How DisplayPort multi-streaming delivers new levels of multi-monitor madness

When a vendor sends us a demo system, it typically take great care to ensure that we experience the system exactly as the maker intends us to. So when VESA, the trade group responsible for the DisplayPort standard, said that it was sending PCWorld a multiple-monitor demo system similar to the one it exhibited at CES in January, I expected it to arrive bundled with a detailed guide and all the software needed to present DisplayPort in its best light.

Imagine my surprise when an MSI GX60 gaming laptop, two 24-inch Dell U2413 displays, and a 21.5-inch HP Elite L2201x showed up in the PCWorld Labs without so much as a user manual for any of the four devices. “Wow,” I thought. “They must be pretty confident that setting all this up will be self-evident.”

Robert CardinThe Mini DisplayPort connector is located on the MSI GX60's rear panel, between the VGA and HDMI ports.

As things turned out, setup was pretty much self-evident. The GX60 has HDMI and VGA video outputs, but obviously I was more interested in its Mini DisplayPort. Both of the Dell monitors have full complements of digital video inputs (HDMI, DVI, and full-size DisplayPort, along with ports labeled ‘DisplayPort In’ and ‘DisplayPort Out’), but the HP display has only a DisplayPort input.

I hope more display manufacturers adopt this standard, because DisplayPort rocks.

I connected the full-size DisplayPort on the first Dell to the notebook, plugged a second cable to that monitor’s DisplayPort Out, and connected that to the other Dell’s DisplayPort In. Then I attached a third cable to the second Dell’s DisplayPort Out and plugged it into the HP display to complete the chain.

The notebook was now driving four displays, including its own. This setup was possible because all of the gear—except the HP at the end of the chain—supported DisplayPort’s multistreaming feature. So if you’re thinking of scrounging up three old DisplayPort monitors and duplicating my experience, you’re out of luck. On the other hand, you can press one old monitor into service (if it supports DisplayPort, and if you install it at the end of the chain). DisplayPort is a common feature on professional and business monitors, but it shows up much less frequently on consumer displays.

I hope that changes, because DisplayPort rocks.

The monitors you use don’t have to be the same size, and they need not support the same resolution. As I found out later, that’s why VESA sent us two models (the Dells) that had a native resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels and one (the HP) that had a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. The laptop display at the beginning of the chain also has 1920 by 1080 native resolution, but the monitor at the other end doesn’t have to be positioned last in the array.

Robert CardinPresented with nearly 6 feet of horizontal display space, I found that I didn't need to use the laptop's display at all.

Since the HP monitor was smaller than the other two, I put it in the center of my field of view and arranged the Dells on either side. I moved the notebook off to one side (with a USB mouse and keyboard plugged in), and used it to park windows—such as my appointment calendar—that weren’t my current focus. I found that having my Windows desktop arrayed across three independent monitors was a tremendous boon to my productivity. I almost never had to waste precious time resizing windows as I multitasked, and I had only to swivel my head when an email or chat window commanded my primary focus.

Robert CardinHere I have 'The Hobbit' running on one screen, information about the film from the studio on a second display, and an online game version on the third.

When I switched over to playing games, however, I turned the notebook’s 15.6-inch display off, because it was too disproportionate to the other three screens. Though I could have added a fourth large display to the mix, doing so would have left a bezel in the middle of my view. That wasn’t an issue when I was in a productivity environment, because I never spanned a single application window across more than one display.

Playing games on three midsize displays is mind blowing. Newer titles, including Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite, support the unusual resolutions that such arrays require. In this case, I ran both of them at 5760 by 1080 pixels (1080 being the lowest common denominator in terms of height of the three monitors I was using). The games filled my entire field of view, immersing me in their environments like nothing I’ve ever experienced short of wearing a head-mounted display—but without the inconvenience of having my noggin tethered to my computer. Using three identical displays would have yielded an even better experience because I could have hidden the bezels on the left and right monitors more effectively behind the one in the center. (Samsung once designed and built monitors—the company’s model MD230—specifically for this application, but it no longer manufactures them.)

Robert Cardin I was able to play Bioshock Infinite at 5720 by 1080 resolution, with all its spectacular visual effects intact.

