Dual monitors

pipchaser · Post by **pipchaser** » 10 Jul 2006, 11:00

Perhaps my search wasn't using good enough keywords but I couldn't find what I am after.

I have seen the screenshots section and well, yes they are screen shots of the screen contents ;) funny how that works.

What I would like to see is how a game, say like WOW with the character centred on the screen looks from you the player.

Naturally the thinner the frame the better, but if anyone is playing games only on dual monitors, could they please provide a photo of how it looks/give some feedback as to what they think of dual say 20" monitors over a single 24".

Cheers

Ice[DDZ] · Post by **Ice[DDZ]** » 10 Jul 2006, 13:14

Pipchaser, if you're looking to play games on multi monitors. Don't go dual screen, it's not nearly as good as having 3 monitors (Checkout Paddy's TripleHead2Go review, or any of the TH2G posts). I've had two 2405's and honestly it's not even playable for gaming. Specifically FPS games.
I'm running just one 2405 right now and it's fantastic for gaming. Though if you've got money to blow, go get 3 monitors (Read TripleHead2Go reviews/features before buying, there are limitations).

When I had the two monitors I did a little comparison in the game F.E.A.R. using pictures taken more from the gamers perspective rather than just an ingame screenshot. This post is where that stuff can be found. Also there are tons of posts with 3x monitors being shown off to give you more of an idea of what it'll look like.

If you ask me though, if you want something ment for gaming between 20-24"... The Dell 240x is a great way to go. Dual 20" monitors won't give you much of a benefit in gaming, while like I said already, triple screens is the way to go if you insist on having multiple screens.

pipchaser · Post by **pipchaser** » 10 Jul 2006, 23:44

Cheers Ice...knew there was one somewhere.

Not quite in a position to pick up 3 screens at the moment. The consideration of two monitors over 1 23 or 24" is one based on $$.

I saw teh writeup on the TH2G and was quite impressed, but a little too far for me at the moment.

Post by **skipclarke** » 11 Jul 2006, 03:34

Hi Pip,

Just thought i'd repost this comment of mine from another thread. Personally i'd love to see more dual monitor support - if we've got widescreen support and triple monitor support, how hard could it be to implement dual monitor support eh?

Other thread comments:

Dual-head gaming on all but a few games is worhtless anyway. You have no center screen and that usually messes things up.

For all practical purposes this is true, and yet....

This mockup from 2 years ago still makes me wistful sometimes.

What was it? About six years ago, Matrox was starting to push for dual monitor gaming support. They had Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, Flight Simulator, Renegade Race, Microsoft Baseball 2000 and one or two others on board, but it never quite took off.

Still I can't help but wonder if this might strike a nice middle ground for those who don't want to buy three monitors, but don't mind getting one extra, or might have one extra laying around. For now I guess its a dead concept, but with Matrox you never know. :wink:

Ice[DDZ] · Post by **Ice[DDZ]** » 11 Jul 2006, 14:21

That's a nice shot you got there of 1942. I wish more games would do that kind of thing ya know? I wanna say something like Guild Wars would make use of dual monitors because you can move your HUD to anywhere and whatnot. But even still you're crosshair is in the middle of the two screens, not too bad for a click around to move game, but...

Post by **skipclarke** » 11 Jul 2006, 19:08

"]But even still you're crosshair is in the middle of the two screens, not too bad for a click around to move game, but...

Yea, I hear ya - having that crosshair in split b/w two screens is definitely no good, it would distract me to no end. Your comment about Guild Wars got me to thinking a bit. The main advantage of having two monitors I think, aside from being able to spread out your view like a widescreen monitor can (albeit with a split where the monitor bezel is), is that you could have the option to access all kinds of tactical data on your second screen while all the in-game action occured on the other.

Do you remember that Netrisca (hope I spelled that right) in-game menu from Serious Sam? Having something like that would be pretty cool - you could track new monster data, weapon info and maybe even chart your progress along the game map, all without having to hit esc to bring up a menu.

What might even be cooler - and this might really be getting into the territory of wistful thinking, but what the hey - is if developers took an approach that really utilized the dual monitor experience. So instead of just showing menu/inventory data on your second screen you'd have access to all sorts of other things - incoming data transmissions from allies, FMV sequences, interactive tool kits etc, so that the second monitor went from being a passive resource to an actively integrated part of the game; something that enhanced the whole experience.

pipchaser · Post by **pipchaser** » 12 Jul 2006, 00:51

>>> is that you could have the option to access all kinds of tactical data on your second screen while all the in-game action occured on the other.

Excellent idea and noticed yuo covered that in your screen shot.

I guess dual screening is the first step to tri-screening. Seeing that and reading both your and Ice's comments reminded me of a game somewhere in the netherworld of the back of mind where such implentation would have been great.....old age is setting in and I can't recall which bloody game it owuld be.

Microtia · Post by **Microtia** » 12 Jul 2006, 01:00

Seriously, if Nintendo can do it, why can't the PC world? :P.

I completely agree though, once you use dual monitors or more, its hard to use a single screen and it would be lovely if you could also use that extra monitor in games.

