dual screen woas

[corosus]

hi

i am addicted to my dual screens so when a buddy of mine had a creative geforce3 Ti for sale i checked if it had the ability to plug in two screens. unlike my old geforce2 400 one of he plugs was a different plug( for lcd screen i think), but i got a little adaptor , so it would fit - the card also has a tv-out, but that,s ot relevant right now-. I installed the card and i can not get the dual screen to work. i downloaded the latest detonator drivers, but nowhere can i find a mention of the dual screen option. right now the screens are running in "clone" mode but i can not find the menu to change it. i am running win2000 and i have lookd both in the display options and the desktop properties, as well as in the nview settings but can not find it annyware

Anny help is greatly appreciated, and i will respond to anny and all questions as soon as possible

[ricercar]

Sorry to inform you that GeForce3 GPU hardware is not multi-screen enabled. You need a GeForce2 for "TwinView," or a GeForce4-and-later (for nView) to enable multiple displays from one GeForce video card.

I believe this is one reason there were no Quadro3 cards released.

[corosus]

ok thanks
back to geforce 2 i go ;)

could i get my dual screen back with an old pci- vga-card???

[Gator]

ok thanks
back to geforce 2 i go ;)

could i get my dual screen back with an old pci- vga-card???

Yes you can do that if you wish. You can make the GF3TI AGP your primary display, and just use any PCI video card for your 2nd display.

The GF3TI you purchased may have had dual heads, but the GF3TI never really supported dual heads at once. They offered that to give people the choice of analog vs DVI.

If you would like a dual head video card actually capable of dual displays at once I recommend the GF4TI, GFFX, or GF6 series.

[corosus]

if i had the cash i would, but i'm kindof broke right now, and this card was verrry verrry cheap,......
i think i will try adding a pci card, a friend of mine should have some lying around

[majortom]

Edit: No Flaming -- ChrisRay

[Gator]

if i had the cash i would, but i'm kindof broke right now, and this card was verrry verrry cheap,......
i think i will try adding a pci card, a friend of mine should have some lying around

Any PCI card will do, even old school 4mb S3 or Cirrus logic cards

Note: you may need to tell the bios to make PCI the primary, but once you get into windows just set the AGP as primary. Otherwise the device manager may report the PCI card as not having any resources.

[corosus]

first of all thanks gator , one thought thou, if i set my pci card to primary, wont most games than automaticly use that card as the video card, since they don't support dual screen

sorry to be such a pr1ck about it, but its spelled WOES. DAMMIT, GET A DICTIONARY. (soapbox)
i am sorry english is not my native language.

[Gator]

first of all thanks gator , one thought thou, if i set my pci card to primary, wont most games than automaticly use that card as the video card, since they don't support dual screen

Nope, it'll be fine. The games will use whatever display you set as primary in Windows and it will ignore the BIOS setting. The only reason you need to set that in the BIOS is so that the PCI video card can receive necessary resources. Trust me ;)

[corosus]

ok thank you for the info, i asked my friend if he still has a card, and he'll give me one this weekend, so i'll try this weekend

[ricercar]

corosus, if you're in the San Francisco bay area, send me PM and we can arrange for you to pick up an old GeForce2 PCI card to go with your GF3.

Stability is much greater with a GeForce PCI card added to a GeForce AGP card. If you have to install another company's drivers, plan for instability.

[corosus]

ok i'll keep that in mind, if possible i will try a geforce based card,
unfortunatly i live in belgium , thank you for the offer thou

*edit; i just phoned my friend who will give me teh card and he does not have a geforce based card, if i pay for the shipping, would you concider sending the card overhere???*

[Gator]

so long as the card uses the built-in windows drivers (and preferably isn't an ATI card) it should work fine with your Geforce AGP card.

What card is the PCI card you have?

[corosus]

i don't know yet, i'll be seeing my friend this evening, i'll remember to give preference to a non - ati card ( if that is propper english;) )

i'll post back as soon as i know what kind of card it is

[corosus]

hi I got the card, it's an S3 virge dx/gx, and everthing seems to be working fine, thank you all for the help

one last question; is it possible to stretch the wallpaper over the two screens ( now it's just twice the same wallpaper) alternatively to use a different wallpaper for eatch screen? i am running win2k

thank you

[Gator]

Two ways to do this:

1) the Nvidia Nview software may allow you to do this despite the other card not being Nvidia

2) Let's say your resolution on the monitors is 1024x768. Create a new image with 2048x768 resolution, and copy & paste the wallpapers you want, then save that image and use it as your background image tiled (not center). If you want to stretch one image for both monitors, just stretch it to 2048x768 resolution and once again tile (not center).

[corosus]

Two ways to do this:

2) Let's say your resolution on the monitors is 1024x768. Create a new image with 2048x768 resolution, and copy & paste the wallpapers you want, then save that image and use it as your background image tiled (not center). If you want to stretch one image for both monitors, just stretch it to 2048x768 resolution and once again tile (not center).



this is what i did (and used to do with dual screen on my geforce2) but now with the two differnt cards it just gives the same wallpaper twice

[Gator]

this is what i did (and used to do with dual screen on my geforce2) but now with the two differnt cards it just gives the same wallpaper twice

What I'm saying is Windows doesn't technically show two wallpapers at once but you can create the illusion of two wallpapers. If your resolution on each display is 1024x768 and you have 2 displays next to each other that extend the desktop, then technically your resolution is 2048x768. So you need to make one wallpaper that is 2048x768 resolution, and you can copy and paste two pictures that are 1024x768 to create the illusion of different wallpaper on each display. Do you understand?

[brataccas]

Are there any significant performance advantages/disadvantages to running two separate cards (AGP/PCI) vs a single dual-head card? Currently, I use a 5900 for my dual-monitor setup. I'm curious if there is any advantage (more resources such as VRAM available to the main monitor for instance) if I pop in an old PCI Geforce4 card for the second screen.

[Gator]

I tried a GF2MX PCI with my card and I saw no significant performance boost, it only made things more inconvenient. I sold the GF2MX within in weeks of initally purchasing it.

Dual head is fine.