4x 24inch lcd's only seems like a good idea on paper :)

[Alptraum]

Yes as the topic says....if it seems like a good idea...get your tape measure out first and confirm that your new monitors you've been drooling over will all actually fit on your desk.

I purchased 4 gateway 2401 series 24 inch lcd's this weekend with the idea that I could just run them all side by side..hadn't planned on mounting them to an ergomount system at this stage..that might come later..hehe well ummmm simply put NO WAY where these massive beasts going to fit on my desk. You also require like a good 5 feet to sit back from these beasts, and white websites can blind you with colors set to bright..so have a pair of sunglasses handy.

I may get a 2x2 mount system..or i may just purchase 3 19'' lcd's and mount those to the top of my display array....anyone else tried to run 4 massive monitors other then xzin ? Im definately thinking it was far cooler an idea on paper then in practice..just way to much screen to try and look at without neck strain.

Kind of glad I passed up on those 28" i-inc monitors at tiger..definately sure of neck strain for sure with 4 of those.

[Kaynin]

aye, babies like these would seriously strain your neck. :P

[Taliesin]

Hehe. More =/= better, in all cases.

Best to design your displays in such a way that everything is at least within your peripheral vision, so you can at least keep up with all the screens without even turning your head. I more often notice a slave break following by noticing off to the side while watching my tank. If you really want to keep all 4, then I would definitely stack them in a tile layout so they are all always basically right in front of you.

Personally, I use two 24" widescreen Dells in horizontal format, side-by-side. The 4 slaves are tiled on the secondary monitor, but all easily monitored with a quick glance. No head-turning involved. It's not a matter of being lazy, but reducing strain on the neck and eyes, especially in the inevitable stressful situations.

[Alptraum]

Hehe. More =/= better, in all cases.

Best to design your displays in such a way that everything is at least within your peripheral vision, so you can at least keep up with all the screens without even turning your head. I more often notice a slave break following by noticing off to the side while watching my tank. If you really want to keep all 4, then I would definitely stack them in a tile layout so they are all always basically right in front of you.

Personally, I use two 24" widescreen Dells in horizontal format, side-by-side. The 4 slaves are tiled on the secondary monitor, but all easily monitored with a quick glance. No head-turning involved. It's not a matter of being lazy, but reducing strain on the neck and eyes, especially in the inevitable stressful situations.Normally I would agree More = better, or at least thats what I was hoping, but sadly these 24's dont spin/rotate 180 or anything fancy like that so I can only put them side by side with my current setup. I might try and purchase a used monitor mount system off ebay or something and then do a 4x panel and see if that creates a nicer work space..all I can say right now though is holy cow I have a lot of screen space...even just on 2 of these things..they are massive, taking up 4 feet of deskspace all by themselfs.

One thing I have noticed running 2 of these beasts off a nvidia 8800 gt card is that my framerates droped from 100+ fps to like 7-20 fps more times then not..im guessing thats cause i moved from a 21 inch 1240x1024 res to an even larger screen (1900x1240). I have 2 of these cards but you can't SLI them together and use 2 monitors...this burns me a bit but every nvidea owner has likely cursed nvidea for this prior to me trying it.

I wonder though if possibly picking up a single ati radeon 4780 x2 card or a pair of those and putting them in crossfire would make my framerates jump back up again into the 100+ figuring my weakest link here is now the graphics cards in my beast.

[Herc130]

I was using a 42" LCD/TV, 24" LCD and 4 17" LCD's. I couldn't even see all of the 42" screen without moving my head around, let alone any other screen. One of my boxes are usually nearly dead before I notice they are being attacked. I shrunk my screens down a bit, getting rid of the 42"er

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/9408/img0934dp1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

and using the 24" as my primary, with a 22" on top for my other melee account (and videos when I raid with the guild!). Still a bit wide, but no where near as bad as before. The center 6, I see all fine. It's not till you get to the outer ones that I only see with peripheral vision. My last set-up.....I couldn't even see anything but the 42"er peripheral vision or not....I had to move my head. At least this one I mostly see everything with no head movement and the right side, I have all my mages with pets....so anything attack them and their pets start going crazy. Left side, top outer monitor is my cleric (gonna need to rthink this) bottem outter is my web surfer info looker upper...won't be running an account there. Also, think I can compress it down some more....just got tired of messing with the monitor stands.

