The GeForce2 MX cards with TwinView support contain two independent display pipelines and offer a variety of display options for a dual monitor system, as well as support for TV-out.

The GeForce2 MX has two different display options for TwinView: Clone and Extended modes.

Further information on TwinView can be found in the NVIDIA Drivers Release 6 for Windows - Features & Enhancements (3.9MB - Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

Mike was the first to experiment with the GeForce2 MX's TwinView features, and through his trials and tribulations with leaked beta drivers, settled on version 6.49 as being the most suitable for TwinView. If TwinView doesn't work reliably using NVIDIA's current official Detonator drivers (6.31), I highly recommend giving the the 6.49 and above drivers a try.

We'll begin with Clone mode, since it's the simplest mode to explain because, as the name states, the secondary monitor is a clone of the primary monitor.

As demonstrated by the above screen shot, enabling Clone mode is a simple click on the button and it's up and running.

You can configure certain aspects of how the second monitor is behaving such as the resolution and refresh rate.

You may be wondering what happens when the resolution of one monitor is set lower than the other. For example, my second monitor is running at a resolution of 800x600 while the primary display is at 1024x768. This is where Clone mode can be configured so that both monitors are not displaying the exact same thing, but are displaying similar objects. A panning mode can be enabled which causes the monitor with the lowest resolution to display the area in which the cursor is located.

There's an option at the bottom of the TwinView tab in which this auto-panning mode can be locked. When enabled the view is locked at it's current location (such as the top-right corner or the center of the display).

You can see that both monitors are showing the same content (shortcuts and wallpaper), but the monitor on the right does not display the entire Xbox logo.

Mercedes Benz Truck Racing

Quake 3 Arena

Rune

The two independent display pipelines are demonstrating their use, as in the Rune an Mercedes Benz shots, where I adjusted the color correction and made the left screen have more of a greenish hue. This property remained not only in the Windows GUI, but also in the games, as is demonstrated by the aforementioned pictures. This can be useful to configure the second monitor, especially if it's an older monitor where colors may have become washed-out.