Matrox Graphics revealed its single-slot card offering 8 DisplayPort outputs.
Yesterday we wrote about AMD's upcoming ATI Radeon HD 5870 with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory and six display ports. Today Matrox Graphics is upping the ante with its just-announced single-slot M9188 PCIe x16 graphics card with a whopping eight DisplayPort or DVI single-link outputs. The company even suggested throwing an additional card into your rig for a... hang on to this one now... sixteen display monster configuration!
Alright, so we're wondering what exactly consumers will do with eight outputs--that would make one massive desktop (and a lost of mouse work). Matrox Graphics conveniently has the answer. "The M9188 is designed specifically for professional monitoring environments that require visualization of large amounts of data at once to enhance mission-critical decision making," said Ron Berty, Business Development Manager, Matrox Graphics.
On the technical side, the PCIe card provides 2 GB of memory, resolutions up to 2560 x 1600 per DisplayPort output, and 1920 x 1200 per DVI output. The card also features various desktop management modes including independent and stretched, and can even be configured with many other M-Series cards.
Obviously, this card won't come cheap. Consumers wanting a wall full of PC gaming goodness will need to fork out a whopping $1995 USD for one card. Matrox Graphics is also offering a cheaper, dual-monitor version as well, the M9128, costing consumers a meager $259 USD.We're not exactly sure what kind of horsepower the card's GPU will bring to the table, but it does support OpenGL 2.0.
a card like this is used in control centers (think video surveilance, nasa and so on).
Consumers wanting gaming goodness should steer well clear of this card, surely?
Matrox cards have traditionally been 2D monsters but you'd think this was at least vastly superior to Parhelia; still very dubious about it offering serious 3D over 8 monitors. I'd love to know how two cards work together, as well.