Preferably one with good linux support.
I have a few questions, first what monitors bandwidth do you need (resolution@refresh speed)? are monitors 120hz+ or 4k or 4k@120hz+? What GPU will be used for? Will it be used for media playback or static content/document processing?
Just from your input I can tell you you can use any AMD (Radeon/FirePro) card (good linux driver support) with 4 ports
Note: you will need to use 2-4 monitors with display port as most of them have DP and some of them have HDMI/DVI, positive side most that have DP have higher bandwidth for monitors (DP 1.2 = 4K@75Hz, DP 1.4 = 4k@120hz). You will also need to find card with 4 ports.
Other suggestions:
- based on your needs the most basic W4100 (from 2014 costs like 30$ at ebay) will drive 4 displays (but it needs miniDP to DP cables, all 4 displays will need to have DP port and it’s DPv1.2a so max bandwidth is 4K@75Hz or 1440p@144Hz)
- if you need to run all 4 displays in 4k@120hz+ you might need smth more powerful than that, so my suggestion is 470+ (470,480,570,580,590,5500XT,5600XT,5700XT,Vega 56/64/Frontier,Radeon VII) now from what I can tell GPU market dropped and you basically need to find acceptable price/performance AMD card with 4 DPv1.4 ports on your market (caution: if some of ports are not DP1.4 they probably will have lower playback bandwidth 4k@60Hz/1440p@120Hz)
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@Nicholas_Primiano, the only advice I can offer that hasn’t already been provided is to stick with AMD graphic cards when using Linux. Nividia Multi-Monitor support in Linux is an absolute mess right now.
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Frankly in my experience with an RX 6600 XT its way worse than Nividia. Even with a recent kernel 5.19.11 I get amdgpu driver crashes when trying to wake monitors up for sleep. Crashes all graphics output. I can still log into the machine with ssh, but it just locks up more and won’t reboot on its own. Strangely it seems to happen more often (or exclusively, not sure) when I leave citrix workspace open full screen and then let it go to sleep.
Anyway seems to be this issue Soft Lockup when waking displays from power save on 5.18+ [drm:dcn20_wait_for_blank_complete [amdgpu]] *ERROR* DC: failed to blank crtc! (#2044) · Issues · drm / amd · GitLab
I’m about ready to get an ARC card as I’m tired of dealing with this pain.
In addition I’ve had PCI Reset or lack of reset issues with AMD Cards with passthrough.
AMD Cards are not a blanket “This is great for linux solution”. Buyer beware.
On the flip side my older system runs 3 heads on a super old workstation class Nividia card. NVS 510 or something like that.
I have the opposite experience. Manjaro, Kernel 5.17 (I think), Radeon RX 6600 (non-XT), KDE. Bare Metal or virtualized with passthrough, Wayland or X-Server it has been rock stable.
What I can confirm, I had several x-server issues while running citrix workspace, similar to yours, but this was with an nvidia card. I had to disable the windows compositor effects for this application.
I’ve never used them, but there are plenty of cheap nvidia workstation cards designed for four monitors. One example is the Quadro P600. Just note that most of them use mini displayport, so you’ll need adapters.
How hard, will these displays be pushed? [res. / Hz ratings]
Are they all the same [or different] style interface? [DP / HDMI / etc.]
In my opinion, there isn’t a great graphics card Linux solution. Both major graphic card manufacturer cards have issues with Linux. I know I will be accused of being a Nividia Fanboy. Still, Nividia graphic cards have better support for Linux because Nividia doesn’t let its visual card partners change the general specs of their graphic cards, while in AMD land, it’s the wild west. AMD doesn’t browbeat their card partners. Instead, AMD allows their card partners to experiment, leading to AMD graphic cards Linux issues that vary between card partners.
Nvidia work OK with Linux but I’m not sure if multi display is a good idea with Linux. Matrox are known for multi display, very old so should be OK with Linux. You don’t say the application. If you’re displaying the menu options above the counter in a Kebab shop then that’s easy. If you’re building a 4 way AAA gaming rig then that’s hard.
@Nicholas_Primiano, I wanted to give an update on one of my posts in this thread. I had a work assignment that ended about three weeks ago. Since then, I have taken one of the two monitors I purchased for the project and attached it to my personal computer. The only complaint I have now is that the Dell monitor (the new monitor) wants to be the primary monitor regardless of the setting I use in Nividia Xserver’s app. So while you might be able to use multiple monitors with Nividia graphics cards, there will be some quirks. My advice now that I have personally used two monitors for three weeks on my system is that there will be quirks with whatever graphic card manufacturer you purchase. I would stick with Nividia. Nividia seems to have fewer quirks than AMD.
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