hello,
I've been using pd/Gem on Macs and on Linux machines. For lots of video stuff I would certainly suggest going with a Mac, dispite the extra cost. This is due to the very optimized commercial video decoders in quicktime. For a Mac I would get the best ATI card available, Radeon 9800PRO? For linux I would certainly suggest an Nvidia card, though the drivers are not free, they are 100% fully functional (for example video output on a radeon card on linux is often not possible). I've not looked into what Nvidia gfx cards are the best here.
Thanx for the answer I put a line in the wiki for this,can you describe Mac modell and system version you used doing that please login here the page http://puredata.info/community/projects/pdcomputer/MacintoshMultiHead
As for professional vs comsumer graphics cards I would guess to say that the Quadro line is probably not going to help you much. I've been told that the only real difference between these cards is the amount of acceptable error in the output. For less error you pay twice as much. The gamer market has only really been pushing the consumer cards (obviously) and so I would argue these give the best value for the money.
The most thing I am suspect is the signal quality, is there a difference in noise floor of SVGA-Outputs and is it possible to drive long cables to projectors on a stage etc... since I never did.
I don't see how you can run four screens off one computer, are there 4HEAD fast openGL cards out there??? I would say you need two machines with dual-head cards. Note that two machines with dual heads is going to be way faster than one machine with 4.
Using PCI-Express or also Known 2 PEG Slots on a nforce4 chipset mainboard, you can drive two cards with SLI Link (I think only nvidia has this) as one with four heads... I have read never tried ?-)
LightTwist is a GPL system for correcting distortion caused by projecting
thanks, noted in wiki
mfg winfried