@Dashrender said:

Isn't the whole point of SLI to take all that horsepower and show it on one, maybe two screens?

You can put something like 6 video cards into a windows 7 machine and hand as many monitors off of each as they each individually handle. and make one honkin' desktop!

As far as I know, yes, as well as a few other benefits. My concern is that

1. I'd like to get a 2nd identical graphics card in case I do want to SLI on my next build and reuse the cards

2. The NVidia SLI page says:

which to me may mean that you can only run 2 identical cards in SLI, which isn't what I want to do and my mobo doesn't support it. So now I'm trying to get a definitive answer because: Restocking Fees.

@MattSpeller said:

@creayt or just a generic card to give you more monitors, not sure if you'd see a benefit from another 970?? This is quickly heading outside what I know about.

I think you're right, in fact there's a note on that SLI page about when you do have 2 identical cards that support SLI about not being able to use a 2nd or 3rd in any way BUT SLI. So close call if that's true. Thx.

@MattSpeller

HMMMMMM. This:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/sli/faq

Says SLI, even quad SLI, supports a max of 2 monitors. So it sounds like SLI is the opposite of what I need

Since I don't need SLI I wonder if I can just run a 2nd 970 ( in case I ever do get into gaming and want SLI ) in the PCIe 2 16 slot and run a monitor or two through it.

@MattSpeller said:

Return / sell the 970 for 2x 960's? You don't really need SLI if you're not gaming either - $0.02

Unrelated: I'm going to be digging into developing for Oculus soon and the minimum requirement is a 970, so I have to stick w/ at least one of those.

@MattSpeller said:

Return / sell the 970 for 2x 960's? You don't really need SLI if you're not gaming either - $0.02

Are you saying you can run 2x GTXs without SLI? That'd be fine for me. If so, do I just distribute the monitors evenly across the two cards and they operate independently? I didn't know you could do that. That sound amazing.

@Dashrender said:

OK to rich for my blood.. those are pretty sweet though.

They are pretty pricey. Not nearly as bad as the 27" 1200p ones I got about 6 years ago, which were in the $1,000 a piece range though. Also you can get these refurbished for $420, but still, I agree. Very spensive stuffs. My monitors, when I'm done w/ this setups, will have cost way more than the workstation that runs them.

@Dashrender said:

LOL - one of my 1680 x 1050 monitors just died and I'm only now upgrading to dual 1920 x 1080.

@creayt what size are those monitors?

Do you find yourself having problems with certain apps running at that resolution?

For example on my Yoga 2 Pro 3200 x 1800, things like VirtualBox look like hell and have tiny screens - I realize it's because the program isn't written to scale with windows, but damn it's annoying.

They're all 27", 2560x1440s. Here's the link to them:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P0EQD1Q?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s01

Haven't had any issues w/ resolution. Because they're so huge even small text is very easy to read from far away, that's actually why I chose these. I ordered a 27 and a 24" at the same resolution ( same quality, same Dell Ultrasharp line ) and used them side by side, the 24" was just slightly too small to read a lot of smaller text comfortably, the 27 was perfect. This is by far the best monitor I've ever had, and the thin bezels are pretty epic.

The reason there are no resolution issues is that at the screen's native resolution you can still use normal ( 100% ) scaling. On laptop resolutions above 1920x1080 you have to use Windows scaling to dynamically make text larger for it to be readable, which screws with SO MANY APPS that I can't use laptops like that on Windows ( OS X handles it much better except... is too slow to be usable ), so I always opt for a 1080p laptop screen.

Totally with you on that. The text scaling in Windows just kills my experience.

@JaredBusch said:

Been there

And my other question is... is SLI as simple as "use both of the graphics cards together as one for improved performance" or will the SLI implementation from a current board be much better/faster than one from say 4-6 years ago? That will heavily affect my decision I spose.

So I tried out this new monitor stand which puts 2 of them in landscape atop each other. And I'm in love. And have decided to upgrade to 5 monitors in butterfly formation.

I currently have a non-SLI motherboard w/ a single GTX 970. All monitors are 2560x1440. I may be able to return the motherboard and grab the upgraded version of it which does support SLI. But, these are 1155, older boards, so maybe I'm better off grabbing the new SkyLake and a fresh mobo and RAM kit. So my question is, does SLI let you use the multi-monitor capabilities of both cards? My GTX maxes out at 4 x 1440p, and I need a 5th, so it'd be amazing to be able to pop in another GTX 970 and use all 5 monitors without having to resort to smoke and mirrors like DisplayLink.

If not, is there a card that can handle 1440p x 5?

