Dual moniter questions...

[jamezzz122]

Are there any requirements video card wise in order to run two moniters? Also what happens when you are doing stuff that usually involves one moniter such as Photoshop. Does the other screen stay idle? What about in games? Thanks!

 

[Ice Czar]

well all the cards I have are dualies with seperate channels
but you can also do an AGP plus a PCI card

I dont do much gaming
but natively under windows
you can either clone or extend the desktop
additional software controls are available depending on the dual head card you use
I have a Matrox G550, ATI Radeon 9600 AIW and an PNY\Nvidia Quadro FX3000
they all have different but similar software features

 

[Zardoz]

Most newer cards support dual outputs, but the requirements is that the card must have 2 ramdac's to run multi-output.

As for desktop applications you can use both monitors as you wish (that's if the app is multi-monitor aware, and most are.) for instance if you use Photoshop. you can have the work space on one monitor with the tools and such on the other. or have Photoshop on one with a browser and other apps on the other...

Games are somewhat different. there are limitations as to what you can do with games and multi-monitors, most games do not run across multi-monitors and some older ones you might even need to shut the second monitor off so it will play right or not take a performance hit... Most of the time you will find yourself only playing on one monitor anyway...