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Horizontal span with ATI cards?

I

inotocracy

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 25, 2004
Messages
5,625
I've never owned an ATI card, and just recently purchased a 3850. On Nvidia cards I'm able to do horizontal span to achieve 2880x900 but I can't seem to figure out how to do this with the ATI card. Is it possible? I know I can enable the second monitor, but it shows up as two seperate monitors which leaves the taskbar on one monitor instead of spanning across.

EDIT: I'm using Windows XP btw.
 
GF just got home and she was upset that I bought a 3850, she had bought a 3870 for me for valentines :eek: Guess I'm taking this back.
 
I personally like having the monitors treated as separate displays... so haven't really looked to see if the spanned single display is possible with the CCC.

However, you can run a freeware program: Multimon Taskbar
http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm
that does a really good job of creating matching task bars at the bottom of each of the additional displays and filters the applications such that only the apps on that particular display are displayed in that task bar.

PS Wow, what a GF, a 3870 for a Valentine's Day present!
 
What are you doing with it? I would just treat it as 2 seperate monitors
Also, nice gf to get you a 3870 for V day.
 
I do a lot of work at home (engineer) so being able to span my code editor across multiple monitors is wonderful, the problem is when its a split display it only maximizes to the length of 1 monitor. Its a nice option to have, and when you've been used to it for 5+ years its hard to take away. Ya know? :) Having the system recognize the display as one large width is nice and I'd like that functionality back.
 
digital_exhaust said:
How does this work in comparison to UltraMon? It looks very similar, but I am curious if transparency is enabled under Vista like it is with UltraMon.... any input would be great...
Click to expand...

I've never used Ultramon, but it seems to do a lot more than Multimon, which is just a taskbar. However, Multimon is FREE, and Ultramon costs $40.

Multimon does everything I need with Windows XP, so I'll take the free software. I've not tried it with Windows Vista.
 
inotocracy said:
I do a lot of work at home (engineer) so being able to span my code editor across multiple monitors is wonderful, the problem is when its a split display it only maximizes to the length of 1 monitor. Its a nice option to have, and when you've been used to it for 5+ years its hard to take away. Ya know? :) Having the system recognize the display as one large width is nice and I'd like that functionality back.
Click to expand...

With separate displays I can enlarge windows to span THREE monitors at work with an NVidia video card and an external video card.
With my HD3870 in Windows XP I can span two monitors with one window.

You just have to DRAG to resize the window instead of just pressing the maximize button.

Not very good at problem solving are you? :eek:
I'm harder on Engineers because I AM one myself. ;)

You can also download ATI's Hydravision desktop software from http://ati.amd.com/products/Hydravision/index.html
Hydravision was also available from the ATI Driver CD that came with my HD3870 video card, so chances are it's on yours as well. Hydravision will extend the maximize button to enlarge windows to span multiple monitors, only if they're set to the same resolution though. Hydravision is similar to NVIDIA's nView software.

BTW I also code, but have NEVER had to span any code windows over two monitors since my company has an 80 column coding standard, I can fit TWO (or 3 with 1920 pixels) code subwindows side by side no problem on ONE monitor in ntEmacs.
The only times I've had to span more than one screen are with some humongous spreadsheets.
However, I've found the extra monitor quite useful for running an app while debugging with the IDE on the other monitor.
 
Yes, I could just drag the window across but thats not ideal. Not only that but I like to have my screen saver run across both monitors, which is possible with one large resolution. I'm aware of possible solutions (ultramon), but I just wanted to know if there was a native one within the driver and not a hack, instead of smug comments. Thanks. :rolleyes:
 
inotocracy said:
Yes, I could just drag the window across but thats not ideal. Not only that but I like to have my screen saver run across both monitors, which is possible with one large resolution. I'm aware of possible solutions (ultramon), but I just wanted to know if there was a native one within the driver and not a hack, instead of smug comments. Thanks. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Okay, so you really want the support because you want to run a screen saver on both monitors...

You did read my message that stated that Hydravision, which is ATI SUPPLIED SOFTWARE, will allow you to press one key to maximize over both monitors. If you consider that a hack, then so be it.

There is no native support in Windows XP for spanning taskbars over several monitors in multi-monitor mode. That's the way Microsoft designed it, correct or not, that's how it is.
If you want different behaviour, you're going to have to run a program that changes it.

Oh, btw, properly written screen savers run fine in multi-monitor mode.
 
bbf said:
Okay, so you really want the support because you want to run a screen saver on both monitors...

You did read my message that stated that Hydravision, which is ATI SUPPLIED SOFTWARE, will allow you to press one key to maximize over both monitors. If you consider that a hack, then so be it.

There is no native support in Windows XP for spanning taskbars over several monitors in multi-monitor mode. That's the way Microsoft designed it, correct or not, that's how it is.
If you want different behaviour, you're going to have to run a program that changes it.

Oh, btw, properly written screen savers run fine in multi-monitor mode.
Click to expand...

Its apparent you've never used horizontal span on an Nvidia card. Windows recognizes it as one large display, with a resolution of 2880x900. I was asking if ATI had a similar capability (to show both monitors as one single large display). There are a lot of reasons, besides screen savers and my editor, but why list them? I didn't offer as to why I needed it, but just that I wanted to know if there was the capability on an ATI card.

alg7_munif said:
Wow, your GF knows how to buy a faster card than yours :)
Click to expand...

I had asked for the card for xmas but she never got it, I assumed she forgot but apparently not :eek: Lucky me I guess :)

ps: thanks to everyone for the suggestions!
 
I'm really fond of horizontal span so I took back the 3870 and put a little extra cash in and got a XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog. Was fun being in the ATI camp while it lasted :)
 
inotocracy said:
Its apparent you've never used horizontal span on an Nvidia card. Windows recognizes it as one large display, with a resolution of 2880x900. I was asking if ATI had a similar capability (to show both monitors as one single large display). There are a lot of reasons, besides screen savers and my editor, but why list them? I didn't offer as to why I needed it, but just that I wanted to know if there was the capability on an ATI card.
Click to expand...

I have used spanning mode on my older nvidia cards and found the single task bar which spanned both screens not to my preference due to the fact that sometimes I had to move left or right almost two screen widths to select items on the task bar. I found with two monitors, with multi-monitor mode activated, placing the task bar vertically in the middle required at most 1 screens width worth of movement to reach it... with three, multimon's task bar was my preferred implementation.

I'm happy you got the features you wanted by trading in your gift.

Basically this is how things work, you list what you think can't be done, we answer on how it can be implemented. It's nice to know what cannot actually be implemented in multi monitor mode so we can use that to form new opinions on which is the correct choice for ourselves. If you can show us something that cannot be implemented it really IS useful.
 
I guess i'm too late.. but I can easily span with my 3870. In the CCC go to "Display Manager", right click on the second monitor, choose "stretch main horizontally onto monitor" (or vertically if you like).

This merges the two screens and gives you new resolution choices (my lcd + crt gave me :3200x1200;2560x1024;2304x864;2048x768;1600x600 and 1280x480)

I guess now you're back to Nvidia you won't be able to test this out...

Edit: I use XP SP2 32Bit
 
Damn Druneau, wish you were here sooner! Thanks for the tip.. its ok though, the 8800GT is a bit faster and I've been using Nvidia as long as I could remember so I'm happy either way. Well maybe the next time someone is wondering this question the thread will help ;)
 
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