http://www.xyzcomputing.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=26

for those few people asking a little while ago about how usefull 2 monitors would be on one computer, this write up goes fairly deep into how everyone should have the set up

I've run dual monitors at work for a long time, and I just fixed my desk at home to fit two 22 inch Dell/Sony Trinitron CRTs side by side AND on a KVM switch. I must say I'm loving the setup so far.

I am building a rack at work to get my AVID to run on 8 monitors (4 accross, 2 high). It'll be so sweet when I finish!

Hm, do games lock the mouse cursor into the window? I.E., extended desktop being unreachable while being in a game.

Depends on the game. Some do. Everquest does and Worlds of Warcraft doesn't. Counterstrike of course does, because you use your mouse as the barrel of your gun.

Also playing games un-windowed changes the resolution of your desktop and can effect the additional monitors depending on how you have them set up.

>Hm, do games lock the mouse cursor into the window? I.E., extended desktop being unreachable while being in a game.

eq1 does, eq2 does not, it does not block out the 2nd window, sometimes in certain set ups the other display will get re sized when a game is started up on the main display (only if the game is different resolutions) this leaves alot of stuff you can leave up, trade skill recipes, walk throughs, a print up of a story you are reading, the message board you are reading while raiding etc.

edit: holy shit kelraz, what are you going to be doing on that?

That's an ok start I guess, but it really seemed to be lacking. Besides, two monitors is so 90's. Three is where it's at.

If you're using a dual head card, most games are a little annoying, unless you play them at the native resolution of the desktop. If you're using multiple cards, a full screen game doesn't affect the other displays.

WoW works extremely well with multiple displays. I use window mode, maximized (it scales nice). So, it acts like just another window, but basically looks like full screen mode.

No talk about multiple displays would be complete without mentioning UltraMon. It is godly.

>If you're using multiple cards, a full screen game doesn't affect the other displays.


weird thing is, my 2nd display is a rage3d AIW, and it will resize when i start up a game with a different native resolution, weird but it doesn't bother me as much

i posted this due to the other thread we had a while ago, and since th is was the only write up about it and it actually did go into detail about it, i thought it'd be good to post about it

It shouldn't. What's your main card?

AVID is my video editing system. I'll be able to lay the entire timeline down on the bottom 4 monitors with all the different tools, and the top 4 monitors will (ultimately) have 4 different video clips each for a total of 13 clips open (one large clip being the end product). Its kinda like how photoshop gets crouded on one monitor and you'd love to have 2, with video (or after effects or whatever else I'll be using) it'll be really nice to have 8. Currently I only have 4, which is pretty limited.

At home I run 2, its all I really need to play video games and browse the web simultaneously.

I have two, and if there is an S-Video to VGA cable out there, I'll get three, Nvidia has the spanning option so you can make it into one giant desktop, which is nice because you can then maximize an app accross both monitors if you want

Ti4600 on my main comp, i have all this other high end stuff that i don't want to use =(

Maybe it's something to do with mixing brands. I run ATI for all mine. A 9700 for 1 and 2, and a PCI Rage 128 or something like that for the 3rd. #2 jumps around when #1 resizes for a game, but #3 never even flickers.

Are you running the 2 monitors of that 9700, or have 2 seperate cards?

Both

he has 2 monitors off of the 9700, and another off of a pci card

I didn't think the question was really that hard, thanks Trimlock :)

Basically a card can only support 1 resolution. To remove that "flicker" you would need to put the monitors on seperate cards OR have the desktop resolution preset to that of the resolution you plan to play the full screen game in.

It didn't seem very complicated that if I was talking about the #3 display, that "the 2 monitors" just didn't make much sense.

Anyway, if you'd read this stuff at all, you'd see I was asking Gokuu about his problem, not having one myself. He's getting the resize issues with displays that are each on their own card. That's kinda weird.

i'm chalking it up to the two different display drivers not liking each other

Must be. I was trying to use the 9700 and a Matrox PCI card for a few days. Had a LOT of hard reboot type crashes when I'd change settings in the display properties. Got the cheapo ATI PCI card and haven't had trouble since (even though I'm still running two separate types of drivers for the two cards, not just a single ATI driver).

the only reason i started using two cards was because i needed a vi/vo, didn't want to buy the $450 9700 aiw at the time and decided to go with this, later on i realized i had a rotting 19" crt under the desk and damn if thats not one of the greatest moves ever

Here is a company that sells 2 and 4 head video cards. Their products are ATI based hardware. I install these for customers that run mutiple apps at the same time.


http://www.appian.com/


Zornhed

My brother used to the Engineering manager here http://www.colorgraphic.net/newsite/misc/home.asp in the early 90s. His coolest design was a PCMCIA card that could drive a bank of 18 monitors (this was in 1992-93ish. Kind of funny multiple monitors has been around for a while, it's only just now getting some fame.