Matrox is a Canadian company that specialises in professional computer graphics hardware. Over the years they have offered a number of graphics card solutions for professionals with specialist needs.

They are also the makers of the DualHead2Go & TripleHead2Go products which are still one of the only solutions that can enable multiple monitors on laptop computers.

They have a new multi-monitor graphics card available which offers 8 monitor outputs from just one card, they claim it is a world’s first and I can’t remember seeing anything else capable of supporting this number of screens, so they are probably right.

8 Screens From 1 Card

In theory you could drop this card into pretty much any computer and be able to connect up to 8 screens, all capable of displaying independent programs.

You can also install two of them in one machine, with the right motherboard, and drive 16 monitors from just 1 PC.

This is pretty impressive really and it could definitely be useful in a number of situations that I can see.

There is a problem though (of course…)

What’s the Price?

All this screen capability doesn’t come cheap, no, the Matrox M9188 is retailing at a massive £1,167 + VAT, that’s £1,400 for most of us!

Our eight screen capable Pro PC is only £995 + VAT, that’s over £150 cheaper and you are getting a full PC and operating system with it.

For an extra £80 more than the M9188 you can buy one of our Ultra Eight Screen Computers which has an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5, 8GB of RAM and a solid state drive. It comes with 8 DVI ports on the back, just like the M9188, and features passive (silent) graphics cards.

With one of our eight screen computers you also get the benefit of redundancy, if the worst happens and a graphics card fails then you temporarily lose 2 screens but still have 6 to play with, if your M9188 dies then you’ll be stuck. I bet they don’t stock replacements for them at PC World!

All joking aside though, I can see the benefit of the new Matrox graphics card in some scenarios. There are companies where money for these types of systems is not an issue, for most of us though, when money is an issue then it’s a purchase which is difficult to justify.

Written by Darren @ Multiple Monitors

Last Updated: April, 2013