| Uses for multiple monitors: CAD/CGI (Rhino 3D, Bryce, Poser, 3DS MAX, Simply 3D), HTML/CGI (NotePad), justifying my chiropractor bill, Seeing how much gamma radiation is required to cause sterility; Mostly, just to be a geek. I think the key question here is, why haven't you done it yet? |
Slackmaster K, Mar 4 2005
| Config 6861 |
| WinXP, 5 monitors, 3 video cards AMD Athalon XP 2800+ (Barton Core), 1.25GB DDR266, 11 HDDs: 1 sATA, 2 pATA, 2 RAID 0 arrays: 120+120+120+(120x4)+(40+40+20+20) = 960GB. Koolance water-cooled full tower, string lights, cold cathode, dual-lighted dual-fan 480W PSU. All lights and case are blue to show icy cool effect. Dual KDS USB optical drive organizers (75 discs each), USB-2 4800x2400 flatbed scanner, Alpha USB Webcam, MS USB SideWinder, Nostromo USB n51 GamePad, Pinnacle RCA & S-Video to USB-2 Converter, USB-2 1-GB ThumbDrive, Dual Belkin USB-2 Hubs, USB DigiCam cable for Sony 2MP USB Digicam and Sony Digital-8 USB VidCam. ATI TV Wonder VE, for watching TV on the TV when I'm too lazy to switch VCR inputs or I want to record (who uses VHS anymore?). Overall video resolution (wallpaper size) 7680x1968. |
| Card 1: |
| AGP ATI ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128Md DDR, ATI 9700 chipset ATI Catalyst Control Center does not initialize if you have multiple Radeons installed. To fix, remove all but one video card, do your spanning and whatever else you want to do, reinstall other cards, reboot. Will work on one card at a time only. Not only will CCC not work with multiple adapters, it won't even initialize. It pops up an error message saying multi cards are not supported and won't even try. Stock 4.8 drivers work perfectly. Any newer version prevents either monitor from going above 1920x1200. Unable to bypass this new limitation. Tried disabling 'hide modes this monitor cannot display', forcing via 'list all video modes', disabling monitor resolution reporting, and changing the refresh rates. It just goes to 1600x1200 (unless you select something between 1600x1200 and 1920x1200) and does virtual for the rest of the screen. This happens with one or two monitors, so it isn't video memory. |
| Card 2: |
| PCI ATI Radeon 7500 64 MB DDR, ATI Radeon 7500 64 DDR chipset Secondary goes RCA to VCR, Coax to TV. Thus the TV can be used for consoles, TV, camera playback, etc. Stock 4.8 drivers work perfectly. Any newer version prevents either monitor from going above 1920x1200. Unable to bypass this new limitation. Tried disabling 'hide modes this monitor cannot display', forcing via 'list all video modes', disabling monitor resolution reporting, and changing the refresh rates. It just goes to 1600x1200 (unless you select something between 1600x1200 and 1920x1200) and does virtual for the rest of the screen. This happens with one or two monitors, so it isn't video memory. |
| Card 3: |
| PCI ATI Xpert 128, ATI Rage 128 chipset Choppy performance when dragging windows from this card to another card. Fixed by hiding most of the window off screen during the drag operation. |