Dual Monitors: What are the uses?

[kantonburg]

<< That's me with two
displays. >>



SUO, twice as productive..pffft.

I could be twice as productive with DUAL CPU's

So why don't you let me use that bad boy beside me instead of this PPro 200 hehe

 

[flenn]

chess9,

I'm lazy so here's a cut and paste from a previous thread:

I'm running a 32MB G400 DH (not Max) as primary and a V3 2000 as secondary in Win98SE on an MSI 6309 mobo. I originally tried to use the G400 for both but there are a few things I couldn't live with, one being that the second monitor shuts off during games. The other is that I couldn't run both monitors at 1280x1024x32 at an 85hz refresh rate. The worst is that you have to disable dual head to run games, which requires a reboot. Well, that isn't entirely true but performance is terrible if you don't.

Just to be clear, the other monitor is on during games but I have to Alt-Tab to actually use the app.

 

[videotips]

If you are doing a lot of scanning you want a large monitor(21&quot not two smaller ones.

Dual monitors are primarily used for video editing... one monitor with timeline, video monitor, fx, etc... the other lists video files.

 

[Double Trouble]

I use the Matrox G400 Max DH to power two 19&quot; monitors.... it's just extremely convenient to have that much more desktop space to have all sorts of windows open, from Visual Foxpro to Netscape to Word etc etc.

There are also certain games (if you are so inclined) that support dual monitors, so the game actually uses both monitors. There's a list of these games on the matroxusers website.

With the G400 you don't have to use up another PCI slot, and more importantly, you don't have to eat up another IRQ either.

All in all, I'm EXTREMELY pleased with the G400 DH, the only thing I don't like is that in Win2k, your second monitor has to run at the same resolution/refresh rate as the first. That's not always convenient.

 

[chess9]

VideoTips: Yes, I already have a Mitsubishi 21&quot; monitor, thank God! But I think I'm going to hook up an old 15&quot; monitor I have sitting here.

Tagej: I'm worried about IRQs because I have quite a few devices already and contention can be a problem. I'm leaning to the Matrox, but I think I'll wait until the Invidia based cards come out. If they are similarly priced, I think I'll go with that solution.

 

[Mday]

spreadsheet, sure i can go higher res, but text is bigger this way.

HTML, code and rendered result at the same time.

programming, well, yeah.

surfing, well, HELL, yeah.

photo editting.

MS FS 98. 'nuff said about that.

matrox's dual head allows DVD to be spanned.

pr0n.

 

[TheBigZ]

Hmm, is this G400 dual head a pci? IE: could one drop that card in and run 3 monitors?? Now that would be sexy... useless perhaps, but sexy

 

[WoundedWallet]

Rogue, is this 9 monitor limit for real?

Can I actually have more than one PCI video card installed without any conflicts?

How is this done? Any special utility for that?

As of right now I have one monitor that serves two computers via a switch, and another monitor dedicated to one of thses computers. Since one of the computers is a server I spend most of the time with a dual monitor configuration which is great to do web work with Netscape, IE and whatever other application I'm using at the time.

I've thinking about a third computer to use for games and multimedia and testing apps. If what you say is true then I could get another switch box and repeat the setup allowing the main system to have three screens where I could keep the two browsers open full screen all the time.

See chess9, after a while using dual monitors, you could start yearning for a third one

 

[chess9]

Nine monitors! You guys need a 12 step program! Good grief, I thought I lived multi-tasking h*ll! I see the Asus MX is close to release. I'd like to be able to see an actual card, something besides a press release. Jeesh!

 

[IceStorm]

I've been using multi-monitor since January, 1999. Ever since I received my twin Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u's. I've done this with:

- Matrox Millennium G200 and a Millennium II
- Matrox Millennium G400 MAX
- Matrox Millennium G400 MAX and a Millennium II

The G200/MII setup was paired up with a V2 SLI rig. That's FOUR video cards in one PC. Ugh. Talk about heat. But it worked.

I've only used it with Winblows 98 (ok, a little with Linux, but not much). I find that on a 440BX platform, there are no problems, and only slight degredation when gaming. On the VIA Apollo Pro 133A, there was a signifigant degredation in performance when leaving the second display on the G400 enabled.

You can game in D3D with no problems with both displays enabled. You CANNOT use an OpenGL ICD when Windows sees more than one display adapter enabled (hardware OpenGL is disabled). MiniGL driver work fine, though (TurboGL on the G400 was a dream come true). You can disable the display via the Display Control Panel - no need to reboot, for most games. One or two were really cranky (Soldier of Fortune, in particular).

The G400 becomes two 16MB cards, but moving pages between heads is much quicker than when using two separate cards. This is something to keep in mind when chosing to go with a single G400 MAX over two separate cards.

Matrox is not the only company that makes multi-monitor cards. Appian has been for years. It is possible to get two and four display PCI cards from both companies - Matrox's cards are very expensive, are not in the Joe Average retail channel, and are rather large.

Just my $0.02

 

[flenn]

IceStorm,

I don't know if it was my VIA 133A or what, but I couldn't run any modern D3D game properly with both heads enabled. The game ran so badly, I couldn't play. Turning off the second head through Video Properties made no difference. The only way to get back performance was to disable DH through a reboot. This was a huge strike against my G400.

BTW, previous to the G400/V3 2K combo, I was using a G200 on one monitor and an S3 virge and V2 on the other.

 

[Nater21]

Yes it is entirely possible to have two video cards or more installed and have seperate monitors hooked up to each one. You must be running windows 98 I think Second edition. I have had two PCI video cards installed. The one in the lowest numbered PCI slot will be detected by windows first and set up as your primary display, and then once in windows if you go to display settings (after all drivers are installed of course) there will be two monitors that you can adjust settings for. Also you can move the two monitors around eachother. so your second monitor can be set as an extension of your desktop in any direction. position above, below, left, right, diagonal, just about anywhere. so when you move the mouse off the screen in that direction, it appears on the second screen. Works very well. Great Feature!