Dual Monitor Support

[Nightwolf]

I'm getting a new video card soon, but it'll be PCI instead of AGP which I have now (read my other posts to understand why). Today it occurred to me that if I leave my old card in after I install the new one, I can plug in two monitors at once. I know Windows supports this, but I don't really understand the concept. Wouldn't both monitors have the exact same thing on them, or can they each display a different program? Are there any games that two people can play together on seperate monitors? Would I need a second mouse?

I'm just not sure if it's worth the extra hassle and expense.

[Luca_Snipes]

yes you can run an AGP and PCI graphics card together, and they will display diferant things (This is how I ran my dual monitor setup for 2 years before I got a dual head card), but you may find that you need to change the first Boot settings in the BIOS to/from AGP/PCI depending on the cards you use
You won't need another mouse, the one you have will just cover a larger aera, and you may find that turning up the speed and acceleration on it are required.

As for games IIRC the only games that support dual monitors are some of the flight sim's, but they still only let one person play

It's always worth having a second monitor if you have the desk space, the only thing I've found is that unless the monitors are the same size and run at the same resolution things can be a little difiicult, so if possable making sure that both monitors are the same can be a good idea.

[Nightwolf]

Cool, thanks for the reply. Everything sounded good until you said both monitors should be the same size. The one I have now is 21" and there's no way I could fit another one on my desk. But maybe if I can find a really cheap smaller one, I'll try it anyway just to see how it works.

[wienerschnitzel]

I used to have a 17in CRT and a 15in LCD pluged into my computer. The desk could only hold my CRT so I put the LCD on a stand. At first it as weird but I started to like it. Programs like Kazaa and Nero I would leave in the other monitor while their were doing stuff. I would play games on the CRT while monitoring my downloads and whatever else my computer was doing. Recently my 17in broke so I bought two new ones and another cheap video card (before that I got a new desk ). Now I have 3 monitors at 1024 by 768. Windows treats it like I have a 3072 by 768 desktop. Everything is the same except when you maximize a window it will only fill one screen. You can strech MPEG, QT and some other video file across multiple monitors. Too bad I cannot strech AVIs and DVD.

Oh yeah, more monitors let me do more things at once, so I got more work done. Not that anyone cares about working.

[WebCheF]

I'm using a nvda pci 64mg card and intel onboard 128 mg agp intgd for my crt, and the pci for my TV, very cool to play a game, or chat, while watching a fresh copy of X2, on a 42' tele, tons of neat uses for me,

[Nightwolf]

I never knew you could have 3 monitors. Apparently I can't even have 2. I can't get my new PCI card to boot.

[WebCheF]

does your bios offer an option to use integrated agp or pci? if not there is a little jumper like the ones on the back of your cd drives, you need to find out what jumper to configure,

it sounds like a pain, but it is easy after the first time, I went though the same thing.lol

[Amarjit]

You can either use two video cards, but some like the nVidia PNY Quadro FX 2000, have two DVI inputs, so they can drive powerful resoultions with two monitors with 128 MB of DDR II RAM.