Hooking up two monitors – advice please

[Chris Wool]

i dont understand how the system is working with 2 separate cards. i have a 2 monitor system driven by one card with 2 outputs in the driver for the card you can elect weather to spread the desk top over the 2 screens or not else you have the same on both monitors.

chris

[steve geary]

Chris,
after i did this i found that a lot of people do it with two cards to increase the number of windows they can veiw from the same system.
After I installed the additional card, it gets set up in display properties, settings tab. You pick a monitor for primary and seconday.. position it, and you then can drag to and from each monitor. Just like having an extra large monitor.

I just don’t need that feature.

My new card has two outputs, but one is vga and the other is S Video… maybe i could just get an adaptor from s video to vga and use the two outputs on the new card.
It would be overkill with the two card, but still think i should be able to do this.

steve

[David Rowland]

Steve, tricky subjet this one. Done a fair bit of it myself.

Powered spltter is good one, although not cheap. Make sure it supports your resolution and your top re-fresh rate of your best monitor or you will have to use a lower refresh rate and flicker.

A basic splitter will weaken the signals, may even damage the grahpics card if you got TWO monitors and ONE graphics card on the same cable. Not even sure if that is possible.

Two graphics cards is cool, however depending on your motherboard, most graphics cards are AGP socket, but only ONE agp is in a computer. PCI graphics cards are rare, you could use one of these, however if you got a 64bit computer and Dual PCiExpress slots, then you can add a second graphics card and this process is called SLI. (mainly for games)

My option would be to use a graphics card with TWIN graphics output, a lot of cards come with standard VGA 15pin D monitor connector and also with a DVI connector, normally you can convert the DVI into standard 15pin connector and then use two matching monitors.

The driver in the graphics cards (you choose), will control Dual monitor support, however a lot of graphics cards only support “extended desktop” so doing dual monitor will be done to the drivers. Mix matching ATI and Geforce graphics cards might not be a good idea, driver conflict might happen.

SO… my advice… research and find out if a NEW graphics card will drive dual monitor in double screen mode. (however extended desktop is very handy!!!!)

For easy approach, Powered Splitter is the easy option but make sure it can take good resolution and good refresh rates.

update: SVIDEO is for TV’s, it is lo-quality video, i have used this for lo-quality outputs for video message boards. But no good for anything serious, for instance, do you remember the Amiga / Comodore/ Atari computers and the poor quality displays?

I am surrounded by monitors, I have 4! all extended desktops on two computers. At work I just use the one. My BIGGEST advise is to buy a 19″-21″ monitor and forget about all this.

[steve geary]

Thanks Dave…. That’s what I needed to know.
The new card i bought did come with a pci slot and seems to work fine.
the poweered splitters are costly, but saw a few for around $80.. not two bad.
I just wanted to make sure i couldn’t do this with the two cards that i have installed, and from what you explained… it seems i can’t.

I did get a 21″ monitor for me and using my origianl 17″ for the customers…. I’ll never be able to use a smaller monitor now.
Thanks for the tip on the s video…. i’ll forget about that.
I think I’ll get a powered splitter, and leave the second card in… maybe i’ll use the extened desktop in the future.
Thanks again!
steve

[steve geary]

Dave…
What’s the DVI connector primarily used for?

[David Rowland]

DVI is the new modern digital connector. Used for Flat screen panel monitors, if you got the socket then you may have a connector in your PC box which converts DVI to Standard monitor to connect to tube monitors. If you got a panel monitor then have a look for DVI on it, if not you should use this.

DVI adapter

A Geforce 6600 with 3 connectors, (SVIDIA, DVI and 15pin VGA) NOTE : This is a PCI Express card !!

[steve geary]

Thanks Dave!
It all makes sense now… pretty much.

The original card is a 32mb ATI Rage Ultra
the new one is a GeForce MX 4000 64mb
Neither has the dvi

I may stick with the two cards i have now and get the powered splitter, or get another new card. About the same money either way.
One more question, then I’ll leave you alone…
what’s the difference between a pci and pci express?
My new card is a pci slot… not express.
If i get another new card, i could ditch the original and put it in the agp slot

[David Rowland]

ok, i just done a bit of an experiment for you, I have a PC that I use for gaming and it can run up to 4 monitors.

However, forget PCI Express… its too modern. Forget PCI as well.

Buy something like this, the features are a bit much for designer work.:-

I just checked and currently running a DVI converter on my older 21″ monitor and my Hansol 19″ monitor is running on the standard monitor connector.
When I go into the NVidia driver settings, there is “nView Display Settings”.. there is an option called “Clone”, this has made both monitors duplicate, however you get all the options you want if you don’t want to clone and it is pretty simple to chop/change. If you don’t get these options straight away then you need to download the latest drivers.