[Taliesin]

My setup: Dell XPS 730, 8 GB RAM, 2 x ATI Radeon HD3850 video cards, 2 x Dell 24" widescreens (2407 and 2408 models).

First question is whether you are using Vista 64bit that has (or can make use of) more than 4 GB of RAM? Otherwise, you need to keep in mind that adding more video cards will make your usable RAM plummet. Vista 64bit keeps RAM and video memory completely separate, unlike other versions.

Also, Crossfire/SLI won't necessarily help when using more than one monitor. In my case, I use one monitor per video card and keep Crossfire disabled. There are arguments for and against using Crossfire, but opted to go with dedicated video for each monitor out of preference. You can try with and without Crossfire and see how well they perform with 4 monitors. Is a simple matter of removing the Crossfire cable from the cards and disabling the feature in the control center software if you don't like it.

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, "More =/= better, in all cases" is supposed to mean "More is not equal to better, in all cases".

[Ellay]

I use to have 5 19 inch screens span across the bottom and it was really a waste of space :( although it looked pretty nifty!

I thoroughly enjoy my setup now which is 3 19 inch on the bottom and 2 17 inch on the top. If I 5 box'd I would upgrade for a 3 17 inchers on the top. Going any bigger for me would hinder more than help, you need everything close :)

[5fingersofdoom]

My setup: Dell XPS 730, 8 GB RAM, 2 x ATI Radeon HD3850 video cards, 2 x Dell 24" widescreens (2407 and 2408 models).

First question is whether you are using Vista 64bit that has (or can make use of) more than 4 GB of RAM? Otherwise, you need to keep in mind that adding more video cards will make your usable RAM plummet. Vista 64bit keeps RAM and video memory completely separate, unlike other versions.

Also, Crossfire/SLI won't necessarily help when using more than one monitor. In my case, I use one monitor per video card and keep Crossfire disabled. There are arguments for and against using Crossfire, but opted to go with dedicated video for each monitor out of preference. You can try with and without Crossfire and see how well they perform with 4 monitors. Is a simple matter of removing the Crossfire cable from the cards and disabling the feature in the control center software if you don't like it.

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, "More =/= better, in all cases" is supposed to mean "More is not equal to better, in all cases".I was under the impression after reading the WoW Forums that XFire doesn't work with WoW.
Can you or anyone else confirm that it does.
Thanks. :)

[Alptraum]

I use to have 5 19 inch screens span across the bottom and it was really a waste of space :( although it looked pretty nifty!

I thoroughly enjoy my setup now which is 3 19 inch on the bottom and 2 17 inch on the top. If I 5 box'd I would upgrade for a 3 17 inchers on the top. Going any bigger for me would hinder more than help, you need everything close :)You are sooo correct about keeping everything close, I was thinking I might put the 2 24's ontop of each other and just go with some 17s or 19s stacked ontop of each other as well, that'd give me a 6 monitor setup that might actually be super useful...having to move your head side to side dosnt sound like a big deal till you try wowing for 4 hours with a 5box team and then wonder at the end of the night why your head feel like its ready to fall off.

5 19's across the bottom would certainly look pretty...4 24's side by side looks amazing but I can't see much past the 3 foot mark without getting uncomfy, even 2 24's side by side is a little uncomfy, even with them wedged on angles to prevent neck strain. I might try 2 24's on bottom and 3 19's ontop if I can find decent mounting system on the cheap.

[Alptraum]

OK you win as far as bragging rites go, that truly is a insane setup you've got...gosh a 42" screen ekkkk i'd have to sit nearly 10 feet back to even beable to see things on the screen. As it is I have to push my 24's to almost the edge of my desk..and roll back a few feet so they aren't blindingly bright on my eyes..I wasn't joking about wearing sunglasses when you pop open a website like google for example....ekkk.

Im not sure I'd be interested in more then 6 monitors, I multibox off 1 super game rig..or at least was super when I built it 2.66 ghz quad with 8 gigs of ram and the 3x 8800 gt's with a 1000w psu. What i've found is if I have to turn my neck to see things its really not a comfortable experience after more then an hour or 2 tops...kinda defeats the purpose of multiboxing for me if I can only do it for an hour or two before I quit..since I find it harder and harder to fit in a night to myself to box in wow as it is.

