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Apparently, Intel is preparing a special driver for its Grantsdale-G aka i915G-based mainboards that would allow plugging up to 4 monitors to one personal computer without using any special expensive graphics cards, sources close to the Santa Clara, California-based company said.

According to previously revealed information Intel’s i915G will sport two display outputs itself allowing to use a couple of displays on computers utilizing this core-logic. However, to address growing needs of enterprise and financial communities Intel will allow sporting four monitors per PC when an PEG x16 graphics card with dual-head capability is installed. Keeping in mind that such graphics cards are now very inexpensive, Intel will offer the most cost-effective 4 display support in the industry.

Systems with two and more monitors are typically used by finance, engineering, design, media and some other communities for more efficient work. The market of professional 2D solutions (the majority of which support 2 or more monitors) is growing rather substantially.

Typical graphics card with support for 4 displays, such as NVIDIA Quadro NVS 400, costs roughly $400. Typical graphics card with connectors for 2 displays usually costs about $70.

Intel’s 915G chipset sports PCI Express x16 graphics port (PEG x16), Intel Extreme Graphics 3 – Intel’s third generation integrated graphics core, dual-channel DDR-II SDRAM, integrated dual-monitor graphics core with a number of DirectX 9.0 features, 4 Serial ATA-150 ports, 4 PCI Express x1 ports and Azalia audio.

Other chipset developers, such as ATI, would also like to see 3 or 4 displays support by their platforms.

Intel would not confirm or deny specific features of its future products.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipset...129003632.html

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