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Curious about multiple monitors

Damage Inc

Damage Inc

Damage Inc

Associate
Joined
9 Jun 2006
Posts
139
Location
Crawley (its so lovely)
Hi guys,

Just a quick question. If you own a good graphics card...lets keep it to say the ATI X1900 XTX or Nvidia 7900 GTX just for simplicity...

What resolution will they support in terms of a TFT monitor? I know this is a daft question but I honestly dont know. How high above 1280x1024 will these cards go? And therefore how big a TFT monitor will they happily run on?

Next question...how high a res will these kinds of cards comfortably play games in? ie will a card like these run a modern game like Doom3 in these super high res? (i guess this question is simply comparing windows performance with games performance)

Lastly - and the biggie for me i guess...running two monitors side by side. how feasable is this on these cards and would they have a hope of playing a modern game across two screens and if so what kind of res is possible without hideous frame rates?

Sorry for so many questions all at once...thanks for any meaningful replies!

Dam.
 
I appreciate that Mav, but it didnt really answer the question lol. The real world that my eyes see is a lot wider than that which I can look at. Whilst I appreciate we only focus on a small area at once we are designed to react to cues over a much wider peripheral area so two monitors (if you have the dollar) arent a waste of time in my humble opinion.

This is more about theory than practice (tho anyone with practice please let me know) - Im trying to find things out regarding real world tests. Would appreciate to hear from anyone with big LCD's or multiple monitors.

Dam.
 
Have to add to this - its not a waste of time for gaming - gives better peripheral vision as long as you can increase the field of view (can in a lot of games). You can also use the matrox triplehead2go to split 3d rendered games over 3 monitors giving uber-widecscreen (3076 x 1024) surround gaming!

As far as how big can you go - depends on the power of the card - sli'd 7900GTX will do better than a single 7800GT to keep the frame rates up - you would also need a decent cpu to avoid the bottleneck!

Hope that helps
 
For the sake of argument assume a system with 2 gig of ram, an E6600 thats been clocked a bit and a top end single graphics card (X1900XTX or Gforce 7900GTX). Im deliberately avoding SLI or Crossfire becasue I want to know how far a single but high end card can push things along.

Dam.
 
I would say that would be ok for the Dell 30 inch screens but would suffer with 2 of them! :D

I would search around but am on a dialup connection so it takes ages - look for max resolution for 7900GTX card reviews on sites such as 3dgaming or tomshardware.
 
Most cards will support any resolution that the monitor supports, so it's the monitor that determines which resolutions are possible. Playable resolutions depend on the game, and how much AA/AF you like to use.
For games like FEAR and Oblivion, you may need to compromise on detail to play at very high res.
 
Cards can output up to 2560x1600 max through dvi.

Cyber-Mav said:
more that 2 monitors is a waste unless you have more than 2 eyes.
Click to expand...

Well that depends on how far away your sitting.
 
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4gigs makes a difference.

dual monitors are crap compared to a single large monitor. can't play a game with 2 monitors next to each other. thier frames are gonna cause problems, big gap in the middle. unless the frame is modified and the actual screens welded together to give one big monitor.
 
Some games can have screens such as a map dedicated to one monitor and the actual game on another so it isnt a neccassirly waste. Personally I think 4Gb of ram is more of a waste when windows xp cant even address that much properly, most applications can only use 2GB of virtual address space so the game is still limited to 2GiB of ram. Its all down to what you use stuff for really.
 
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Cyber-Mav said:
4gigs makes a difference.

dual monitors are crap compared to a single large monitor. can't play a game with 2 monitors next to each other. thier frames are gonna cause problems, big gap in the middle. unless the frame is modified and the actual screens welded together to give one big monitor.
Click to expand...

MS FS 2004 works perfectly on dual screen, I can play and watch a film or have MSN/TS/Vent open on the other one.


Two > one.

and for games 4Gb DOES NOT make a difference.
 
2 monitors has loads of good points. Games aren't one of them (in general, exceptions as above ^^)
MULTITASKING is where its at ;)

Still will be getting a larger monitor myself though.....
 
PinkFloyd said:
2 monitors has loads of good points. Games aren't one of them (in general, exceptions as above ^^)
MULTITASKING is where its at ;)

Still will be getting a larger monitor myself though.....
Click to expand...

Yep, I want a 2405, but ill be getting a 17inch to get next to it, muhahaha
 
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