I am running 4 TFT monitors from my dual graphics card (using 2 VGA powered 250Mhz splitter boxes). Basically I need to see the same dual screen setup in another part of the room.

I seem to be getting some ghosting on two of the tft screens, i.e. THey are set up as 1&3, and in the other part of the room, 2&4. The slight ghosting appears on 3 & 4. It is very slight but its annoying and, despite tweaking the display settings its there and cannot be rectified.

Could this be due to one of the graphic card outputs having a digital output adapter prior to the VGA adapter in the back of that?

Is 250Mhz enough for the splitter boxes? not sure what that means?

Hope someone can help.

Al

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So you're running 4 TFT's from only 1 video card, is that correct??

I've never used those splitter boxes before, but my guess would be latency in the signal passing through the splitter.

Your best best would be to purchase a cheap dual output video card (like a geforce 8400 or something) and run the other 2 screens off that (i.e. 2 screens per vid card). No need for the splitter then.

BTW, are all the screens the same, or could the ghosting be down to the screens themselves?

(sorry, just want to get all the details before giving many suggestions)

Just because these terms are often used interchangeably by people, I wanted to make sure we're talking about the same video symptom:

I'm going to assume you're not describing "smearing" which it seems lately has been mostly used to describe a latent after-image kind of effect with moving images. Also as used recently, "ghosting" appears even with static images. (However, tomorrow popular usage might be the other way around again)

A handful of other items that can cause static image "ghosting" (Depending on where the cables/connectors are, how you're using DVI to VGA adapters, etc in your topography. For example, even which cable end the vga adapter is attached (card/display-head) can make a slight difference).

Cable type used (e.g vga v. DVI)
Cable quality
Cable impedance
Adapter quality
Cable length
Video amplifiers (on vid card, active splitters, or display head)

Resolution v. refresh rate (For example, a larger XbyY pixels picture with a given refresh rate ups the "dot-clock" frequency. Combined with poor cables/adapters, the image gets worse the faster more data flows. This also affects the video amplifiers on the card and in the display head. If the amplifier is poorly designed or designed to a given optimized bandwidth, when you exceed that bandwidth the image quality suffers.

Display "screen refresh rate" (for example, I've seen static "ghosting" of text when the rate was set to 60Hz, that completely disappeared when it was set to 70Hz) This is related to 'resolution v. refresh rate', bandwidth optimization, etc As you can see, it goes both ways. In this case, a higher refresh rate fixed the problem. So, I was below the maximum bandwidth of the display amplifiers, but I had not been at an optimum setting.


edit to add--
To rule in/out display contributions, I'd run each diplay directly locally off the video card using no adapters if possible, and a short high-quality cable. If they all look identical and don't diplay the symptoms then you've got a place to start

I'd then repeat the trial just before the inputs to the splitter boxes, again, comparing monitors.

edit--
a bit more on the impact of setting of screen refresh rate

hi thanks for that. Well I'm running four screens from one dual card using two splitter boxes. I have been to the pc the shop and they have tried installing a second dual card as you suggested but they just got blue screen errors. They tell me it is not possible unless I get a new motherboard that has two 16x PCI graphic card slots and even then I must use two of the same cards or there will be conflicts.

So currently I am running all four 19" screens 1280 x 1024 they are all standard not widescreen. I have tried different combinations as you suggested and the ghosting still appears but its livable with. Just not good to stare at for long periods as it will be bad on my eyesight.

Anyway I will maybe try higher end cables would that maks the difference?