# 2 x Matrox M9188 Video Cards & 16 40" Monitors



## naughtyscamp (Oct 17, 2010)

One of my clients has a video wall of 16 Samsung 40" 1920 x 1080 monitors arranged in a 4 x 4 grid. We have constructed a PC using an Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer motherboard, Intel Core i7 Extreme and 6Gb RAM. It has two Matrox M9188 graphic cards slotted into PCI-E x16 slots. We are running Winows 7 64 bit with a single desktop area of 7680 x 4320.

All very impressive except that full screen video is a major problem and I'm not sure what the cause might be. If I run a 1080p movie clip at full screen the frame rate drops. If I stream video (eg from the BBC Sport website) then the frame rate drops to about 3 or 4 FPS. Obviously the pixelation on a video area this size would make it unwatchable anyway, but I still need to get to the bottom of this.

I'm interested in running GPU-Z but am unsure if it will support the Matrox cards? I'm also hoping that someone on this forum will be able to point out what the problem might be. The Windows resource monitor is showing little or no demand on CPU cores, disk, network or memory so I assume the problem is either within the GPUs or perhaps the PCI-E bus is bottlenecked.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I've attached a photo of the videowall.

Matt


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## Kreij (Oct 17, 2010)

You may be asking more from these cards than they are capable of doing. It looks like they were designed more for multi-monitor, large display accuracy than high speed framerate (like a gaming card).

Very impressive setup, however.


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## dr emulator (madmax) (Oct 17, 2010)

it says on their website 





> M9188 can only be combined with another M9188, M9140, or M9148 graphics card under Windows XP and Linux.


 so the drivers might not support dual cards under windows 7 source here


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## Dent1 (Oct 17, 2010)

naughtyscamp said:


> One of my clients has a video wall of 16 Samsung 40" 1920 x 1080 monitors arranged in a 4 x 4 grid. We have constructed a PC using an Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer motherboard, Intel Core i7 Extreme and 6Gb RAM. It has two Matrox M9188 motherboards slotted into PCI-E x16 slots. We are running Winows 7 64 bit with a single desktop area of 7680 x 4320.
> 
> All very impressive except that full screen video is a major problem and I'm not sure what the cause might be. If I run a 1080p movie clip at full screen the frame rate drops. If I stream video (eg from the BBC Sport website) then the frame rate drops to about 3 or 4 FPS. Obviously the pixelation on a video area this size would make it unwatchable anyway, but I still need to get to the bottom of this.
> 
> ...



Wouldnt the easiest, cheapest and most logical method be to buy a projector? Done, sorted.


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## n-ster (Oct 17, 2010)

naa you don't get the same pixel pitch OR resolution.... Remember, this totals over 160" diagonally


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## Dent1 (Oct 17, 2010)

There are plenty of 1080p projectors on the market, but yes you're right the dimensions might be too broad. Saying that though having those black lines between the grids look awful. 

My feeling is that the Matrox card isnt upto the job, GPU or integrated memory wise.


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 17, 2010)

dr emulator (madmax) said:


> it says on their website  so the drivers might not support dual cards under windows 7 source here



The latest drivers support multiple cards in windows 7.

The main purpose of the setup is to have about 30 no. 640x480 camera feeds displayed simultaneously with the ability to full screen any of the feeds (agree that pixelation would make this look ridiculous though). Client also wants to use apps like google earth, which looks incredible except for when zooming or panning, etc.

Someone suggested using a projector but this will not provide adequate resoltuion.


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## 3volvedcombat (Oct 17, 2010)

naughtyscamp said:


> The latest drivers support multiple cards in windows 7.
> 
> The main purpose of the setup is to have about 30 no. 640x480 camera feeds displayed simultaneously with the ability to full screen any of the feeds (agree that pixelation would make this look ridiculous though). Client also wants to use apps like google earth, which looks incredible except for when zooming or panning, etc.
> 
> Someone suggested using a projector but this will not provide adequate resoltuion.



Use ATI's eyefinity?

I think you would need 3x Eyefinity HD 5870's, a crap load of adapters, and maybe that will handle it all

Im not exactly shure though.


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## Steevo (Oct 17, 2010)

Multiple projectors on a screen would provide the same resolution without all the black edges. They would produce more heat and take more energy though. But you would have a much cleaner picture, with more colors, with darker black.

Hell four projectors would outperform that setup for image quality, clarity, and scaling.


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## wahdangun (Oct 17, 2010)

hmmm why don't you use eyefinity6 HD 5870 card in Crossfire ? it will be more cheaper, and more supported in win 7

btw i never know maxtor still produce video card.


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 17, 2010)

HD5870 cards would not allow a 4x4 monitor setup.

We cannot use projectors for various reasons including -

1. The video wall will normally be used in an office which has too much ambient light for projectors.
2. The wall also needs to be quickly and easily assembled for use at expos, etc. This would be far too difficult with projectors.
3. Don't have the space for a projector setup.
4. £25,000 already spent on monitors. 

It is what it is and I'm just trying to figure out what is causing the problem.

