Why wide when you can go dual?

[SH4RKY]

Yeah... it does. so with an FPS or something I would turn the second screen off to keep framerates up.

This is with XP and a 6800gt though. I'm hoping a Quad6600 and GX260 wont take too much of a hit. And i have no idea how vista is going to handle 2 screens... hopefully better than XP did.

 

[R4z0r]

I agree actually, I've never understood the craze for widescreen, 2x 1600x1200 20" screens is about perfect for me. Unfortunely I'm working from a laptop most of the time these days so I can only have a single external screen easily...

Have a look at a docking station with dual outputs. At my old job I had a laptop that I docked which then had the keyboard, mouse and dual 19". Was the perfect setup for me, had my work with me where ever I went but had a much more usable desktop when I was in the office.

Totally agree on the dual screen thing though, I could neevr go back now!

 

[bledd]

Yeah... it does. so with an FPS or something I would turn the second screen off to keep framerates up.

This is with XP and a 6800gt though. I'm hoping a Quad6600 and GX260 wont take too much of a hit. And i have no idea how vista is going to handle 2 screens... hopefully better than XP did.

ok

could do with a script/bat file to disable/enable the 2nd screen

 

[SH4RKY]

Yeah.... I just had a dual screen and single screen profile in nView and used that to switch between the two.

Im sure there is a more automated way of doing it though. infact.. (from memory, havent played an FPS for a while) some games automatically turned the 2nd screen off. wonder if that was part of a GPU driver update... ho hum.

 

[bledd]

when i play games in XP64, my 2nd screen just keeps displaying the desktop

will try it out after the weekend, to see if there's a performance difference if you disable it

 

[DreXeL]

Oh, another question...

Does a 20" square have the same vertical physical height as a 24" wide monitor??


Im guessing yes as the vertical Resolutions are the same... cant be having different sized monitors next to each other... haha, that would spoil the look

My 4x3 is 19" and my widescreen is 22", and they are almost the same height, it's not exact though, theres about 5mm difference.

 

[Andrew_McP]

when i play games in XP64, my 2nd screen just keeps displaying the desktop

That's how I have mine set up most of the time.

With Nvidia cards (I don't have ATI at the moment) you have to fiddle with a setting deep in the Nvidia control panel to make sure the desktop spans both monitors in the right way. Set them up as dual monitors and games won't see the second screen. Set them up as spanning and DX will see the total resolution and offer that resolution in games. You can tell it's set up correctly because when you right click/properties/settings on the desktop you'll see one big blue wide screen as [1] rather than two smaller screens side by side.

Andrew McP

 

[SH4RKY]

Yup. I originally used Horizontal Span. that sets up the monitors as one big screen. I now use 'Dual view' as it offers greater control over applications. eg, i can throw an application to the other screen and max it and it will only fill that one screen. but also have the option to stretch it over both screens. if the monitors are set up as Horizontal Span applciations wont be able to see the edges of the 2 screens so run into overlapping issues and have to manual stretch windows to fill a single screen etc.