3 Monitor Setup

immortalgeek · 9 Oct 2008 at 11:58

Hi,

If i got a 3 monitor setup could i have say office word on 1 screen, the internet on the middle screen and then say media player on the third and be able to keep them all open at the same time?

Matt

MTA99 · 9 Oct 2008 at 18:02

Yep! Never used a 3 monitor setup myself but had dual monitor for ages. Might have issues running full screen media player on the secondary or tertiary displays without something like ultramon but otherwise word, firefox etc. all fine

Ch3m1c4L · 9 Oct 2008 at 18:54

normal apps like that work fine liek that. However if you ahve a game open and its full screen, and then you click on something else, it will almost always minimize the game in question. There isn't a way around this. For normal office work though, it is fine. How are you doing the three monitors? extra graphics card or matrox box?
pic of my work setup should show you that it works

immortalgeek · 13 Oct 2008 at 11:59

Hi,

Whats a matrox box? , would the dual graphics c ards give a batter result.

And where do you work? , NASA???

GingerNinja1989 · 13 Oct 2008 at 12:03

OCUK forums and WMP? Shouldn't you be working?

go.mole · 13 Oct 2008 at 12:11

I run 3 screen at home.

I have a crossfire board (so gives me 2x PCI-E), a 9800GTX and a 7600GT. It was a pain installing drivers in Vista as nVidia had stopped supporting the 7 series in the latest drivers, so had to get the 7600GT running from old drivers and then install the latest drivers for the 9800GTX. Thankfully nVidia have reintroduced 7 series support and only one install is needed now.

I find everything runs great and I can even move a VLC window playing 720p content between a 9800GTX screen and the 7600GT screen and it seamlessly just keeps on playing

Games work fine on my main screen aswell!

immortalgeek · 13 Oct 2008 at 12:15

So you would say 2 graphics cards would be better than a matrox box?. 2 cards would be able to run 3 monitors wouldnt it?

Matt

go.mole · 13 Oct 2008 at 12:20

I can run 4 displays on my current set up.

I have no experience of matrox boxes, but for past experience on XP and current experience on Vista, they both handle multiple graphics cards with no issues. I've always ran this way because I've always had multiple cards laying around from various upgrades

Someone else will have to tell you whether matrox boxes work better

TheKnat · 13 Oct 2008 at 12:35

Matrox boxes fool your card into seeing one giant monitor, so if you clicked the maximise button then it would jump across every screen. Having monitors connected to 2 separate outputs from a GFX card doesn't do this and would just maximise inside its current display.

As for games, as long as you run them in maximised windowed mode then you don't get the problem of the game closing itself down.

Mud · 13 Oct 2008 at 12:52

I run a Matrox Triplehead2Go rig...the maximum resolution was recently boosted from 3x1280x1024 to 3x1680x1050, though only at 57Hz. Everything worked wonderfully well at 3x1280x1024, but they're still working the kinks out of the newer 3xWS resolutions so read up on the widescreengamingforum.com forums if you're tempted.

TheKnat said:
Matrox boxes fool your card into seeing one giant monitor, so if you clicked the maximise button then it would jump across every screen. Having monitors connected to 2 separate outputs from a GFX card doesn't do this and would just maximise inside its current display.

This isn't quite true, Matrox provide a desktop divider utility.

go.mole · 13 Oct 2008 at 13:14

Well for me I run 1x24" and 2x17", so I find I only want to game on the 24" and therefore using multiple graphics cards works best for me

as they just work as usual multiple display set ups with windows controlling everything.

Andelusion · 13 Oct 2008 at 14:20

I run 3 screens here (1 x 24" and 2 x 20" screens), the 24 and one of the 20s are connected to each DVI output on my Nvidia 8800GT, the third 20 screen is connected to the DVI output on a secondary Nvidia 7300 card.

I was unsure if it was going to work at first and asked for advice on here, most people seemed to say to minimise possible driver conflicts that if going for this option (2 non-like graphics cards) that you should ideally get them from the same manufacturer.

jimmy29 · 13 Oct 2008 at 18:36

Yeah, good advice^^. I had an nVidia 7800GS paired with an ATI 7000 in my old rig and they did work together but it was a pain. Updating the drivers on the 7800 involved first physically removing the ATI card from the system.
I'd say go with the two graphics card option. There's no need to get an expensive second card if all the 3rd monitor is going to do is display office/internet etc.

Ch3m1c4L · 13 Oct 2008 at 19:46

Matrox boxes are a hassle and do not work quite as nicely as multiple cards, unless you are going to be gaming accross all three screens and then you can use all three for certain games, if you ahve the gfx horsepower.

The middle three of the monitors in my screenie are a matrox box, the one to the right of them is the second port on the card, the one you can see the corner of is anothe rpc. The one on the left is a second output from my laptop. Synergy everything up and its all good

....except dragging around lol.