Thanks!

Probably my most frivolous purchase in years.

Backplate for the GTX. Seems to add a certain je ne sais quoi.

@creayt said:

I'm not sure what you guys are talking about. The CPUs aren't that powerful. 32GB+ in a laptop is a minimum for me and I don't even run VMs, just multitask.

It's not that the products I develop use 32GB of RAM, it's that all of my tooling, web browsing, Creative Cloud apps, and debugging, etc. all ad up to more than 24 GB and I think rapid mode uses a handful of GB ( used to be limited to 1, I think I read that it maxes out at 10% of system as of the last few updates so somewhere around 3 GB ). There are certain projects I've written that do a heavy amount of complex relational data assembly and caching at startup and serve that from a RAM cache, so it's nice to allocate 10+ GB to that when I'm working on it, but that's not at all times. In any case, I've tried working on 8, 16, and 24 GB and inevitably get the Windows pop up that the OS is running out of RAM.

I'm excited for the days when containers come to Windows and my workstation has as much RAM as my server ( 256GB ).

@s.hackleman said:

Can someone "explain it like i'm 5" why you need this kind of power in a mobile workstation? It seems like complete overkill for me.

I'm not sure what you guys are talking about. The CPUs aren't that powerful. 32GB+ in a laptop is a minimum for me and I don't even run VMs, just multitask. If you need a workstation graphics card, however high-end, it's because you're doing 3D modeling or some other task that requires it. Developing for Oculus, for example, requires a very high end graphics card.

The idea behind a super high powered laptop is that you consolidate your workstations. You have a single laptop that replaces your desktop and you plug into monitors at the office and then take with you on the road without having to manage two different OSs, app sets, and setups.

I had to ditch the ASUS w/ the GTX 965 because it couldn't handle Oculus development. It also wouldn't allow for the use of 4 1440p monitors which I've now switched to ( ordered a stand yesterday ).

To me, these Lenovos aren't that powerful. Xeons are great at having tons of cores, not great at having blistering clock speeds.

I personally can't develop comfortably on less than a 3.5ish Ghz quad w/ HT ( somehow the 4-core i5 I had felt noticeably slower than the HT Xeon at about the same clock I'm on now ), 32GB, and specifically a Samsung SSD in rapid mode. Now that I'm finally on a legitimate graphics card and can see how dramatically it improves my computing experience I doubt I can ever shy away from that either. In fact the GTX 970 feels so nice that it's got me wondering whether I shouldn't upgrade to a 980 TI while I still can.

Just because you don't need something to get a job done doesn't mean that having it won't improve or dramatically improve your experience.

I'm actually excited about these workstations and the first UHD 17" screen I've seen. The idea of 64GB in a laptop and all of the things I could do with that is mouth-watering. You'd be surprised at how quickly professional editing and debugging tools combined w/ debugging code you're working with can saturate large amounts of RAM. I'm sure video editors, game-makers, 3D modelers, CADers, and other heavy duty pros make great use of systems like these.

For typical office peeps and light development though, you definitely don't need them. But honestly $2,000 is NOT expensive for a high-quality laptop ( not saying these are high-quality, I haven't touched one yet and I've seen a lot of shitty Lenovos at stores ), it's a bargain. You can configure some 17" Dell Precisions w/ less power than these that'll get you past $3,000 easily.

@MattSpeller said:

@creayt the seiki is how I know 60hz is a must lol - but for $300 I really can't complain.

Ahhh, very nice. Believe it or not I tried to use a Seiki 39" 4k on two separate occasions, I actually loved the size and clarity, etc, but yeah, the 30 Hz got to me. Do you use it for work work or just gaming or media or what?

@MattSpeller said:

39" 4K + 26" 1080P - love it. Wish I'd gone larger for the 4K (oh and 60hz is a must)

Nice! What 39" are you on? Not the Seiki I reckon because it's 30 Hz.

I'm currently on 3x 27" 2560x1440 screens and thinking very hard about adding a 4th to get to this setup, now that I have a graphics card that can handle it.

Totally agree w/ the comment "How can more real estate be a bad thing?"

I know there are various camps about this, but I'm curious to get some opinions. Who here uses more than one monitor? For those that don't, why don't you? For those that do, why do you? And what's your setup like? And your workflow?

Making a monitor buying decision and curious as to how other pros live.

Seems to work if it's the only thing in the post.

@scottalanmiller said:

Tested and the error is happening in Chrome for me but not for Firefox. Are you on Chrome?

Yes I am. I have Firebug installed for development which renders the browser unusable for anything other than development. So it's 100% Chrome for browsing.