Do you think the Alienware Desktops (ATX) are worth it? My main desire is to run 3-5 monitor of 24" or so?
as an alienware owner i must say no its not worth it, sure its cool, sure your friends prolly wont have one, youll get some kudos etc etc but its just a pc at the end of the day, if you like building them then do your own or get one from dell (owns alienware). if you have the money and you dont mind paying a premium then get an alienware like i did. actually i see a lot of places that build gaming PC's soooo much cheaper than alienware and in some cases are just as good. why you would wan to run more then 3 monitors is beyond me, your graphics card will have 2 DVI ports which means 2 monitors per card, so your going to need 3 cards to run 5 - 6, i advise you stick with 4 monitors max, youll only need two cards for that and you wont be able to run it in SLI. If you use devices to clone displays then that sux as they cant act as independent displays, not worth it.
alienware do produce good machines as the setups are designed together so they will all run well making them run quicker than perhaps some other machines with a similar spec. they also build the cases with extra lighting and stuff to show that it is for gaming but they are overpriced. if u were to buy the same parts and build it urself u do save a lot in money especially with gaming pcs. also, with gaming pcs, they are never rele that worth it as after a year the price of the graphics card and stuff decrease massively when a new one is released.
Not sure if Alienware has them, but you might be interested in the ATI/AMD 5000 series cards which can support up to 6 monitors using Eyefinity. Here are some reviews/articles about that: http://guru3d.com/article/ati-eyfinity-editorial-review/1 http://www.geek.com/articles/games/ati-eyefinity-one-card-powering-six-displays-20090911/ http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ati-eyefinity-radeon-monitor,8637.html Anyway, personally I would build my own PC unless money isn't an issue for you.
to run that many monitors, u just need a board that has 3 or more PCI-E slots and have video cards in them, if you want to expand what you see across the monitors, u will need ATI Eyefinity Technology or similar from nVidia
no the 50" lcd tv woudln't do what OP wants...none of the video cards will support that large resolution
