ATI multiple monitor support question

J

JamesE

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 22, 2006
Messages
113
Hey folks,

Odd question - it's been years since I've used an ATI product, and I'm currently working with a bfg 8800 GTS 512 thinking about grabbing a 5770 1gb with the intention of a 2nd down the road if performance becomes an issue. My question is, for multiple monitor setup, does ATI have the ability to treat each desktop independently? for example, in the nvidia control panel there's a setting for multiple monitors that doesn't stretch or clone the desktop to the other display devices, but rather treats each monitor separate, with it's own desktop wallpaper, native res, etc. Does it work the same for ATI cards?

Thanks!
 
You mean extended desktop? This is standard in Windows, not just video drivers. If that's not what you're talking about, you could point me in the right direction for where the setting is, and I'll see what the comparison would be (I have a 9600GSO and a 5770 on different rigs).
 
You're talking abou nView desktop manager right?

Unfortunately, there's no equivalent for ATI. It does support cloning, spanning, extend (if you maximize a window it only expands to that monitor), but that's about it. There's no desktop manager. The wallpaper is left up to windows, so whatever wallpaper you stick in one monitor gets applied to both.

It doesn't quite work right tho, i have two monitors, and one of them is in portrait mode. I set the wallpaper and it shows up properly on one monitor, but that attribute gets applied to both. So i ended up with black bars at the top and bottom of my portrait monitor. Apparently it has issues with independently autoscaling the background for each monitor.

There's also a few bugs in the way the monitors are managed, particularly when you try setting profiles that include spanning. It screws up the rest and seems to lose track of which monitor is which, how they're rotated and what resolution they support. If i do it wrong, one of the monitors would end up defaulting to 2560x1600, which is normally not even in the selection.

I have two monitors a 17" 1280x1024 and a 22" 1680x1050 (Primary). The other day, i tried activating the profile for 17"Portrait and 22"landscape. I ended up with the primary desktop going to the 17" and that monitor is showing an out of range error. Since the control panels only show up in the primary, i was screwed. I had to force a shutdown (Hold power for 5 secs) and restart with the 17" unplugged.

After some tinkering, i found that the profile for spanned desktop had screwed up the options. I managed to fix it but it was a pain trying to figure out what went wrong. Needless to say, i do not recommend trying out eyefinity with rotateable monitors.

And one more thing, i can't seem to find a way to assign profiles to applications. So if you had a profile that would force antialiasing on a game, you can't do that in ATI control panel.
 
I remember nView that was one thing I loved about nvidia card. It's been a while so I don't remember much else. Currently I have an ATI, I love it, and Catalyst Control Center is great.
 
Sly pinned it, desktop manager is what I was talking about. It's unfortunate ATI doesn't seem to have an equivalent judging by what you're saying. Thanks for the detailed analysis!
 
ATI does have Hyrdavision, which is a free download for their products that is their answer to nView. I haven't used it, but it appears to have many of the features of nView (which I have used in the past.)

Is nView even supported in Windows 7?

I just use the ATI CCC for a multiple monitor configuration, and use profiles to switch between 'working' and 'gaming.' Different games have different (user-generated) profiles, and I just manually select the profile to use with a particular game.
 
Balthazor said:
I just use the ATI CCC for a multiple monitor configuration, and use profiles to switch between 'working' and 'gaming.' Different games have different (user-generated) profiles, and I just manually select the profile to use with a particular game.
Click to expand...

I have issues with switching profiles, my eyefinity profile works great but when going back to extended mode i have to open up CC and re set the monitor placements. Dunno why it keeps messing up extended mode after i switch from eyefinity mode.
 
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