I will again though tell ya that picture looks crazy in a good way..some impressive hardware...loving all those xkeys u got happening there.
I was using a 42" LCD/TV, 24" LCD and 4 17" LCD's. I couldn't even see all of the 42" screen without moving my head around, let alone any other screen. One of my boxes are usually nearly dead before I notice they are being attacked. I shrunk my screens down a bit, getting rid of the 42"er

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/9408/img0934dp1.jpg ('http://imageshack.us')

and using the 24" as my primary, with a 22" on top for my other melee account (and videos when I raid with the guild!). Still a bit wide, but no where near as bad as before. The center 6, I see all fine. It's not till you get to the outer ones that I only see with peripheral vision. My last set-up.....I couldn't even see anything but the 42"er peripheral vision or not....I had to move my head. At least this one I mostly see everything with no head movement and the right side, I have all my mages with pets....so anything attack them and their pets start going crazy. Left side, top outer monitor is my cleric (gonna need to rthink this) bottem outter is my web surfer info looker upper...won't be running an account there. Also, think I can compress it down some more....just got tired of messing with the monitor stands.

[Alptraum]

Im actually running XP pro 64bit with 8 gigs ram..im not having ram issues at all, my system keeps up pretty decently, never see my core's being hammered by anything, I can easily 10box off my machine..though I didnt really pay attention as to what the framerates where..I did have to turn the alts video settings off of max to low to get that smooth, and i was only testing 10 inside Sm cath at the time..normally I only 5box.

well SLI isn't an option on dual monitors, despite nvidia's promises...just like the 3way sli off 8800's GT's they promised, only to quickly print a retraction statement. Unless they have changed this for the 260/280 models..I haven't really looked at SLI since. Its all about stacking 3 video cards into your computer to run 6head anyways isnt it? thats what i've done with my 3 8800's, although keep in mind you have to fiddle around with the nvidea control panel a bunch when u reconnect or disconnect monitors and move applications around..or at least i find I have to.
My setup: Dell XPS 730, 8 GB RAM, 2 x ATI Radeon HD3850 video cards, 2 x Dell 24" widescreens (2407 and 2408 models).

First question is whether you are using Vista 64bit that has (or can make use of) more than 4 GB of RAM? Otherwise, you need to keep in mind that adding more video cards will make your usable RAM plummet. Vista 64bit keeps RAM and video memory completely separate, unlike other versions.

Also, Crossfire/SLI won't necessarily help when using more than one monitor. In my case, I use one monitor per video card and keep Crossfire disabled. There are arguments for and against using Crossfire, but opted to go with dedicated video for each monitor out of preference. You can try with and without Crossfire and see how well they perform with 4 monitors. Is a simple matter of removing the Crossfire cable from the cards and disabling the feature in the control center software if you don't like it.

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, "More =/= better, in all cases" is supposed to mean "More is not equal to better, in all cases".

[Taliesin]

Ah, okay. I should have said any 64bit should do. I just didn't want to even begin giving advice about 2+ video cards until I knew the rig could support it without hurting something else. Glad you mentioned the PSU as well, as that was an afterthought of mine after posting.

As for CrossFire working with WOW, I'm not 100% postive, but I'm quite sure I originally tried playing with it enabled and it worked. This was before I bought the second monitor (hence why the second one is a slightly newer model), and had some video issues. This ultimately turned out to be a video setting I fixed, but didn't go back to CrossFire with WOW because I was already moving to dual monitors and wanted to keep them separate. So I can't give a definitive answer from experience there.

[5fingersofdoom]

Thanks i've been wondering about that.
I tried myself using 2 ATI cards a year or so ago,I had no success at all using them and had pretty much given up on the idea of XFire in WoW.
I have different cards no so i'll look into it some more.
Thanks for the reply m8.
GL with your MB :)

[Chranny]

Ah, okay. I should have said any 64bit should do. I just didn't want to even begin giving advice about 2+ video cards until I knew the rig could support it without hurting something else. Glad you mentioned the PSU as well, as that was an afterthought of mine after posting.

