# Triple Monitors: Awesome



## AshleyAshes (Mar 22, 2012)

I'm making television and movies and what this means is that stuff gets demanding.  Like running four Adobe programs at once and trying to reference material from one program into another.  I've long used dual monitors but earlier this week I caved and ordered a third, and this maxes out my Radeon HD 6850 card which can only drive three monitors at once.  I also got tired of Adobe After Effects telling me 'Insufficent RAM.  Multiprocessing Disabled.' when rendering, so I upgraded from 16GB of RAM to 24GB, I expect to see the system to be maxed out at 32GB of RAM by the end of the summer.

So... Behold!









And also useful, something I've never used before, Adobe Premier using the right side monitor as a Program Preview monitor.  Everything from the Program window in the center monitor is rendered fullscreen on the right side monitor.  If I were to add another, low end graphics card, I could then mount a 32" HDTV on the wall behind the work station for a large screen preview.  This is something that's fairly common in editing suites.  But yeah, graphics card, HDTV, VESA mount into the wall, and all of it just to preview material... ...Outta mah budget for now.







Two RAID1 arrays, 500GB and 1TB.  24GB of RAM.  4.4ghz liquid cooled quadcore processor.  Radeon HD 6850.  Three monitors.  ...I've built the computer I dreampt of owning back when I was a stupid teenager, but this one has a totally practical use!  And the whole thing on the desk, not including the keyboard, mouse and headphones, only adds up to $1352.14 CAN.


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## Runefox (Mar 22, 2012)

I'm still trying to work out the logistics of getting a desk into this place that would fit a tri-monitor setup. As it stands, the two (small) monitors I have take up my whole desk. I'm thinking if I get an arm mount or something, it might work out, but I'd rather a better desk, really.

Most people won't see the benefit of three monitors except in EyeFinity (where it's AWESOME 8D), but for any kind of serious audio-video work, it's a godsend.


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## AshleyAshes (Mar 22, 2012)

Runefox said:


> I'm still trying to work out the logistics of getting a desk into this place that would fit a tri-monitor setup. As it stands, the two (small) monitors I have take up my whole desk. I'm thinking if I get an arm mount or something, it might work out, but I'd rather a better desk, really.
> 
> Most people won't see the benefit of three monitors except in EyeFinity (where it's AWESOME 8D), but for any kind of serious audio-video work, it's a godsend.



Yeah, I had to order an active DisplayPort->DVI adaptor to drive the third monitor (Got the cheapest one I could find, works GREAT BTW) and even that thing had all sorts of gamer bullshit labled over it.  It was clearly targeting gamers looking for eyefinity rather than anything 'professional'.  It was like 'See More.  Win More'.  I don't think Eyefinity even offers any advantage in gameplay, since both the side monitors get fairly distorted images due to it being one massive screen instead of three angles.  Though I figure fans of iRacing or flight sims would find good use for it.  ...The device though was clearly being marketed towards people looking to play Battlefield 3 and the like though a wide-screen wide-angle lens.

Also, it's been proving to be trouble to find very nice, pleasent looking 5670x1080 wallpapers to span across the desktop.  Half of my findings are half naked women. :/  But this proved nice though:


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## kayfox (Mar 23, 2012)

Quad monitors is better!

(Disclaimer, I technically have 7 monitors on my desk, 4x attached to the windows 7 machine, 2x attached to the Linux machine and 1 attached to the Paragon KVM)


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## Ikrit (Mar 23, 2012)

what headphones are those...


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## AshleyAshes (Mar 23, 2012)

Ikrit said:


> what headphones are those...



Sony MDR-XD200, got'em on sale: http://www5.ncix.ca/products/?mode=productreviewread&product_id=29606

They were like $25 when I got'em.  They're kinda unremarkable though, why do you ask? o.o


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## Ikrit (Mar 23, 2012)

AshleyAshes said:


> Sony MDR-XD200, got'em on sale: http://www5.ncix.ca/products/?mode=productreviewread&product_id=29606
> 
> They were like $25 when I got'em.  They're kinda unremarkable though, why do you ask? o.o



 i'm a headphone enthusiast, i'd use a pair of headphones over a speaker system any day probably (it's just their sound signature that i enjoy so much) 

i got a pair of Grados for computer and home, because panning in closed headphones drives me fucking crazy and makes me feel deaf in one ear when it's uneven.


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## AshleyAshes (Mar 24, 2012)

Ikrit said:


> i'm a headphone enthusiast, i'd use a pair of headphones over a speaker system any day probably (it's just their sound signature that i enjoy so much)



I exclusively use headphones on my PC because that way I can listen to loud music at 3am and not enrage my roommate.  I rather need her half of the rent.

However, for audio mixing, headphones can be terribly deceiving and the resulting mix can be totally off for viewing on a 'normal TV'.  So I also have the audio hooked up to the crappy speakers built into my monitors.  So any end mix has to go through those before the mix can be considdered done, just so I know it'll sound 'right' even on shoddy built in speakers.


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