How fast of a PC?

SoloCon · 05-30-2007, 07:38 PM

I am working on building a PC for the Car. I have built many systems over the last 15 years but nothing needed for running 5-6 screens.

My question is, what shold I b looking for in a system thats going to be running 5-6 screens. These screens will NOT be "clones" but different apps will be running on each screen.

1 screen will run RR.
2nd screen will run the audio/video from RR
3rd screen will disply ecu info comming form my Car.(different app)
4th will do same as screen 3 but disply different info. (Same app, the app can do all this)
5th screen will clone the auto/video screen (screen 2)
6th screen will do my nav/gaming/internet

I know I am looking at a power house for all this. I also have multi "quad" card so thats OK.

Just need some info on what type of hardware should I be looking at? Any ideas out there?

walstib · 05-30-2007, 08:53 PM

Wow, maybe a Cray or BlueGene/L? Seriously, that is a pretty significant load, crunching all of that data and pushing all of those monitors + audio. I would think you would need at least a 2GHz dual core processor. Just a guess. Only one way to know for sure... It may be cheaper to have 2 PCs, one smaller PC for ECU stuff, one beefier PC for everything else?

RedGTiVR6 · 05-30-2007, 09:08 PM

Most people who have done this in a car (did it for show only purposes) have done so with multiple PCs. They just arent displayed so you never know it.

turbocad6 · 05-30-2007, 09:18 PM

one word, multiple pc's & networking..

ok, so it's not one word, but it may be the easiest & most efficent way to really pull of a system like this... if you think about it a bit, you'll see that it really is the best option, I mean 2 single cores will have double of most things that a dual core will have, & can be much easier to manage

I'm building a dual laptop motherboard setup that will take the space of a single pc for a system like this, something to consider at least, & let's face it, 80% of the time only the front few screens will be in use anyway, so it can be more efficent this way too, pc 1 can activate pc 2.. a network enclosure for media drives, a kr1 router for mobile hotspot & everythings networked & sharable... someones got there laptop, hey great, when there in or around your vehicle there online & can access your media too

another thing to think about... sure you can have 5 screens run off 1 pc, use something like ultramon & dedicate a program to each screen, but, how versitile is that? I mean suppose screen 2 wants "source" 1 while you want to be in the back & access main control on screen 5, that could be a problem, especially if everythings touchscreen, I'm setting my system up so I can switch each screen to select what's displayed independantly & all touchscreens too, are you thinking each screen just static & dedicated display?

05-30-2007, 11:53 PM

The best I can do for a dual monitor setup is to always display video overlay on one monitor while being able to run applications and surf the net on the main monitor.

You might want to look into some sort of multi monitor multi desktop setup. For video overlay, you should be able to specify which monitor to display video overlays. For various applications, you need to find out how to always run the program on a specific desktop workspace.

From a Unix standpoint, you can direct windows or programs to one of 4 desktops. I've never done this on a multi monitor config, but it'll be interesting.