I'm considering upgrading the GPUs in my Dell Precision T7500 workstation. Currently it has a pair of Nvidia Quadro NVS 295s and they struggle to drive basic desktop tasks on my 4 1080p monitors. I've got most of the animations turned off in Windows and still get frequent lags when opening and closing windows.
Basically I'm looking for a card or two that can drive these monitors properly in Windows 10 with all the animations and no lag; I don't need any gaming performance or any GPU compute performance as this workstation is just used for coding and related tasks. No budget in mind, just something that's the least expensive that will do the job.
AMD W5100 might be overkill for your needs but at ~330$ it is a really solid workstation card. Details The W4100 is 100$ cheaper, however you would need to get miniDP to DP adapters. Nvidia Quadros for your needs are 300$ or more. I did not check for gaming cards.
An Nvidia Quadro K4000 and K4200 will do just fine for most applications these days. It won't be amazing and will be a little loud. But it's damn powerful.
Any reason why something like a gtx 950 wouldn't work? It's got enough display outputs and probably enough power. Plus it's cheaper than any of the workstation cards.
Normal consumer gaming cards doesn't have the same opengl support, no ECC memory, the safety margins that workstation cards are built with and usually doesn't have the same amount of ports.
No, as far as I know I'm not using any GPU compute; they're just driving displays. I'm using Visual Studio 2013, Sublime Text, Chrome, MS Office, and a few other similar programs.
Good point; what programs need the OpenGL support? As far as I know I just need something that'll drive 4 displays; most mid tier gaming cards will do that. I would like to have the option of getting a 4k screen in the future in case I can talk work into getting me one of those 40in 4k monitors Wendell is fond of. I'll be getting one for my home rig soon for sure; I've got a 980 in it.
I'd get that... will give you power to spare, 4GB GDDR5 should you need it to drive 4K in the future, plenty of GPU compute should you need it in the future... 4 display ports... pretty much covers everything right? Might be a tad bit overkill but $180 after rebate's pretty damn cheap for a GPU and it'll breeze through 4 monitors for coding...
I do not see any benefit of getting a professional GPU for coding... unless you just blatantly prefer to pay WAY more for WAY less...
That's just the cheapest, kind of nice GPU on the market that has plenty of VRAM to power 4x 4K displays
Looks good except that it only had 1 DisplayPort so it will only do 1 4k screen @60hz. If it had 4x DisplayPort I'd be all over it. IDK why more cards aren't setup that way. DisplayPort easily adapts to anything else.
it'd drive up to 5 monitors @ 1440p tho... or 3x 1440p and 1 4k main... or 2 displays @ 4k, 1 at 60hz, 1 at 24hz, and 2 1440p.... so... not a terrible option especially for the price... there isn't a GPU on consumer market that uses all display port connections that I'm aware of, not even the Titan Z? For workstation cards you'd have to get in the ~$900 range for a Quadro M4000 which might actually have the horsepower to power it... the K1200 I just don't see having the horsepower to power 4x 4k displays and it's $100-150 more... I get the connectors are there in theory... but no... I've got a 1440p BenQ 27" display as my main and it's really nice... I would save my money and get the much cheaper 380 option over shelling out $600 for 2x M1200's in SLI to have a bare minimum horsepower to power 4x 4k monitors...
I mean for coding, you don't need 4k anyways not even on a main... but hey... spend your money how you wish :)
Really there is no reason for you to buy anything more then a Gtx 960. The reason I say Gtx 960 is because you can get cards with triple displayport, and hdmi 2.0 so for if for some reason, if you really wanted too, you could drive 4 by 4k panels. Realistically, your probably fine with your quad 1080p setup for the coming years, so if you want to pickup something like an R7 370, I'd say go for it. If you want the 'future proof-ness' of quad 4k capabilities, here is a 960: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SC6HAS4/?tag=pcpapi-20 If you have no intentions of shelling out for quad 4k in the next 4 years, here is an R7 370: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZQ3QVLS/?tag=pcpapi-20
@thelonewanderer As nice as the HD 7990 is, it is overkill for simple desktop use (and the price is really high, even compared to the W5100). The W4100 would be enough. Plus this cute thing only requires 50W.
Thanks everyone; if/when I upgrade I'll either go for the W4100 or a gtx 960. They both have great display out options and plenty of power for whatever displays I end up with. I'd say the W4100 probably makes the most sense as it has a lower TDP which means less heat and power use.
so much derp here... it highly depends if what you're going to work requires to render with dual-precision or not, and what kind of stuff are you going to work on... Some applications will prefer amd other will prefer nv... If you are looking for dual-precision look for 7970 gpu's from ebay -> they had fully unlocked dual-precision flops pipeline (and all of the nice goodies) I doubt you need server/"workstation" gpu's (Quadro/FirePro/Tesla) . . . they are far more expensive, and most of it is just support from company, some minor tweaks in drivers, and unlocked dual-precision flops... Not a gamechanger worth a lot of cash... You'd be better to go with 390, 980 gpu's... if you lack cash get used 780ti or one of best 290x's. On both you'll get far better performance for laughable ~$300 Quadro or FirePro card
Speaking of so much derp, he's looking for something purely for the purpose of driving a lot of displays. Not gpu horsepower, and not compute performance. So this is useless information.
