multiple display drama

[felix 0]

Two Questions:

 

a) Does Win2k support more than one display adapter ie two monitors?

 

Does anyone know whether the above will work with two PCI Trio64's?

 

I am attempting to get dual monitors working on an old dog box for the hell of it.

 

 

 

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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

[PraetorJudis 0]

Yep. Two displays will work. I've only tried it with a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP and a 3D Rage II PCI however. I attempted to add another PCI card (a cheapo Trident or S3 Virge (I don't recall wchich one I grabbed out of my "Box o' Stuph")) to no avail, but that could be my BIOS and not W2K.

 

If you are using a AGP/PCI mix, you have to set your BIOS to poll the PCI card first, or it won't work correctly...

 

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*gniltrohc yawa srednaw*

[YuppieScum 0]

I've just taken a look at the W2K HCL, and there are no S3-chipped cards listed as working in a multi-monitor setup.

[felix 0]

Oh well,

I got all the stuff for free anyway so I guess I haven't lost anything.

 

Thanks for your help y'all.

 

 

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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

[JimmyK 0]

I dont think my tnt's were listed in the hcl, but they do work with multi monitoring. Im using a Tnt2ultra, and a tnt1-pci.

 

 

PraetorJudis, why would it not work correctly?? my agp is my primary card and in the bios it was set to pci and I changed it to agp, and it works flawlessly.

[PraetorJudis 0]

Hrm... eh.. dunno exactly. I even forget where I found information that making the switch would help. Perhaps it's due to the fact that I had ACPI installed? I removed the ACPI stuph to get my new SBLive card woking (sort of working that is), perhaps I should switch my BIOS again and see what happens....

 

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*gniltrohc yawa srednaw*

[YuppieScum 0]

JimmyK - TNT's are listed in the HCL for multi-monitor compliance...

[Cynan 0]

I've just setup dual monitors on my machine, and I can help with the "why do you need to change to PCI" thing. I had it set to AGP, and when 2K booted, it saw the other card, but under the Display Properties, it only showed up one of them. So I changed it back and all worked fine.

 

I do however, have some other questions that perhaps you can help me with.

 

If I don't select "extend my desktop", the other monitor doesn't display anything, can I not just have another desktop on that monitor? another start menu instance? can I extend the start menu across them? I'm yet to see any options in 2K to do this. I'm about to go look at that PowerStrip thing though, I hear that has dual monitor options.

 

I also have a problem with playing Quake3 based games. When I have the "extend my deskop" flag checked, the game graphics fail to display.

 

Any ideas? TIA.

 

--Cynan.

[Cynan 0]

Well I answered my own question. It seems that you must disable your other monitors while an OpenGL application is being initialised. I also found a nice lil prog. called UltraMon that allows you to make shortcuts for programs, that will disable the monitors, run the program, and then reenable them. Nice!

 

Oh, this prog. also handles wallpapers, screensavers etc, and to make the toolbar span onto other monitors, you simply "drag" it across.

 

Hope this help anyone else with similar questions.

 

--Cynan.

[spacey 0]

yea multi monitors work in win2k if your cards support it, cheap ones that work fine are easy to find. just ask your nearest store for their cheapest card that supports multimonitor. i think i paid like 30 bucks cdn a year ago for one that works fine.

 

one important thing is, in windows 2000 if u buy a single card like a dual head matrox or twin view ati... you need to run both monitors at the same resolution and refresh rate! i'm not sure why, something to do with win2k cuz in win9x they can be different, so this isn't an option for ppl who don't have 2 identical size monitors really.

[BladeRunner 0]

That is no longer an issue with Matrox.

Matrox are the only company who have managed to get around that issue under Win2k - their latest drivers support different resolutions and refresh rates on each monitor.

[Dragon-Lord 0]

using two cards works great for me. Each monitor can have its own separate settings/refresh rates, yet share a common desktop. Very nice indeed.

 

While I prefer this over the single card approach, the biggest issue today with this is that *no one* has dual AGP slots on the motherboard, and it is getting *really* hard to find anyone selling PCI display adapters/video cards anymore. Frye's doesn't even stock anything but AGP anymore...sigh.

 

:}

[spacey 0]

omg you're kidding blade.. thats sweet. now if only they had some better 3d on their cards.. cmon canadian companies!

[BladeRunner 0]

:-)

Unfortunately Matrox are out of the really fast 3D market at the moment.

It really is a shame, becuase nothing can touch their 2D quality and their dual-head software/drivers is way ahead of everyone else's.

The Matrox G550 is supposed to be announced and released quite soon, but it's aimed at the business user.

The un-official specifications have this card's 3D properties at somewhere in the region of a GeForce 2 MX.

Matrox have siad they haven't totally forgotten the 3D market and I'm sure a true replacement for the excellent G400MAX will appear one day.

[spacey 0]

yea matrox is really kewl 2d... but weak 3d indeed, i wish nvidia would fix up their twin view or whatever, make it as good as matrox and i'd grab one for sure. or make an "all-in-wonder" type of card for video editing more available, i've only herd of one version of the gf3 like that.