plus an R9 280x will give you 6 monitors with one GPU.
3 GPUs can fit into a standard ATX motherboard with at least 3 PCIe 8x lanes

That means you could potentially run 18 monitors on a single PC.

Close enough?

Here is an MST Hub in case you were curious.
https://www.amazon.com/Club3D-Mini-DisplayPort-Multi-Display-CSV-5300A/dp/B00PB8FB4G?ie=UTF8&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&tag=mmcct-20

Won't three or four monitors Daisy Chained to DisplayPort output on r9 280x instead of MST hub do the trick? If the monitors have DisplayPort 1.2 in and out they shouldn't need MST hub, right?

Correct. The MST hub just eliminates the need for a compatible monitor. Daisy chaining is another form of MST.

 

[greens]

Hello!

I have been doing some research lately as in my company we would like to create 20 wall mounted monitors display surface with as few PCs as possible. The project's goal is to have an HQ of sorts in a sense where on all monitors there are different charts and numbers live updated in some large intervals, probably in the web pages opened in fullscreen web browser windows.

I have been looking for graphics cards with Eyefinity technology as I have read that they have good multi-monitor support. There are FAQs about Eyefinity setup on AMD website where they state that a lot of their HD 5800+ series cards support 6 monitors and HD 5700 along with HD 6700 series support 5 monitors.
(source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151)
But I couldn't find one of those cards with 5 or 6 DisplayPort outputs. Well, there was one or two but they were extremely expensive and I would have to buy four of them to have enough displays runnig.

I have thought about Daisy Chaining: Dell UltraSharp U2414H seems to be affordable, have thin border and supports DisplayPort 1.2 MST so it is possible to Daisy Chain four of them.

The first question comes from two above paragraphs: given that I connect four DisplayPort 1.2 MST monitors together with Daisy Chain and I connect them to Eyefinity ready AMD graphics card that has two display ports can I connect additional four Daisy Chained monitors to the second DisplayPort output on the graphics card? That would give a total of 8 monitors where each 4 are Daisy Chained together and connected to one of two Display Port outputs on the graphics card.

If the above is possible that would make one graphics card able to support 8 displays each as extended display and I would need 3 graphics cards to connect 20 wall mounted monitors each with Display Port 1.2 MST.

I have found ATI Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 256bit with 2 miniDisplayPort, 1 HDMI, 2 DVI-I outputs and this is a card that I thought would be a good choice for double Daisy Chained 4 monitors because of 2 miniDisplayPort outputs if it is possible. If it is not can I connect 4 Daisy Chained monitors to miniDisplayPort, 1 to another miniDisplayPort and 1 to HDMI output and have them all use Eyefinity technology to form an extended desktop? From the FAQ (source: http://support.amd.com/en-us/search/faq/151) it looks like this graphics card can handle up to 6 displays.

What do you think about this project? How can it be achieved to have as many extended displays controlled by as few PCs as possible? This setup would be in the office space so I wouldn't want to have 5 PCs laying around and have all these cables hanging, also controlling the displays would be a pain when there are so many individual computers that drive them. Maybe dual GPU with each graphics card powering 4 Daisy Chained monitors will do the trick? It would make 1 PC run 8 monitors, 4 on each GPU.
(I have just found out that Eyefinity is not supported for each card in Crossfire individually, but only one graphics card can have displays connected to it, so it makes answer to question above false, but I'll leave it there for discussion's sake.)

Please, post your thoughts and experiences on the subject, I would greately appreciate direct answer to my question, but I would like to see a discussion almost as much as the solution.
Thank you!

MST Hub plus an R9 280x will give you 6 monitors with one GPU.
3 GPUs can fit into a standard ATX motherboard with at least 3 PCIe 8x lanes

That means you could potentially run 18 monitors on a single PC.

Close enough?

Here is an MST Hub in case you were curious.
https://www.amazon.com/Club3D-Mini-DisplayPort-Multi-Display-CSV-5300A/dp/B00PB8FB4G?ie=UTF8&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&tag=mmcct-20

Won't three or four monitors Daisy Chained to DisplayPort output on r9 280x instead of MST hub do the trick? If the monitors have DisplayPort 1.2 in and out they shouldn't need MST hub, right?

Correct. The MST hub just eliminates the need for a compatible monitor. Daisy chaining is another form of MST.

I want to add a disclaimer.

I am quite certain you cannot eyefinity monitors on different graphics cards.
So you'd actually end up with 3 seperate eyefinity sets on one PC.

 

[tallyon]

Can I even use multiple GPUs without bridging them with Crossfire? If I install three GPUs inside one PC and connect one monitor to each will I have three separate desktops on each monitor?

I always thought you can use multiple GPUs only when you bridge them with SLI or Crossfire. Unless you do that you can only use primary one, closest to the CPU. If that's case you'll have either 3 GPUs with Crossfire running 6 monitors because only primary Crossfire card have outputs working or 3 GPUs not connected with Crossfire with 6 monitors because the other GPUs are not working with the primary one unless Crossfire'd

 

[greens]

You can use multiple GPUs without having them in crossfire without difficulty - they will just run independently. You only need to use Crossfire/SLI if you want to combine the power of the cards, but that isn't what we want anyway. It isn't typical to run multiple GPUs not in xfire/SLI, but 20 monitors is not typical.

Eyefinity simply tricks your PC into thinking that 2-6 monitors are actually just one big monitor. it isn't needed for multiple displays at all. Instead of having 6 monitors running at 1080p, you have "one" monitor running at 2160x5760 (or whatever configuration you choose) I like the idea of you using eyefinity because it would be much easier to manage 3 giant screens than 20 individual screens. But depending on what you're doing you can actually mix and match, creating "monitors" out of clusters of your display. The only problem with this is that you can't use eyefinity to merge monitors that are on different GPUs.