Though I had to dial down Crysis 3’s visual effects to ‘medium’ to render the game playable, I turned on antialiasing and cranked Bioshock’s texture detail and texture filtering settings to ‘ultra’ and had a perfectly enjoyable experience. The game’s built-in benchmark produced an average frame rate of 26 frames per second at those settings, with a maximum of 48 fps and a minimum of 7 fps. Twitch gamers will grouse that anything less than 60 fps is an unacceptable level of performance, but you can get close to that magic number by reducing the demands on the GPU at the expense of the game’s stunning visuals.

Making the most of DisplayPort 1.2 and its multistreaming feature entails a significant investment. DisplayPort is a common feature on business-oriented laptops and desktops, but you won’t find it on a typical all-in-one PC. However, AMD and Nvidia have jumped on the DisplayPort bandwagon in a big way. You’ll find multistreaming DisplayPort connectors on all video cards based on AMD’s Radeon 7000 series and Radeon 8000 series GPUs (as well as on most cards based on its Radeon 6000 series chips), and on all video cards based on Nvidia’s GeForce 600 series and Quadro series processors. Intel’s upcoming Haswell series CPUs will support multistreaming DisplayPort, too.

Even if you already have the right connections on your computer hardware, you’ll likely need to buy new displays to get DisplayPort multistreaming, and such displays don’t come cheap. The high-performance Dell U2413, for instance, costs about $600. If I could afford it, I’d happily invest in three daisy-chainable displays that possess the same dimensions and resolution—but doing so would require more coin than I’m prepared to part with right now. Let’s hope the display industry embraces multistreaming DisplayPort in a bigger way and introduces more consumer-oriented models soon. As I said earlier, DisplayPort rocks.

A lapsed musician, Michael is passionate about home and personal audio. He uses his home as a real-world test lab for evaluating consumer electronics and home control technology.
More by Michael Brown

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Review: Multiplicity 2.0 handy in a multi-computer, multi-monitor setup

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them, studied music at Julliard, and power mods his car for kicks.
More by Jon L. Jacobi

If you run multiple computers and monitors in close proximity to each other, Stardock's Multiplicity 2.0 (free and $40 premium editions) is a cheap and effective alternative to a physical KM switch. It allows you to share a mouse and keyboard with multiple computers.

Multiplicity is free for non-commercial use with two networked computers. More PCs than that and you'll need the $40 version that provides support for up to 9 computers, as well as nice touches such as cut and paste between PCs, centralized audio, and sending keystrokes to all PCs simultaneously.

The latter two features are new for version 2.0, as is the AES-256 bit encrypted connection.

Multiplicity's grid defines which way you scroll the mouse to transfer control to secondary PCs.

Installing Multiplicity is easy, though there's a very subtly placed option for AVG Security Toolbar that's selected by default. Install it if you want it, otherwise, deselect it and follow the prompts.

Eventually the setup will ask you if you want to be a primary or secondary user. Select primary for the PC whose mouse and keyboard you want to use, and secondary for the PCs that you want to control with them. In the latter case, you're given a passcode to enter in on the primary machine to enable remote typing and mouse control.

About the only technical stipulation for using Multiplicity is that the network must be defined on each machine as home or business, not public. Once you've installed Multiplicity on each computer and connected, you drag the secondary computers around a 9-slot grid in the Multiplicity control panel. If a computer is on top of the primary computer, you scroll with the mouse off the top of the primary PC's screen and you see it off on the secondary. Scroll it off the bottom of the secondary screen and you're again using your primary PC.

In my tests, I found the Multiplicity handiest for using my keyboard and mouse to control the laptops I review and network lag was minimal. Beyond keyboard and mouse control, the handiest feature of the pay version of Multiplicity for me was copying files between computers. Alas, while I had no problems cutting and pasting in either direction, for some reason I could only drag items from secondary PCs to the primary PC.

Multiplicity is very handy in a multi-computer, multi-monitor setup where the units are close together. It's more versatile, more convenient, and less expensive than a KVM or KM switch. Give it a shot if you have the need.

Note: The "Try it for free" button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here