Trouble With 4 Monitors

[kenberman]

first, you need to know how many open memory slots your PC has.

if you have 2 slots, then I think you'll want dual channel RAM - my understanding is that you get 2 pieces of RAM working together in dual channel mode, making each of them run faster than 2 individual sticks of ram would run.

if you only have 1 open slot, then you'll want to buy a single stick of 1 GB or 512mb.

you'll also need to be sure that the speed of ram you buy is compatible with your pc. if you have a newish pc, then this shouldn't be a problem. (I think)

[hate]

Motherboard has to support dual channel, and I've never seen gigantic improvements from dual channel ddr setups anyway. anandtech or arstechnica will have better explanations about memory and current configurations. Whether it has two slots or not has nothing to do with whether it supports dual channel or not. And don't buy into the gamer timed matched 300 dollar supertimed hype [censored] that gaming rig ricers like to spew out.

[NoTalent]

Is it only sluggish when you have the 4 monitors connected? It would seem that your system might be the culprit because no matter how you look at it, 4 tables at 1600x1200 is a HUGE amount of bandwith to display.

1600x1200x24bpp/8= 5.76MB per refresh per screen!

[Terry]

[ QUOTE ]
4 tables at 1600x1200 is a HUGE amount of bandwith to display.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes it is. This goes beyond the current state of my knowledge but I really think trying to move that much data through the PCI bus is most likely the problem. AGP would be better. PCI Express is probably the right thing.

Try setting all four monitors to a much lower resolution -- like to 800x600 -- just as an experiment. If that makes things run at a normal speed, even with stuff open on all screens ...

More RAM might help a little bit but if the above experiment makes a big difference you've got to do something else to gain bandwidth for those 213T's ... so don't waste money on memory your new computer won't be able to use.

You might wamt to consider a dual processor set-up with PCI Express to handle the load you're trying to push around.

[astroglide]

this thread is very amusing. thanks dude!

[NoTalent]

Holy crap terry--I didn't realize he was running this on the PCI bus!

That is your problem, the pci bus cannot handle that much bw

[Flint{$N}]

wow...four 21" flat panels...i gotta see this!!!!!!!

Are there mobos out there that have multiple agp slots?

[climber]

i think ...correct me if i'm wrong someone...but the new SLI motherboards allow you to use two of the new PCI Express cards together.

I doubt thats really necessary for this--I expect normal AGP and a decent 256MB card will prob do it fine.

[BusterStacks]

you are missing the point about quad-dvi. Standard PCI is a bottleneck here.

[ArthurD]

The current PCI Bus on most computers is around 133MB/second, depending on how new it is and exactly which standard is followed. Quite honestly I didn't see how one of the posters figured he got you at ~6MB/second for refreshing, and how that pushes it over. Perhaps he meant gigs, I'm unsure. In any event, that is quite possibly the culprit, although I'm not totally sure of it.

For the future, though, and on a setup as nice as 4x 21" panels, I'd probably rethink my motherboard and get one with at least 1 PCIX, although currently AGP and PCIX don't have many differences at all since nothing needs more bandwidth than AGP can offer, although in the future this will not be true and PCIX will be able to be utilized to its fullest potential.

Sorry I can't provide more concrete help, hopefully this information will guide you. Good luck in solving the problem.

-Arthur