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Dual monitors, but no nice monitors?!

post #1 of 10
7/20/06 at 10:17pm
Thread Starter 
Hi,

I wanna make a sweet setup with my M1710;

My lappy in the middle, and a 17" lcd monitor on the right (maybe one on either side )

But i plan on buying the 4gb ram kit (eventually, when i win the lottery) so i wanna be able to dual wield games (i tried running Unreal Tournament and WoW and it worked out fine) and i wanna be able to watch a movie while i play WoW e.g.

But wont everything bug and look all nasty if both (or all 3) monitors isnt the same resolution?

It is virtually impossible to find a 17" monitor with a 1920x1200 resolution..
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post #2 of 10
7/20/06 at 11:58pm
Yeah... dual 2405FPW's would be nice (got only one, myself), but the Dell laptops only support 2 monitors at a time, so you couldn't use your laptop screen as well. There are other solutions (external boxes), but to get a high resolution cost BIG bucks for a box.

If you are just extending your desktop, the resolution is immaterial (I had a 1280x720 HDTV and my 1920x1200 2405FPW going that way). You can't run a game on both together, though... only the MAIN display.

For best results, you'd need an external box that just looks like one display to windows, and matching monitors, preferably with the smallest bezel you can find.

I still prefer having one large monitor myself, as there aren't even that many games that support large wide resolutions over multiple monitors.
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post #3 of 10
7/21/06 at 11:00am
The probability of you being able to play games at the same time as watching a movie is pretty low.

While most media players are a lot less processor intensive than games, they're still not exactly a lightweight application.

Also, firing up a video overlay application at the same time as a full-screen DirectX appplication is a... ummm... ticking time-bomb. Assuming it doesn't blow up in your face immediately.

As for multi-monitor gaming - as Garbuckle said, not a lot of games support that. There are games with inherent support, but those are far and few. The most recognizable one is Flight Simulator 2004.
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post #4 of 10
7/21/06 at 11:47am
XP Service pack 2 will only recognize about 3GB of memory (it's a security fix issue) The original XP & SP1 recognize the entire 4GB.... THere is a PAE fix from Microsoft that allows you to use the entire 4GB... However most users will actually see a performance decrease when using 4GB unless you are utilizing it for a specific task (A/V editing/CAD...)

There is no reason in the world to have 4GB for games & movie watching... 2 GB is more thna sufficient...HEll I have never used more than 1.2 GB with Oblivion running & about 15 explorer tabs, outlook & word running, as well as Delorme mapping... (I had all these open as a test)


As Revenent said Video overlay app+ a full screen DX app...=crash & burn
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post #5 of 10
7/22/06 at 1:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Garbuckle
Yeah... dual 2405FPW's would be nice (got only one, myself), but the Dell laptops only support 2 monitors at a time, so you couldn't use your laptop screen as well. There are other solutions (external boxes), but to get a high resolution cost BIG bucks for a box.
Wrong.

I used the Matrox DualHead2Go which was $170 and I run 2 19" monitors.

Also to the original poster you won't be able to run 2 games on seperate monitors at a sustainable framerate. The only reason it works now is because they are on the same monitor, as DX is initialized through the first DAC... if you tried to boot a game on the second monitor you would be in REF mode and slow to a craw (think 10s per frame).
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post #6 of 10
7/22/06 at 2:01pm
Well, what I meant is the Matrox only supports monitors up to 1024x768 (or is it 1280x1024). Either way, you coudn't run two 2405's with it (1920x1200). For something like that, only a pro solution exists (I think this was discussed in another thread). But if the OP wants to run a couple of 17"ers, then it should do the trick...
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post #7 of 10
7/23/06 at 10:30am
The TH2Go supports a resolution of 3840x1028 with no problems, although I'm not 100% sure if the dual does as well.
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post #8 of 10
7/23/06 at 11:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolApathy
XP Service pack 2 will only recognize about 3GB of memory (it's a security fix issue) The original XP & SP1 recognize the entire 4GB....
Could you briefly explain why XP SP2 pretending that 25% of the memory isn't there is a "security fix"? Not doubting you, it just seems really wierd.
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post #9 of 10
7/24/06 at 4:07am
It's not technically a security fix issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888137/en-us
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post #10 of 10
7/24/06 at 8:12pm
Actually... I wanted to see just how powerful my laptop was after upgrading to the 7800 go gtx and 1gig of ram, so I ran all of these applications at the same time and my computer ran surprisingly smooth.

Doom3 @ max settings windowed at 1024 x 768

Watched a movie w/ PowerDVD

Watched TV w/ my AverTV pcmcia card

Several other small programs including aim, web browsing, RightMark CPU Clock Utility, and nvidia geforce temperature level monitor.

I ran all of these programs simultaneously w/ no problems.
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