Dual Monitor Support, Vista, and You

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djnes

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I haven't really played around with dual monitor setups at all in the past. However, I have some spare 17" LCDs at work. Does Vista handle dual screens pretty well, in concert with the Nvidia drivers? Both of the screens will be the same size and resolution, so I'm thinking UltraMon would be overkill.
 
Ever since I started messing with Vista in Beta 1 days it's been just fine with multiple monitors. I use ultramon because I want the second task bar with only tasks from that monitor on it.
 
Ive never used Nvidia's support for this. Does it have the same button (like UltraMon) to send the window to the second screen, or is it all done just with clicking and dragging?
 
The buttons are gone even in ultramon (with Aero). These nvidia drivers aren't as advanced as XP's either, with XP you could grab a window and "flick" it and it would coast to the other screen if the option was turned on in the nvidia drivers.
 
I too have been using dual displays since the early beta's, and my feeling is it works rather well. I have never really used nVidia products much at all, so I can't really comment as to how well they play with Vista.

I can tell you this. Right now, UltraMon is a waste of money with Vista. I know that they are working on it, and I'm sure that shortly a new, Vista compatible version will be available. As far as sending a window to the secondary display, right now it's all click and drag.
 
Dual mon works fine for me. I have the 7950GT and using S-video out to go to my TV (regular Flat tube) and it works wonderfully. Getting another 19" soon and I dont anticipate any issues.
 
I've had a couple minor problems getting dual monitors working, but now they're working fine.

I've got a 19" widescreen and a 4:3 17" CRT both running off a GeForce 7800GT, with the widescreen as the default. When I switched to dual screen with the drivers, two things happened: first, it says my primary monitor is a generic plug-and-play monitor, which it apparenty has assigned to my widescreen, and that my secondary monitor is the widescreen, but in fact uses the CRT as the secondary. I don't question it, it works, but it's odd.

The other minor problem I had was when I first enabled dual monitors, it rotated both monitors 90º to the left, so I had to tilt my head to edit the display options. :) That was odd, but hasn't happened since, and all my settings stay the same through reboots, so I'm fine with it.

Anyone have any suggested fixes for that first problem of monitor detection?
 
I have some strange things that happen, using the latest NVidia drivers for Ultimate Edition

- Sometimes when waking up the monitors from sleep (not the entire computer) my second display is at a lower resolution that what I set it to.
- The picture screensaver/slideshow uses my second monitor's resolution (1280*1024) on my main monitor (should be 1680*1050), so that looks weird unless I set the monitor to stretch the pixels. And it doesn't show anything on the second monitor
- I can set the monitor arrangement (i.e. secondary to left of my main monitor) in the windows control panel, but whenever I open the NVidia control panel, my secondary monitor is moved to the right.

I think that's pretty much it.
 
What i want to know is if Vista fixes the limitation preventing you from rendering across multiple video devices.

For example, lets say you have a Windows XP box with two monitors plugged into two video cards (one monitor on each card). If I start a 3D app on Monitor 1, then move the window over so that part of it is on Monitor 2, the part of the window on Monitor 2 will just be black. When more than half of the window is on Monitor 2, the part of the window still on Monitor 1 will turn black, and the program will resume rendering only on Monitor 2.

Will Vista allow the 3D app to render across the two cards?
 
Unknown-One said:
What i want to know is if Vista fixes the limitation preventing you from rendering across multiple video devices.

For example, lets say you have a Windows XP box with two monitors plugged into two video cards (one monitor on each card). If I start a 3D app on Monitor 1, then move the window over so that part of it is on Monitor 2, the part of the window on Monitor 2 will just be black. When more than half of the window is on Monitor 2, the part of the window still on Monitor 1 will turn black, and the program will resume rendering only on Monitor 2.

Will Vista allow the 3D app to render across the two cards?
Click to expand...

I'm sure you have your reasons but I'm just curious: why would you do this rather than just connecting two monitors to the same card?
 
Sabrewulf165 said:
I'm sure you have your reasons but I'm just curious: why would you do this rather than just connecting two monitors to the same card?
Click to expand...
It was just a simplification, I know a single card will work fine for two monitors, but if I want to plug in a 3rd screen on a second card to try out surround gaming...it's a no-go on Windows XP.
 
Unknown-One said:
It was just a simplification, I know a single card will work fine for two monitors, but if I want to plug in a 3rd screen on a second card to try out surround gaming...it's a no-go on Windows XP.
Click to expand...

Oh OK. I take it you're aware of Matrox's TripleHead2Go? Kinda expensive but it would solve the problem for you.

Here's a nice review on Anandtech in case you hadn't heard of it - http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2806
 
I'm running 2 22 inch screens of a 7600gt in vista business with no issues. Running them both off my 7600 as the ati x1300 card isn't working that I usualy run monitor 2 off of.
 
24" and 19" displays here, both widescreen. No problems. I do use UltraMon, since Vista's NV Control panel is rather limited still as compared to XP's.
 
Sabrewulf165 said:
Oh OK. I take it you're aware of Matrox's TripleHead2Go? Kinda expensive but it would solve the problem for you.

Here's a nice review on Anandtech in case you hadn't heard of it - http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2806
Click to expand...
I have four problems with that solution:

1. It's a $300 fix for something that should just work
2. Windows sees one big screen, so when you maximize a window, it spans all three screens, useless for productivity.
3. It's VGA only, with a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 per screen.
4. I have a 22" wide screen (1680x1050) that I want to put between two 19" full screens, the Matrox box will not allow this.

Sooo, is it fixed in Vista? ;)
 
Unknown-One said:
I have four problems with that solution:

1. It's a $300 fix for something that should just work
2. Windows sees one big screen, so when you maximize a window, it spans all three screens, useless for productivity.
3. It's VGA only, with a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 per screen.
4. I have a 22" wide screen (1680x1050) that I want to put between two 19" full screens, the Matrox box will not allow this.

Sooo, is it fixed in Vista? ;)
Click to expand...

1. It should, but in case you didn't know that really has nothing to do with Microsoft. The Gfx companies have restricted multiple monitor capabilities in their consumer products.

2. Not true. As I type I have two a4's on a 24" and a full screened Outlook on my 21". You said your purpose for this was to "to try out surround gaming", how did 'productivity' work itself in? And if you need it for games and work, then I'd consider Fire or Quadro solutions in future upgrades.

3. Yes, they seem to be limited to vga output only. But if you want a full DVi/Hdmi solution, then see 1 and 2.

From Matrox web site.

Supported Display Modes*
Resolution Refresh rate
1920 x 480 (triple 640) 60Hz
2400 x 600 (triple 800) 60Hz
3072 x 768 (triple 1024) 75Hz
3840 x 1024 (triple 1280) 60Hz
Regular VESA-compatible single screen modes at up to 1600x1200 on center display
*GPU dependent

4. See 3. You may also be interested in this company, which sells complete multiple monitor solutions; not for purchase reasons mind you. They have a list of graphics cards "certified for compatibility" for their Digital Tigers Multi-Screen Displays™.
 
They must have changed something since they first released the triple head 2 go; last time I had a chance to play with one, windows would maximize across all three screens, and only one very wide screen would under display properties.
Nice to hear that they fixed that. :)

Are you sure about running higher resolutions on the center screen? It sounds like it disables your side screens when you do that....it says "single screen mode".
If it does support 1280x1024 x 1680x1050 x 1280x1024, then I'm all over it!
 
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