are USB display adapters worth it?

[thejanglytemblor]

i just managed to grab three 15" 4:3 monitors from a local thrift store for $6.00. they're all VGA, and i can't hook all three up at once. i already knew about USB solutions, but i don't know if they're all that great. i can't seem to find answers to my questions; my Google-fu is failing me.
ideally, i would use a single usb 3.0 4 port hub and plug in 3 USB 3.0 to VGA adapters. my monitors are all 1024x768 75hz, not sure on color depth.
some questions:
will the display adapters use my dedicated graphics card or integrated chip?
can i set it up with eyefinity or surround? what about on Integrated Radeon graphics?
will the single USB 3.0 port bottleneck the adapters?
do all adapters work the same?

thanks in advance, i appreciate it.

 

[hookerbot]

All usb display adapters use their own graphics chip as opposed to dedicated or cpu integrated graphics. Therefore they will not work with eyefinity or surround.
I can't speak to the port bottleneck, but I have heard that they can drag down your cpu a significant amount.
Every review ever basically says that they are fine for spreadsheets or webpages, but don't even think about gaming on them.

What would work for your situation is a triplehead2go from matrox
There is the discontinued analog version for vga that you may be able to pick up on ebay for a decent price
Triplehead2go Analog Edition
If you can't find one of those the Digital edition should also work with some dvi to vga adaptors
FTR I have never used one of these devices, but I put a fair bit of research into using them in a manner similar to what you want.
Good luck!

 

[k1114]

All do not use their own graphics chip. Most if not all emulate, it's much cheaper to produce and more widely compatible. But it still won't work with eyefinity, surround, or collage (that's intel's equivalent) since it's not really using any gpu. I've never heard anyone run multiple monitors off a single port but just thinking of bandwidth needed, it sounds like an issue. Don't you have multiple usb ports? What video ports does it have?

 

[thejanglytemblor]

All usb display adapters use their own graphics chip as opposed to dedicated or cpu integrated graphics. Therefore they will not work with eyefinity or surround.
I can't speak to the port bottleneck, but I have heard that they can drag down your cpu a significant amount.
Every review ever basically says that they are fine for spreadsheets or webpages, but don't even think about gaming on them.

What would work for your situation is a triplehead2go from matrox
There is the discontinued analog version for vga that you may be able to pick up on ebay for a decent price
Triplehead2go Analog Edition
If you can't find one of those the Digital edition should also work with some dvi to vga adaptors
FTR I have never used one of these devices, but I put a fair bit of research into using them in a manner similar to what you want.
Good luck!

that might work, but i just read a review on Amazon stating that the TripleHead2Go Analog Edition is funky with ATI/AMD cards. i don't want to take any chances. is there anything else i could do? i intend for this triple to be used with multiple systems, including laptops. more of a guest setup.

 

[thejanglytemblor]

All do not use their own graphics chip. Most if not all emulate, it's much cheaper to produce and more widely compatible. But it still won't work with eyefinity, surround, or collage (that's intel's equivalent) since it's not really using any gpu. I've never heard anyone run multiple monitors off a single port but just thinking of bandwidth needed, it sounds like an issue. Don't you have multiple usb ports? What video ports does it have?

i'd prefer for it to be USB 3.0. framerate isn't the biggest issue, as long as i can do a good 30-45hz out of it. not all of my computers have VGA. and if they're emulating a GPU, what do you mean by that? from what i could understand about DisplayLink, it uses the graphics card to generate the image and then sends it over USB to the adapter. i'm not sure on that though. although i could definitely be wrong.

 

[k1114]

I honestly can't say if it'll work since I've never seen it done with a usb splitter but I don't see why it shouldn't. Gpus can only output to a certain number of monitors but gpus can also compute data. So that's how you get circumvent the limit, simply put, have the gpu send it as data back through pcie. So what the usb adapter does is translate it back to video so it's letting usb, which is a data output, emulate a video output. You can't really call it a graphics chip as it's not doing the work.