3 external monitors

Hey,
I want to know how to get three monitors working off my m4400, now I have read up a little bit on it and I have found that it will only support 2, however I could go down the route of getting either a pci graphics card or a usb to dvi converter.

Firstly I am a little unsure how the pci graphics card exactly works and I have heard lots of problems with the onboard graphics card and pci graphics card drivers conflicting, therefore unless somebody could explain to me exactly how this works I am not going to attempt this by myself.

The other option is using a dvi to usb converter to get my 3rd monitor going, I understand that I obviously will not be able to use this monitor for solidworks, so I could ensure that this screen could be designated for things like excel.

I would like to get 3 monitors going if there is an affordable solution, if anyone can see a way of doing this please let me know.

Thanks

If it helps the current graphics card is a Quadro FX 770M

 

By "PCI graphics card" I assume you mean something like an external dGPU setup?

It's definitely way easier to get a USB display adapter; they are relatively inexpensive and not too difficult to set up. And you can use it for Excel... though what exactly do you mean by "designated for things"?

 

Yes I do mean like and external GPU. What I mean for designated is that, I will use the monitor driven from the USB to only ever use office and web browsing. And my other two monitors I will use for solid works.

 

Yeah, you can definitely do that; USB adapters show up just as any other conventionally attached display would in the Windows display manager.

 

Ok that's good to know I didn't think that the display would show up in the display manager if it was driven from a USB, I was under the impression that the windows display manager only ever showed 2 displays. Also as the m4400 doesn't have usb 3.0. The monitors I am looking at purchasing are dell 22 inch LCD's, I am unsure how big a display a USB connection would support? It might be a good temporary option and maybe one day I would buy an external GPU, if I felt the need to.

Or I'm pretty sure that it doesn't work but I see that the workstation docks have multiple outputs. Would I be able to hook up three displays if I purchased a dock?

 

It depends on the specific make/model of adapter you buy... I think most should support at least FHD though.

You would still have to use the USB adapter for the third display.

You could also try using something like the TripleHead2Go:

Matrox TripleHead2Go DisplayPort | Multi-Monitors for Laptops

 

Could you use a firewire to VGA/DVI converter to operate the third screen. I am assuming that in my case this would be far superior to using the USB 2.0 port or maybe even using esata. Or can you only run a third monitor through the USB, I am a bit unsure still as to how this all works.

I got my dual screens set up to day and it really does making things easier. I think 3 will make things even better.
Thanks again.

 

I am not sure if the Firewire adapter exists, but if it does I'm sure you could use it. The eSATA adapter definitely doesn't exist though.

 

You could use something like this: EVGA - USB Devices - EVGA UV Plus+ with an expresscard USB3.0 adapter. That way you get USB 3.0 for the display adapter which is going to be faster than USB2.0. It's still video through USB, but it's definitely better than USB2.0.

 

The evga adapter looks pretty expensive but that gets me thinking I could in fact go from pci to dvi. These converters do exist and I would assume it would be the best option. What do you think?