These days its common to see video cards which have three ports on and enough video memory to drive them all, but back when we were building this we had the more common 2 dvi ports per card. I think now every mac card has at least one mini display port adapter. It looks like the standard cards for the mac pros have two display ports and one DVI, but its hard to tell from the tiny picture on their site. I cant really conceive of why anyone would want more than three monitors in a "desktop" configuration, That was pretty standard for our editors, two desktops for working on and a third for previewing video.
Sadly i wont be in a position to sell off any of the old mac pros, (otherwise I would snatch one up for myself in a heart-beat) a) because I don't work there anymore, and b) because we used our equipment until destruction and often beyond. no PC style 2 year tech- refreshes for the macs. Which was actually one of the best financial reasons to be using them. They may cost 3 times more than a cheap PC, but they last at least 3 times longer... On Aug 29, 1:07 pm, Jason Davies <[email protected]> wrote: > Tobio wrote: > > The current mac pros video card has one DVI and one display port > > adapter, so you will need to factor DVI adaptors into the mix. Also, > > I would highly recommend you buy your extra video card(s) at the time > > you purchase the mac! It is possible to mix and match the cards that > > go in later on, but the difficult part is availability. It would be > > nice to just be able to buy a cheap PC video card and use it, but that > > wont work. > > > Buying an extra card to go in later on (say in 3 years time from now) > > would mean that your only options would be a) the top end card that > > apple has at the time, for a very high price. b) a closer match to > > your existing card available from a repair shop through GSX - usually > > these have to be for replacing broken parts and can be tricky unless > > you have a mate who can order you one on the side, or c) buying a > > second hand or broken mac pro on ebay and robbing the cards from it. > > ah, now this is the kind of thing I knew I needed to flush out into the > open. I will want to run two or possibly three monitors. I have one with > DVI/VGA and one with VGA only (the DVI is broken). I also have a USB > vibook adaptor (though you don't get the full refresh, by a long shot, > so you can't eg watch video on it very well). Given that one of my > screens is the laptop itself (and a bit limited) I can probably manage > with only two! > > The Store says > Configure your Mac Pro with two cards to power up to six displays > simultaneously for visualization projects and large display walls. > > So how many can one card run? That implies three -- which will do for me. > > PS if you sell off old Mac Pros from that pile, drop me a line. Just as > a current one would probably be overkill, I could probably work with any > Intel Mac Pro (need Intel though) quite happily. > > I'll be checking it has a video card though...;-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB.
