Cheapest way to get ~5 vga outs on a PC

[willp]

A lot of multi-out video cards are display port/DVI/HDMI. Our (pretty basic) projectors are VGA devices and these cards often don't have the analogue stuff in them to support VGA.

 

We're looking at putting together a video server (running Screen Monkey or similar). Suitable for running 4 projectors and a control screen (so 5 outs).

 

Has anyone done something along these lines, any advice?

 

Thanks, Will

[pritch]

Displayport does seem to be the prevalent connector on multi-output display cards these days.

 

That said, I've had considerable success with relatively cheap (£20-ish) DisplayPort-VGA adaptors, so assuming that your PC already has one VGA output, one quad Displayport card with four adaptors should sort you out nicely.

[smalljoshua]

I use ATI Eyefinity cards in my servers. 6 outputs on Mini Display port. The 5xxx series ones can be found on eBay from time to time for a bargain price.

 

Josh

[lite_lad]

Personally id say you were best off looking at a Datapath X4 as this will mean you only need to use a single graphics card (possibly using a dual or triplehead2GO on the other output) and then converting to VGA as these run on DVI.

 

These basically make the computer think it has a big display on it (say you wanted 4 1024x768 outputs it would be 2048x1536) and then you can set it to crop each output to look at a quarter of the image.

 

http://www.datapath.co.uk/products/multi-display-products/datapath-x4

[AHYoung]

Remember that allthough the inputs to the X4 or Digital only, the outputs are DVI-I so it outputs VGA natively without needing conversion on the DVI -I connectors. its also worth being aware that for higher resolutions and refresh rates you will require a Dual Link DVI graphics card. However my laptop will run 2560 / 1440 into an x4 @ 25p over hdmi no problem.

 

id have suggested the X4 as we use them all the time, but didnt as it doesnt meet the "cheapest" part of the brief.