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Why is horizontal spanning so difficult to do with ATI cards?!

KatanaDV20

KatanaDV20

KatanaDV20

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Hey guys could you offer some advice please!

This has me thoroughly puzzled/frustrated. Heres what I want to do:

1. I have two identical 20" monitors (each 1680 X 1050)
2. I want to play (Microsoft Flight Sim) FS9 & FSX spanned across BOTH displays (so total res will be 3360 X 1050)

This was SO easy to do with my nVidia card - it was a 5-second job. But with this new ATI HD4870 1GB its just impossible!

:(

I have the latest Catalyst with the latest HydraVision but nothing works - the sim will not span across both displays despite the relevant options being enabled in Catalyst-HydraVision.

nVidia has this wonderfully simple option:
----------------
Horizontal Span
----------------

Click it and away you go. Not so with Catalyst :mad:

If any of you have ATI cards and are spanning the sim across your multiple displays then *please* tell me how you did it! Why does ATI/AMD make this such a pain?

Thank you!

---->>>>>>

EDIT - Made this diagram to clarify :) :

UnableHSpan.png
 
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It is well kown amongst Triple Head users that there are some resolutions that all ATi do not support, 5040x1050 included which is what I use. I read somewhere (but cant find it now) that the total pixels need to be completely divisible by some number for it to work but Nvidia cards do not have this limitation. There appears to be no work around to this problem, other than using a diffrent resolution with Ati cards.
 
Not particularly difficult-
Open Catalyst Control Centre
Go to Display Manager
Right-click on the second monitor & choose "Stretch main horizontally onto monitor"
This'll give you a new set of resolution choices, one of which should be what you're after :)

Different place, thats all.

-Leezer-
 
Cyber-Mav said:
as mentioned above, ultramon will do the job seeing as how the crappy ati cards cant do the job on thier own.
Click to expand...

I thought the Problem was ATI software limitation, not hardware & if it was the hardware then ultramon would not work would it. ;)
 
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Final8y said:
I thought the Problem was ATI software limitation, not hardware & if it was the hardware then ultramon would not work would it. ;)
Click to expand...

Is the software not half of the product?

It's stupid things like this which is the reason why I'm willing to pay that bit more for an NVidia card, little point in having great hardware when the software/drivers hold it back.
 
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mmj_uk said:
Is the software not half of the product?

It's stupid things like this which is the reason why I'm willing to pay that bit more for an NVidia card, little point in having great hardware when the software/drivers hold it back.
Click to expand...

Its still a software limitation.
I'm not debating it being good or not because it not good & in noway was a trying to say it was.
Its the drivers fault & not the card.
If people took what your saying & what Cyber-Mav as literally then people would think that there would be no noway of getting it to work as the card & driver are one then it would be impossible for 3rd part software to get the card to-do what it originally could not but that's not so, as new features & drivers get upgraded on the same hardware.

Over Generalization is not a good thing as you got to know where the limitation lie when there is a problem as when its at the hardware level then your nearly always stuffed & vice versa knowing that hardware is capable of more but is software/driver/Bios limited but can save you a bucket load of cash when using the software/driver/Bios that will unlock features that were only implemented on more costly version of the hardware.
 
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Well guys guess what after a lot of searching I came upon the probable (?) cause.

Horizontal Spanning using graphics card software (Catalyst, GeForce) is apparently not possible in Vista. Notice I did not mention TH2GO, Ultramon etc. This as far as I understand is not *true* spanning where the OS core "senses" one giant display made up of multiple screens. On my old system with XP & 7600GT card flight sim actually sensed the 3360 X 1050 display made up of two 1680 X 1050s without the use of any additional 3rd-party hardware or software.

From what I saw on gaming forums many people have dumped Vista and gone back to XP because it allows spanning with their cards. Im glad I found this out before I ordered an NVidia card because extensive searching found that even people with NVidias cannot not Horizontally Span - but the option to do so magically appeared when they went back to XP.Why did I give up safe and faithfull XP!

pcrying.gif


Initially I had planned on buying XP Home and having a dual OS - keeping XP just for FS but I realize that Windows 7 is coming....fingers crossed they re-enable good old Horizontal Spanning.

I am now in the RIDICULOUS situation of having been able to game at 3360 X 1050 with a Pentium 4, 7600GT system but stuck with 1680 X 1050 with a Core i7, HD4870 system
rofl.gif
 
KatanaDV20 said:
Well guys guess what after a lot of searching I came upon the probable (?) cause.

Horizontal Spanning using graphics card software (Catalyst, GeForce) is apparently not possible in Vista. Notice I did not mention TH2GO, Ultramon etc. This as far as I understand is not *true* spanning where the OS core "senses" one giant display made up of multiple screens. On my old system with XP & 7600GT card flight sim actually sensed the 3360 X 1050 display made up of two 1680 X 1050s without the use of any additional 3rd-party hardware or software.

From what I saw on gaming forums many people have dumped Vista and gone back to XP because it allows spanning with their cards. Im glad I found this out before I ordered an NVidia card because extensive searching found that even people with NVidias cannot not Horizontally Span - but the option to do so magically appeared when they went back to XP.Why did I give up safe and faithfull XP!

pcrying.gif


Initially I had planned on buying XP Home and having a dual OS - keeping XP just for FS but I realize that Windows 7 is coming....fingers crossed they re-enable good old Horizontal Spanning.

I am now in the RIDICULOUS situation of having been able to game at 3360 X 1050 with a Pentium 4, 7600GT system but stuck with 1680 X 1050 with a Core i7, HD4870 system
rofl.gif
Click to expand...

Vista was not in your first post as i know there are limitations in vista with resolutions that must be supported in game & can not be overridden through driver.
Under XP NV control panel lets you make a custom res which ATI CCC does not & that where i thought the problem was in your case.

lucky you did check up & not take Cyber-Mav post as the cause.

Windows 7 should sort out that problem.
 
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I promise you that I've had my x1800xt horizontal spanned on XP, I'll admit it took some fiddling but it is possible.
Click to expand...

Neat! It is a "true" span? By that I mean Start button on the lower-left corner of the left screen and the clock showing on the lower-right corner of the right screen? :)
 
KatanaDV20 said:
Neat! It is a "true" span? By that I mean Start button on the lower-left corner of the left screen and the clock showing on the lower-right corner of the right screen? :)
Click to expand...

I'm pretty certain it was, I remember being able to play a film across both screens and also playing an fps (crosshair split so rubbish). Extended Desktop is much better imo.
 
i know how you can get arround the crosshair being split, buy a 3rd screen XD asides that my input here i totally useless! but i learned something today! and thats good!
 
i believe phil on these forums uses a 3870 with ultramon with 2 monitors on vista 64bit with no problems. ultramon should do the job for you.
 
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