Question on dual monitors...

[AMDPwred]

How exactly do they work? I know you need two monitors and a dual display video card. I'm wondering if it's one big screen split between two monitors (which would suck) or can you have two separate desktops? Example, can you play CS on the left monitor and when you die in a round jump over to the right monitor and browse the anandtech forums?

-Edit-

Anybody have duals and do this?

 

[Thyme]

You can't run a DirectX or OpenGL or whatnot game on one monitor and surf on the other. It just extends the desktop.

You could do that if there was a game that ran windowed and ran when it wasn't active.

 

[AMDPwred]

Come on guys, I know a few of you use duals

 

[bigbootydaddy]

you could use 2 video cards, like I am...

games like CS dont like dual monitors, i have to disable my extended desktop just to get opengl to kickstart. if it is windowed, then that might be different.

same for q3, diablo2, etc etc.

you still have your desktop, but then you get more space, ou can place it above, below, left or right, and your menus dont leave the original screen unless you tell them to and wont extend (start bar across both screens)

 

[AMDPwred]

Could you post a pic of your desktop(s)?

 

[AMDPwred]

I was just looking at the GF2 MX dual display and it was saying you need Win2000 to run games in OpenGL or 98, ME, 2000 for DirectX games. Also it said you need a normal monitor and a TV or a projector for the second screen. How can you just hookup two separate PC monitors? Any links?

 

[IcemanJer]

My suggestion is to go with the Matrox G450 DualHead card. The ATI Radeon VE will work fine as well but ATI's got a rather buggy history of Win2K driver support. You have the option of extended desktop or 2 desktops. The Matrox card has 2 VGA connector. The ATI card has one VGA and one DVI/S-VIDEO (only one between the DVI and the S-VIDEO can be used at the same time), but it also comes with a DVI->VGA adaptor so you can use 2 VGA monitors on the ATI card. I'm not sure how the connector is setup on the GeForce card.

 

[AMDPwred]

It looks (looking at the pic for the card) as if you have one PC monitor output and one S-Video output.

So could you give me a link to the card you are talking about? Thanks for your reply!

 

[wyldebill]

its actually a pretty useful feature, although i have found some bugaboo's with it.

i use visual studio at work, and put the classbrowser, variable windows, and stack on the left monitor. leaving the entire right monitor (less the toolbar of course) for code. schweet.

bugaboo. lunchtime quake3 games require me to disable the 2nd monitor. all fullscreen 3d apps currently require this. however, you can run q3 in a window if your card supports it by hitting alt_enter ingame in q3. it ain't perfect, but it can be done.

also, i have noticed that if i put a window up in the 2nd monitor (like a classbrowser) and then shut down visual studio. and disable the 2nd monitor. and then bring visual studio up again, the class browser is now in 'never-never land'. never to be seen again until you enable that monitor. worse, if you move the ide window to the 2nd monitor now you will (once again) never see the classbrowser as it somehow uses the 2nd monitor as it's base of reference and the other monitor will not display the classbrowser ever!!! it has to do with taking for granted a single monitor, which is not always the case now.

i could go on and on, about how when doing a screencap the wrong screen gets capped, it's possible to disable both monitors thus rendering the system completely useless,etc.

however, when it IS working it really is nice. browsing the polycount forum for metastream models while compiling on the other for example...

wb

 

[AMDPwred]

So you can't really do my CS game in one monitor, AIM and web sufin in the other monitor idea?

 

[AMDPwred]

Bump

 

[Jimbd]

I use two monitors with a Matrox G450 dual monitor card AGP. To answer your question, Yes you can play games on one monitor and browse anandtech on the other. you can watch DVD on one and bowse on the other.

Whether you have single desktop or two desktops depend partially on the OS you will be running. In Win 98 you can limit one application on one monitor and run the other app on the other. In win2K you see one desktop. The resolutions on each monitor are also despendant on the OS.

I don't play games so I will not be abe to guide you about games, etc. I strongle suggest you chec/serach matrox tech support faqs. I'm sure they will answer your questions fully.

If you are a professional user I sugget you use Matrox the image quality is superb.

 

[AMDPwred]

Thanks for your reply! BTW, I use Win98SE.

 

[Zach]

I just use two video cards, one for each of two monitors. Easiest, and your upgrades are easier (do you care if your second card is 4mb? probably not. Does it need 3D? noooo...). I don't play games on my dual monitor system anymore, but when I did I either kept the second monitor disabled in a profile under Win98, or used Win2K for dual and Win98 for singe.

 

[AMDPwred]

Yeah cause I'll be playing games alot so I need at least one card to be good. So I could just get a crap PCI video card and use that right?

 

[Zach]

<< Yeah cause I'll be playing games alot so I need at least one card to be good. So I could just get a crap PCI video card and use that right? >>



Exactly. Do research though. I bought an ATI Xpert98, found that it couldn't be second card in Win2K. Xpert99 is fine.. blah. I've used a Viper V330 (Nvidia Riva128) and Creative Labs Blaster Exxreme (Permidia of some sort) fine though.

 

[acidtear]

coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllllllllllllll
if you get this to work tell me

 

[AMDPwred]

Hey Zach, could you show me a link to a cheap card that will work for me? Thanks for all your help!

 

[Zach]

I feel generous (and bored):

search for
&quot;XPERT pci 128&quot;
&quot;riva pci&quot;
&quot;matrox Millenium pci&quot;

or go generic with:
&quot;video pci 8mb&quot;
&quot;video pci 4mb&quot;

Search in pricewatch or pricegrabber. Find a good looking deal, check if it's not compatable. ATI has good FAQ's, Matrox I don't know about. I haver personal experiance with Riva and permidia PCI baords though.

A post in the video forum looking for suggestions from others might help, you'll get varified results. Make sure to ask about Win9x and Win2K though, some like those Xpert98's might be different in either.

 

[AMDPwred]

Hey thanks for that info!