How do i choose the primary monitor for single screen gaming

[boppcj]

So I KNOW this has been covered before but I am having a heck of a time finding it... please don't yell at me. I had it working in triplehead2go for years by selecting it, but ive since dropped it for the nvidia surround for native display rez.

I've got tri-sli, Im running 2d surround for most games, but some older ones don't have the support, so when i launch them in, say, 1600x1200 rez, the game is displayed on the left monitor. Obviously I would like it to be in the center. Ive spoke with some nvidia tech nub multiple times and they had no clue/help to give me, great.

I've switched the cabling to the cards thinking the hardware designated the primary but no luck, its always the left monitor for single gaming.

another wierd thing, just to experiment, I did the 2d surround wizard and drug the left screen (the one with the taskbar) to the middle, so my desktop was all fubar'd and if you ran the mouse from left to right in motion, the cursor would go center, left, right screen. This STILL didnt work so i can't even trick the damn thing into thinking its in the right spot!

I can't find any option for this in the tri-sli 2d surround setup wizard.

windows and nvidia panel show the display as one giant one labeled "1" so i cant just right click one and "set as primary"

What gives?

[Delphium]

I beleive you will need to switch to extended/individual monitor mode, and not used a spanned/surround monitor mode.
Then you would be able to set the central monitor as primary.

[boppcj]

hmm, well i could have sworn i've read somewhere that someone has used the matrox gxm utility on an eyefinity setup to choose the primary monitor maybe? could be wrong?

also, the thing that rubs me most is this, here is a pic i cropped from the end of the nvidia wizard showing resolutions and setups...




anyone know why this doesn't work as intended? or does it and i'm just a dummy?

[Paradigm Shifter]

I'm using the 258.96 drivers, and I have my centre monitor hooked up on the primary DVI port of the first card. In nV Control Panel it's listed as monitor 1, with the leftmost being 2 and rightmost being 3. If I launch a game at 1920x1200 with Surround enabled (as it takes too long to switch, I leave it on permanently) it's automatically on the centre monitor...?

Will look at it in more detail tomorrow if I get a chance, take some screenshots etc.

[boppcj]

hmm, that's a possibility also, since I'm using the 260.99 drivers. I'm going to reinstall these and see if it is the same, if so, I'll revert back to the 258.96 and report back.


thanks

[Paradigm Shifter]

I've got family visting at the minute and they've taken over everywhere. Only reason I've got a free minute on the forum is that I seem to be in the doghouse for something or other. It'll have to be tomorrow.

[scavvenjahh]

I'm using the 258.96 drivers, and I have my centre monitor hooked up on the primary DVI port of the first card. In nV Control Panel it's listed as monitor 1, with the leftmost being 2 and rightmost being 3. If I launch a game at 1920x1200 with Surround enabled (as it takes too long to switch, I leave it on permanently) it's automatically on the centre monitor...?

Exactly. Primary card > center monitor and you're good to go.

That's the difference between TripleHea2Go and 3-way SLI:
-On TripleHead2Go, your monitors would be connected as they are on your desk (Left output = Left panel, Middle output = Center panel, Right output = Right panel).
-With Nv Surround, they are connected in order of "importance" (Top card = Center panel, Second card = Left panel, Third card = Right panel).

[boppcj]

yep you are right ^^^

the only catch is that even after I switched the monitor cables so the center monitor was the primary connector on video card #1, it still didn't change the output monitor until I reinstalled the drivers.

Other than that, I've got it working now so thanks for the interest guys.


-chris

[scavvenjahh]

Glad you got it working :)
FYI you shouldn't need to reinstall drivers just to do that. In fact, you don't even have to exit your Windows session... Simply make your connection changes, disable SLI, re-enable it and run Surround setup.

[ysu]

G'day gents,
first poster here.

I'm having the same issue; the monitors are connected in the order of middle monitor on 1st card & 2/3 on 2nd card.

I've switched on/off SLI, no help. I've reinstalled the drivers after driver-sweeper cleanup, nothing.

I'm at my wits end, every time the driver activates the right side monitor as the "main" one, whenever a 1920x1200 (single monitor) resolution game is started up.

Please, if you guys have any pointers what to try, I'm all ears.

Btw; when I set the surround the first time, the order is mixed. The left-most monitor is arranged automatically to the right, so based on that (wrong) arrangement the middle monitor is indeed picked. But I've re-arranged them!
Is this a driver problem, then? Is there some way to trick the driver into submission?

[scavvenjahh]

Things are a bit different in n 2-way SLI, I think the correct setup is: left+middle panels on the primary card, right panel on the secondary card; two panels on card 1 and the last on card 2 anyway.
(On your current setup, the Surround driver sees two monitors on your secondary card, so treats them as the "primary" monitors i.e left+middle, hence ruining your arrangement... Hope I'm making sense.)

[BHawthorne]

How do i choose the primary monitor for single screen gaming

Right click your desktop, bringing up the contextual menu.
Select NVIDIA Control Panel.
Disable NVIDIA Surround in the NVIDIA control panel.
Right click your desktop, bringing up the contextual menu.
Select Screen resolution.
Set the checkbox for the center display as your primary display.