I use the 6600 Geforce and is working fine, cheaper cards are available but I cannot tell you which to use.

However, if you got a bad quality second monitor, YOUR display will match the poor monitor!!! so it may be big/bulky on the good monitor and touch flickerly, both monitors USE the same resolution and refresh rate.

[Andrew Ritchie]

I use a ATI 9550 256MB. I think I paid about £41 gbp for it. I can plug in 2 monitors at once with no problems at all. most new tft monitors ship DVI connector as standard so there should be no problems getting them to work as dual screen.

The card i use is a AGP which has been built specifically for the AGP port which the bus speed transfer is far superior to the PCI slots. I would always go for the AGP cards over PCI because PCI shares the bandwidth with other devices on your motherboard where as AGP is independent.

A DVI to VGA connector will set you back a further £10 or $10.

PCI Express is a slot built on the priciples of AGP but will ran alot faster

Like Dave said there are thousands of cards out there, some are cheap as chips.

Andy

[steve geary]

Thanks again Dave.. and Andrew..
Lots of spot on info that i needed.
I currently am using the new card (pci slot) with the non powered splitter… After redaing your advice and some other research i did, I think I’ll get another card to replace my original in the agp slot, and chalk up the loss to ignorance…
Dave… can’t find the clone option, but I’ll keep looking.. maybe mine doesn’t support it.

Cheers guys!
Thanks for taking the time to help!

[David Rowland]

the clone option is an Nvidia driver feature… bin your cards steve.. no win situation that.

[Shane Drew]

WOW 😮 good info here. Certainly worth bookmarking this one.

I run 2 identical 19″ crt screens to have the extended desktop option, using two cards (AGP & PCI).

I can not go back to one monitor now. When I work at home with my 17″ LCD, drives me nuts. Not enough space on my screen!

Thanks again

[Robert Lambie]

i have a 21.2 inch view sonic flat screen with very slimline border.
the idea of this slimline frame is to interlock another 5 screens to create a sort of video wall. the monitor itself slides up and down and can spin onto its side. viewing portrait instead of landscape.
there appears to be 5 usb ports on the back to link 5 monitors to create video wall.
sorry that’s about as much as i know about these things :lol1:

i bought this monitor basically to help my eye site. i spend so much time on these things it was really giving me sore eyes. lots of cheap liquid screens out there but this one has a very high response time and very clear/sharp. lots overlook these important features. i would have myself if i wasn’t told to be wary of all the lower costing ones on the go.
at the end of the day, you get ones set of eyes, better being safe than sorry. 😀

[Tim Painter]

on that note Rob….lighting is important & the distance the screen is viewed from depending on its size.

[Kevin Flowers]

i run a system with 3 x 19″ lcd screens can view all the same or 2+1 or all independent, purchased as a system so never got too far into it. comes in handy at times, when designing-sending files to print server and checking out quotes etc as you go through the day. (Impesses the customers as well)

Kev

[steve geary]

Just an Update to you guys that helped me….
I bought a new card for the agp slot – xfx GeGorce fx 5500, 256 mb, with dvi and agv outs, and the dvi to agv adaptor
Worked great, have it on the clone option with the two monitors seeing the same.
I left the other new card in the pci slot and have extended desktop on a third monitor.
I had to upgrade my power supply, so that was another 50 bucks, but everythings working as i’d like it now.
The new card with the additional memory is noticably faster.

took a while, but all is good now…
Cheers
steve

[David Rowland]

Excellent… all u need now is a few games and we see you in a match!
I suspect upgrading the powersupply is for the grahpics card’s 3D, even though you will only use a small percentage of that card for 2D work.
Sorry, forgot to tell u that

[steve geary]

I wish i had time for games…. I can’t event get my truck lettered!
the only game I’ve played on the computer is the Old asteroids… takes me back to my youth!.. not much heavy duty graphics in that game.
Thanks for the tip on the power supply dave… I kind of thought i might have got away with the stock 250 watt, but the card said 300 watt minimum, and at this point i didn’t want to take a chance… I’ve been out of control with new jobs lately, and if I had a major breakdown, I’d totally freak. I do have another system, but it’d still be a major hassle.

[David Rowland]

250watt… thats small!
Currently using 500watts and turn off the heating system

[steve geary]

quote Dave Rowland:

250watt… thats small!
Currently using 500watts and turn off the heating system

😀

I went with 350… Hope it’s o.k. for a while… I don’t really see me doing much more to this system.