The maximum bandwidth for a PCI-E x16 bus is 4GBs. Based on the resolution 7680 x 4320 (33,177,600 pixels), 16 bit colour and a 60Hz refresh rate, is there an equation that will calculate the bandwidth requirements for the graphics. If it's greater than 4GBs then there lies the problem.


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## erocker (Oct 17, 2010)

Have you tried at a slightly less resolution to see if there is any improvement in performance? What are the rest of the specifications of the computer?


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 17, 2010)

erocker said:


> Have you tried at a slightly less resolution to see if there is any improvement in performance? What are the rest of the specifications of the computer?



Asus P6T7 WS motherboard
Intel Core i7 980x processor
6 GB RAM
700 Watt PSU
1 TB WD1002FAEX Hard Drive
Win 7 64bit

I will try lowering the resolution tomorrow. Still intersted to know whether GPU-Z will work with the cards?


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## Kantastic (Oct 17, 2010)

naughtyscamp said:


> Asus P6T7 WS motherboard
> Intel Core i7 980x processor
> 6 GB RAM
> 700 Watt PSU
> ...



PM this guy and ask.


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## erocker (Oct 17, 2010)

naughtyscamp said:


> I will try lowering the resolution tomorrow. Still intersted to know whether GPU-Z will work with the cards?



It might. Give it a try, even if it isn't supported it will do no harm, it will just start and most likely not give any information /  incorrect information.


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## W1zzard (Oct 17, 2010)

gpu-z doesnt support matrox cards, sorry. does anyone know how to contact matrox developer relations ? or is there some open source stuff for linux ? or public docs ?


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## driver66 (Oct 17, 2010)

W1zz on the ball as usual


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## erocker (Oct 17, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> gpu-z doesnt support matrox cards, sorry. does anyone know how to contact matrox developer relations ? or is there some open source stuff for linux ? or public docs ?



They have a phone number. Any other contact information on their site is product support.

Matrox Germany
Inselkammerstr. 8
D-82008 Unterhaching
Germany
Tel: + 49 89 62170 - 0


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## wahdangun (Oct 18, 2010)

naughtyscamp said:


> HD5870 cards would not allow a 4x4 monitor setup.
> 
> We cannot use projectors for various reasons including -
> 
> ...



hmm why HD 5870 eyefinity6 can't do that ? it have 6 display out put.

it even can do 4X6 with quad fire capable motherboard
















above was an 4X6 eyefinity6 setup, and playing flight sim games


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## DRDNA (Oct 18, 2010)

I truly think you'd do better with the set up above.

My guess is its either lack of windows 7 driver support or the cards just don't have the power to support that configuration with any video out put.


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 18, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> gpu-z doesnt support matrox cards, sorry. does anyone know how to contact matrox developer relations ? or is there some open source stuff for linux ? or public docs ?



The guy I have been dealing with at Matrox is -

Rob Moodey
Matrox Graphics
Chaplin House, Widewater Place, Moorhall Road, Harefield, Middlesex UB9 6NS
T: +44(0) 1895 827262 (direct)
T: +44(0) 1895 827300 (reception) 
E: rob.moodey@matrox.com

Thanks,

Matt


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## pantherx12 (Oct 18, 2010)

Have you contacted AMD about eyefinity at all?

Could be worth a shot, as someone posted above they demoed it on 24 screens before it was out.

Might just be a case of them sending you a tweaked catalyse control centre with the eyefinity control panel having 24 monitors in it instead of 6.


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## douglatins (Oct 18, 2010)

YES get the Eyefinity setup ASAP, done problems solved, get 3x6 Outputs


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 18, 2010)

When we first designed this the Eyefinity 6 only allowed a 3x2, 2x3, 1x6 or 6x1 combination. Even now on AMD's website it still suggests a maximum or 8 monitors over 2 cards.

However I spoke to UK tech support this morning and apparently the latest drivers will let me use three cards to create a 4x4 grid. I am still unsure though whether I won't be exceeding the bandwidth of the PCI-E bus at this resolution with a useable frame rate? The guy at AMD wasn't sure what frame rate I would achieve with the Eyefinitys and I'm waiting to hear back from him.

It would be really helpful if somebody could let me know what sort of bandwidth I will require for 33,177,600 pixels, 16 bit colour and 60Hz refresh rate.


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## W1zzard (Oct 18, 2010)

naughtyscamp said:


> what sort of bandwidth I will require



what kind of content are you displaying? you never transfer full frames over the pcie bus - something like that would happen in software only rendering, where the cpu creates every single pixel and the graphics card is just a framebuffer. nowadays you send high-level primitives to the graphics card which then does the magic on the graphics board

i just read more of the thread and if you are doing video playback without acceleration then you would indeed be in a software rendering scenario as described above.

your math would then be something like
4 * 1920 = 7680, 4 * 1080 = 4320, 7680 * 4320 = 32 MPixel per frame

32 MP * 2 (bytes per pixel at 16 bit color) * 60 (frames per second) = 3.84 GBytes/s


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 18, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> what kind of content are you displaying? you never transfer full frames over the pcie bus - something like that would happen in software only rendering, where the cpu creates every single pixel and the graphics card is just a framebuffer. nowadays you send high-level primitives to the graphics card which then does the magic on the graphics board



Ok for instance if I have Google Earth running then as soon as we introduce motion (either panning or zooming) then we get this appalling framerate of 3 or 4 fps.

