Preserved Topic: dual monitors (Page 1 of 1)

i am looking for info on how to hook up a dual monitor setup so any of you fortunate enough to have such a thing fell free to break it down for me...

You need to get a graphic card that has support for two monitors. Either get a graphic card based on GeForce 2 MX with TwinHead technology or some Matrox graphic card with DualHead technology...

isnt there a way to do it with two video cards as well?
i have an extra video card and a monitor but getting a new twin head video card isnt in my students budget just yet...

If I remember correctly you can use two video cards starting from Windows 98...

I was just wondering that myself. I have two Hercules Prophets, one from my old system and one that came with my new system. Could I just install both of them to run the dual monitor set up?

Wead's almost got me talked into it. Plus, looking at pics of his set up made me drewl.

Gonna move this over to Ozone where it'll get the appropriate attention..

Yes it works under Win 98. I ran 3 monitors on my last machine (this one's a laptop). It's pretty much dumb as dirt. Plug in both cards and go. You have to enable the extra card(s) in the display settings panel.

Things that are cool:
* maximizing a window maximizes it to that screen only
* you can place your photoshop toolbars in a separate window for working on big stuff
* you can drag between monitors
* you do not need identical cards
* you can use different settings on each card (got a cheap card and a small monitor? dedicated toolbars for PS)
* dialogs and stuff don't generally straddle the two monitors
* there's no assumption that the monitors are side by side, you can stack them vertically if so inclined

Things that blow:
* screensavers mostly don't do what you expect (big deal)
* if you use an AGP card, it has to be the "root" monitor
* some (but not much) software screws up or can't deal with the multimonitor rig
* some tooltips mysteriously appear on the wrong monitor (IE is bad about that)

It's a good thing, to quote Martha Stewart. (Martha pimps iMacs, so screw her.)

Krets: Do it. Thank me later.

Krets, I've just remembered one thing. Most new video cards are using AGP slot, and since there's only one AGP slot on motherboard, you can't plug two Hercules Prophets in the same computer...

Yep, I thought about that almost as soon as I hit the submit button.

Anybody gotta PCI card they wanna swap???

Maybe I can sell the two Hercules and get one with two doohickeys.

So, lets say you are playing Unreal or some other game, would it show up on one monitor so you could still ICQ or whatever on the other monitor?

I'm no gamer, but ActiveX progs seem to show on the root monitor only.

Krets: If you want to buy the Matrox this guy is selling the G450 32MB for $139. He's at 81st. and Wornall. (everyone else please ignore that.)

I don't know if that's a good price or not, but I hate giving money to Beast Buy. This guy is nice and will stand behind the product. FWIW.

[This message has been edited by linear (edited 05-11-2001).]