ATI Radeon HD 5800 Eyefinity with 24 Monitors
Wanting more than 2 screens up until late has been the realm of the hard core enthusiasts. Now it is the realm of the enthusiasts. Check out 4 Radeon HD 5800 in one machine! This demo is running Ubuntu 9.04 with X-Plane. Impressive!
I think it is not too practical due to the grid lines which separate all the screens but soon we will be seeing displays with much smaller bezels to fix the issue.
Some people think it is silly to have multiple screens, instead opting for one big one. The problem with one big one is the inherant defects which occur when producing more than 6.2 million pixels per screen. It is impossible to manufacture that many pixels without defects at a cost effective rate. If one pixel is dead, the whole screen is defected. Lots of smaller screens means you can isolate the detects and remove them (in terms of 24 screens, it means replacing a screen).
I think we will see a move to multiple screens and hopefully solutions to counter the increase in cables, I’m thinking monitor to monitor connections. Plug one monitor in, one into that one, next one, so one.
OLED Technology seems promising though and we may see huge sizes manufactured in poster like setups. Pick a wall, hang your screen mat. If you haven’t already I would suggest checking out the OLED technology. They are producing screens which can be bent, even while displaying images.
Back on topic, I applaud ATI for increasing how many monitor’s I can run on my desktop without having to pickup multiple cards to support it. Though 24 screens is tempting, I don’t think even I could use all of them in a working environment.