That is a good idea too. Well, considering that I just have fried my gxf card (hardwarecrash when entering Ryzom) and that the gpufan was moaning and whirring for some time now, I am not sure what card will be next.
Not even sure how many output it will have....
Two display screens
Re: Two display screens
Most current graphics cards support dual screens really well. Nvidia generally do it with less "issues" while ATI performance seems better. (Less noticeable performance hit with ATI)
I tend to find I can watch TV on one screen and game on the other with my Radeon while on my GeForceFX both the TV and the game suffer.
On the other hand GeForce allows 3D and DirectDraw windows to overlap between the screens effectively and with no extra performance hits.
Proper Multi Screen support in games generally doesn't work with ATI cards at the moment, although it's so rare in games you would never know.. (The only games I have ever played with it in are X2 and Eve and I play a lot of games..!)
For those of you seeing big performance hits with ATI cards you need to move the game "window" a little bit to stop it overlapping between the screens. It takes some doing every time you run a game especially when there is no title bar and the mouse pointer is hidden but performance goes from choppy to rock solid. (A single pixel of overlap is enough to screw things up - I have no idea what causes the performance hit as the overlap only renders in blank black anyway..)
The comment about video memory is wrong, the cards memory is not split between the screens, only shared as needed. 128mb and 256mb cards should not see a problem with 2 screens with current games.
I run dual screens all the time and it doesn't affect any 3D benchmarks by any significant degree whether the second display is enabled or disabled. Obviously running applications has an effect, as you would expect..
Hope this helps someone, multi screen setups are the best!
I tend to find I can watch TV on one screen and game on the other with my Radeon while on my GeForceFX both the TV and the game suffer.
On the other hand GeForce allows 3D and DirectDraw windows to overlap between the screens effectively and with no extra performance hits.
Proper Multi Screen support in games generally doesn't work with ATI cards at the moment, although it's so rare in games you would never know.. (The only games I have ever played with it in are X2 and Eve and I play a lot of games..!)
For those of you seeing big performance hits with ATI cards you need to move the game "window" a little bit to stop it overlapping between the screens. It takes some doing every time you run a game especially when there is no title bar and the mouse pointer is hidden but performance goes from choppy to rock solid. (A single pixel of overlap is enough to screw things up - I have no idea what causes the performance hit as the overlap only renders in blank black anyway..)
The comment about video memory is wrong, the cards memory is not split between the screens, only shared as needed. 128mb and 256mb cards should not see a problem with 2 screens with current games.
I run dual screens all the time and it doesn't affect any 3D benchmarks by any significant degree whether the second display is enabled or disabled. Obviously running applications has an effect, as you would expect..
Hope this helps someone, multi screen setups are the best!
Re: Two display screens
I played using dual screens before patch1 and it worked fine, I moved to uni since then tho and don't have the room for another monitor on my desk so I can't vouch for it (but people are saying it works fine)
I also found that the game was a bit more choppy when running with dual's enabled. I ran dxdiag, and found that the onboard gfx RAM was didvided onto the 2 screens.
Afaik it depends on which card you have whether it splits the mem or not... With my Radeon 9200 it didn't split it; they each got as much as they neededThe comment about video memory is wrong, the cards memory is not split between the screens, only shared as needed. 128mb and 256mb cards should not see a problem with 2 screens with current games.
Re: Two display screens
I have a Radeon9800pro, GeForce 4600ti and Geforce 5600FX cards and have used them all to drive my dual monitors. (They have all been my main video card at some point)
None of them split the memory as described..
I would be curious to know exactly which recent cards do split it.. surely the newer cards don't or that would be a big step backwards!
None of them split the memory as described..
I would be curious to know exactly which recent cards do split it.. surely the newer cards don't or that would be a big step backwards!