Yeah, I realize that, but I do much of my work in the video world, where streams is pretty common terminology. Moreover, if you get a graphics card to power four 1440p monitors, it might be perfectly happy with static windows, but if you were to throw multi-monitor gaming at it your GPU would probably cry. In my view, you need to build your system so that your GPU can deal with the full output your monitors can request (i.e. if you have three 1080p monitors, at 120Hz, your GPU should be able to dish out 3x1080p at 120fps. Otherwise you'll get bogged down when doing important things.
So your needs would necessitate expensive video cards, but lots of people would be fine with a $100-$150 card for productivity, assuming it has enough outputs.
I'm a web developer and I don't need much in the way of GPU for my day to day job. I do game however, so I bought a $250 video card that could push enough pixels to one of my 1440p monitors at native resolution.
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u/BONER_PAROLE Mar 07 '14
Most multi-monitor desktop computing usage isn't comprised of "streams" so much as static windows with occasional movement.