Post by **skipclarke** » 13 Jul 2006, 01:52

Hey guys, I've been thinking about his topic more and more as of late. Seems kind've a shame that it was dropped by from the gaming landscape, but it looks like a few people out there are still toying with it.

I was just browsing around and found this picture online. It's kinda hard to see in the dark, but it looks like this guys is using two 19" or 20" displays to play Battlefront 2.

pipchaser · Post by **pipchaser** » 13 Jul 2006, 02:10

excellent thanks Stretch.

will let you know how I go in the next couple of days...

Post by **skipclarke** » 14 Jul 2006, 01:42

Best of luck, Pip!

Here is a small addition to the list of games that currently support dual monitors:

MS Flight Simulator 2004
StarTrek Amarda II
StarWarsGalaxies
Serious Sam - The Second Encounter
Sub Command

(small caveat - some of these games may require some tweaking and/or only be supported by matrox cards)

pipchaser · Post by **pipchaser** » 15 Jul 2006, 08:52

well still messing around with my stuff.
Monitors arrived yesterday, two GFX5500 cards arrived today.

Running the latest drivers of NVidia, yet this dual PCI card combination seems to be worse than a single AGP GFX5700.

WoW is very choppy...even while wow is running in window this screen where I am writing this is a bit laggy in response.

this is at running in 16800 x 1050

AGP card didnt display any of this.

So far only able to get WoW running on one monitor...

Post by **skipclarke** » 15 Jul 2006, 21:53

Sorry if i missed something, but about your video cards - are you talking about old school PCI, or PCI-E? The FX5500 debuted around two years ago, and i'm not sure if it is up to running the latest titles at high resolutions.

If I was going to run dual monitors, i'd probably get a single, powerful card (like the one in my specs) with two DVI outs to run them. With Wow, you might want experiment a bit- try running the game at the lowest resolution and work your way up to see where the frames max out.

Star Wars Galaxies was one MMO I heard that supposed to be dual monitor friendly. Anyway, happy tweaking, thx for taking the time to experiment with this, i'm eager to hear how it turns out.

pipchaser · Post by **pipchaser** » 16 Jul 2006, 03:38

nope you didnt miss anything. I'm running with an older motherboard so cannot get one of the latest PCI-E cards.

WoW and a few free online games are about all I play at the moment so not too worried.

Just a bit surprised that the performance was so bad with 2 cards.

Thanks again though for you input.

cheers

Jupix · Post by **Jupix** » 18 Jul 2006, 13:17

I used to have 2* Samsung 172x 17" screens :P

That specific model was advertised for the ultra-thin bezel, but it still was about 2,5 centimeters. It's kind of up to you if that's too much for using the screens in "horizontal span" mode (both displays doing the same game or movie or whatever) or not. Didn't bother me that much personally, though I'm not a huge FPS fan, I played Live For Speed and for that it was awesome. The wide picture with lots of mpix's let me see far more other cars than 1 display would.

I never had any kind of problem with the screens. Most games supported the dual-screen mode out of the box with full resolution (2560x1024). GTA: San Andreas being an exception. I never got it working (actually, if I recall correctly, that was the reason I joined WSGF!). Working games include HL2, Far Cry, Doom 3, GTA: Vice City, MS Flight Simulator, and virtually all older titles like RTC Wolfenstein.

I sold the screens recently though so no more dual display fun. Wanted a bigger screen you know. :P

Post by **skipclarke** » 19 Jul 2006, 20:28

That looks very cool Jupix. 8)

Those Samsung's are very slick. How did you enjoy your gaming experience on these monitors?

Jupix · Post by **Jupix** » 20 Jul 2006, 10:50

I enjoyed it very much. Like I said above, I mostly used the "horizontal span" for Live For Speed, Flight Simulator and all the Tycoon games. FPS's and all of the like with a crosshair were a bit problematic because you had to aim "between the bezels" but naturally you could get used to that because the bezels don't actually hide any pixels. So, usually I played Half-Life 2 and the like on one display and had all the chats etc. on the other so I never had to quit to check those for new messages. :P

Also, the 172x has a TN panel so it's very fast for its age, so no ghosting either. On the minus side it has a bit bland colors on factory settings (and as we all know NVIDIA drivers only allow color calibration for the primary display).

There were no faulty pixels either and no backlight bleeding. All in all, superb panels. A bit small though. :P

Deceneu · Post by **Deceneu** » 27 Jul 2006, 12:43

(and as we all know NVIDIA drivers only allow color calibration for the primary display)

:shock: :shock: :shock: i have a dual monitor setup and a 6800GT since December 2005 and all, I mean all nvidia drivers I've ever tried allowed me to calibrate colour on both displays.

Jupix · Post by **Jupix** » 27 Jul 2006, 13:01

[quote] (and as we all know NVIDIA drivers only allow color calibration for the primary display)

:shock: :shock: :shock: i have a dual monitor setup and a 6800GT since December 2005 and all, I mean all nvidia drivers I've ever tried allowed me to calibrate colour on both displays.

That's strange, all driver versions I tried only gave me the changes on the primary display. And that's for both horizontal span and dual display modes. :?

I have a different card though. Does the 6800GT have 2 x DVI?

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