I just got this message from my contact at Matrox. Not sure if it is relevant -

_Another thought – with your wide monitors you may have run into a pixel limit of an application you are unwittingly using in the player – like DirectDraw etc.

Aero for example turns off its compositor at 8k wide. (Don’t think that is the problem here). Some others have similar limits, but in the past had limits at 4k and 6k.

Might be worth figuring out if there is a particular width at which it ‘goes wrong’._


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## W1zzard (Oct 18, 2010)

basically what they are saying is "some applications might magically break at big resolutions"

check if google earth runs significantly better at lower fullscreen resolution


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 18, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> basically what they are saying is "some applications might magically break at big resolutions"
> 
> check if google earth runs significantly better at lower fullscreen resolution



There may be some truth in this. It does seem to be a 'jump' when we go from say 3x3 to 4x4. I'm not on site at the moment but will see if I can get someone there to try some other resolutions and work out when it breaks.


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## W1zzard (Oct 18, 2010)

you have to see the jump based on resolution, not on number of monitors

if you can, definitely give this a try with eyefinity


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 18, 2010)

Understood.


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 18, 2010)

Surely though if the problem lies within the application (eg DirectDraw) then it won't matter whether I use eyefinity or matrox?


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## cadaveca (Oct 18, 2010)

Eyefinity will (should) add hardware acceleration, negating that problem. The slowdown problem, seemingly, is software-based, as those cards you have don't actually have very much "grunt".


Eyefinity is the final nail in Matrox's coffin. Unfortuantely, AMD's DirectDraw accelleration isn't up to snuff 100% just yet.


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## W1zzard (Oct 18, 2010)

cadaveca said:


> Eyefinity will (should) add hardware acceleration, negating that problem. The slowdown problem, seemingly, is software-based, as those cards you have don't actually have very much "grunt".
> 
> 
> Eyefinity is the final nail in Matrox's coffin. Unfortuantely, AMD's DirectDraw accelleration isn't up to snuff 100% just yet.



not sure if ati actually has accelerated video for eyefinity. and not sure if the player software will even recognize it as valid hdcp protected link


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## cadaveca (Oct 18, 2010)

I do get flash and normal video acceleration, however, my eyefinity set-up is 3x wdie only, and it drops the side monitors while using the middle monitor for, say, movies.

HDCP seem to work, verified with BluRay playback. Again, it sometimes drops the side monitors, other times they stay active. Hence my mention of DD not up to snuff yet...I'm not the only one complaining about it, but I'm also sure that it's these configs that need it, but most sluff off DD acceleration, because most users this does not affect.

You may very well be right(not sure how so many monitors work, most I've tried was 4), so it would prove good to contact an AMD representative to confirm function for such a specialized setup, IMHO.

I've tried to find out what hardware AMD was using for the Eyefinity demos on release, and they haven't been too forthcoming with info for me. but maybe a user like this will get some answers.


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## naughtyscamp (Oct 18, 2010)

HDCP is not so much an issue. Nobody will watch a movie on this because of the bezels. It is mainly for viewing mutiple camera feeds which can be full screened, and also for using apps like Google Earth and probably some games to create an impression at trade shows.

I'm still waiting for AMD to come back to me. If I can find out what they used hardware wise for their 6x4 demos I'll let you know.


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## DRDNA (Oct 18, 2010)

naughtyscamp said:


> HDCP is not so much an issue. Nobody will watch a movie on this because of the bezels. It is mainly for viewing mutiple camera feeds which can be full screened, and also for using apps like Google Earth and probably some games to create an impression at trade shows.
> 
> I'm still waiting for AMD to come back to me. If I can find out what they used hardware wise for their 6x4 demos I'll let you know.



It may end up being easier to achieve your goal with multiple setups and a KVM switch or something. Just will loose the all in one picture accross the monitors but will have good security cam FPS.


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## nessu (Oct 18, 2010)

I think this is the best solution for you 2x http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/v9800/Pages/v9800.aspx  Its designed for monitor walls like yours.


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## freaksavior (Oct 18, 2010)

nessu said:


> I think this is the best solution for you 2x http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/v9800/Pages/v9800.aspx  Its designed for monitor walls like yours.



One problem, he has 16 monitors. Not 12, and at roughly $3500 a piece, I think that is crazy when he could have gone with a 5870 for $350 a piece.


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## Steevo (Oct 19, 2010)

I drive two monitors, well a 46" TV displaying hardware accelerated and upscaled video, plus my 26" monitor as one active desktop space, and I can play a video game while the family watches netflix on the TV, it can cause the occasional hiccup but it really works great. 


Driving multiple hardware accelerated screens seems to be no issue. I do have to lock the clocks to prevent switching issues however.


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