As for CrossFire working with WOW, I'm not 100% postive, but I'm quite sure I originally tried playing with it enabled and it worked. This was before I bought the second monitor (hence why the second one is a slightly newer model), and had some video issues. This ultimately turned out to be a video setting I fixed, but didn't go back to CrossFire with WOW because I was already moving to dual monitors and wanted to keep them separate. So I can't give a definitive answer from experience there.Crossfire does (and has been) working fine for quite a while.

I do all my boxing on 2x 19" where one of them is an old CRT. :p Seems I'm the poor mans boxer.

[Taliesin]

Crossfire does (and has been) working fine for quite a while.

I do all my boxing on 2x 19" where one of them is an old CRT. :p Seems I'm the poor mans boxer.

Thanks for the confirmation. This tempts me to go back and try it again and see if I can detect any real gain from it.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I remember getting my 30 inch. It took a little getting used to. At first I was swinging my head back and fourth to see it all like someone watching tennis. Now though after I have used it for 4 years, its great.

[heffner]

You might be able to stack 2 in the center and then rotate the other two and place them on either side (and run 2 toons on each of these and use the fourth for surfing?). Probably still need mounting hardware though.

[Alptraum]

Yes theres no way to escape the required hardware....I might toy with this idea of mounting them to the wall like tv's that way I can back my desk up to whatever comfortable range I need and still retain some vision. Im liking the 2x2 tile idea, I was thinking maybe of trying to turn a 5th and 6th 24 onto their sides 180degree's and add those to the array depending on if my wall studs will allow me to mount that much weight to them, and if I can manage to still see all this screen from my desk. Im loving the giant 16ft dvi cables I got for these monitors though, really lets me move stuff around a lot
You might be able to stack 2 in the center and then rotate the other two and place them on either side (and run 2 toons on each of these and use the fourth for surfing?). Probably still need mounting hardware though.

[Nisch]

Yeah I tried 3 22" across the bottom, to eventually go to a total of 6 22" monitors, but I found it to be just too wide (see avatar pic). I ended up going back to my original config with 2 22" in the center with 4 17's on the side.

[-silencer-]

I was using 3x 24" + 1x 22" for 2 days 5-boxing, then scrapped that plan to just go with 2x 24".. main toon on one, and 4x windows on another. Gameplay is much easier when I'm not looking all over the place for each WoW window. Now I use the 22" as a webpage window and the 3rd 24" as a HDTV. :)

My main toon 24" is in front of me, and the 4x alt 24" is to the right. My TV is to the left, and my 22" is to the left of the TV.

[5fingersofdoom]

Just a point,has anyone posting in this thread worked out how the costs of adding Flat screen monitors?
I was under the impression they were much more economical than the old CRT.
Any confirmation and figures?

[heyaz]

Man I've had this 30" dell so long a 24 looks small

[Herc130]

Just a point,has anyone posting in this thread worked out how the costs of adding Flat screen monitors?
I was under the impression they were much more economical than the old CRT.
Any confirmation and figures?

My 17" LCD's are 28w per monitor. A typical 17" CRT is 75w per monitor. A 24" LCD is @50w+ .

[Alptraum]

Just a point,has anyone posting in this thread worked out how the costs of adding Flat screen monitors?
I was under the impression they were much more economical than the old CRT.
Any confirmation and figures?my 4 gateway 2400's use 150watts per..im not sure what my old nec 21inch crt used..but to reclaim the extra deskspace im more then happy to not worry about my electrical bill

[5fingersofdoom]

Just a point,has anyone posting in this thread worked out how the costs of adding Flat screen monitors?
I was under the impression they were much more economical than the old CRT.
Any confirmation and figures?

My 17" LCD's are 28w per monitor. A typical 17" CRT is 75w per monitor. A 24" LCD is @50w+ .Thanks m8,i've been wondering what other people got :D

[Taliesin]

My 17" LCD's are 28w per monitor. A typical 17" CRT is 75w per monitor. A 24" LCD is @50w+ .Thanks m8,i've been wondering what other people got :D

2 x Dell 24" Widescreens, models 2407 and 2408, here. Rated usage is 57 watts (typical), with max of 110 watts. Still puts out a fair bit of heat.

[5fingersofdoom]

Thanks guys for all your replys,good to know they are alot less on consumtion than the old CRT.
Good info for the future :)