Rokage! Thank you for that URL to UltraMon 
The only annoying thing left is that ‘Minimize all’ minimizes also the stuff from the second screen.
Bill,
3+ monitors works in any way with any pci card
slotted in, in terms of spanning desktops, (talking about agp + pci architectures),
guess “our” (nVidia users point is :
horizontal span w/ 2 monitors !
and it seems it just does not work !
I run a 4 monitor system with 2 EVGA 6600gt cards in pciX …
now that I’ve been using that…I’ll never go any smaller…
4 is the way to the go if u ask me… u just have to sit a tiny bit farther back from the lcds…or you will be moving your head a little more…( which I don’t mind anyways…)
the EVGA cards are awesome an under 130$… just the 19" monitors killed me… $1200 for those puppies… the heat from the comp and 4 monitors heats the room up like a s-auna when I really get rocking…
but it literally was a matter of plugging the cards in and hooking the cables up…
no brainer if u ask me…
and I cant post my email or homepage because u have x-x-x words not allowed… kinda stupid… but keeps the spam out i guess
I’m a graphic designer and web developer who is looking into purchasing a new pc in feb or mar. i’ve been reading up on a lot of graphics cards to try to determine the right ones for me. I want to have a 4 monitor display. I have read all about sli technology and think that having 2 processors working on stuff at once is a great idea. does it really make sense to have two sli cards versus getting 2 non-sli cards that are cheaper? Any reccomendations would be greatly appreciated.
does it really make sense to have two sli cards versus getting 2 non-sli cards that are cheaper
There is no such thing as an “sli card”, just motherboards that are “sli capable” meaning they have two video card slots.
You just plop two regular PCI Express video cards in those slots and you’re off to the races. That’s exactly what DJBXP did in the post above yours.
I’ve been ruuning XP with 3 Princeton 18 inch flat screens(DVI). I have an AGP NVidia 5500 and 2 PCI NVidia 5200 cards. It’s great. The only way to develop software. Unfortunately I haven’t found a multi-head fish aquarium screensaver but that’s a question for another post.
Each of these cards “supports” dual monitors but I wasn’t using the second port.
I also have 3 19inch analog VGA CRTs sitting here doing nothing, I decided to try the dual port setup. The analog monitor plugged into the AGP (NVidia 5500) port is crystal clear. Unfortunately that’s not the case for the analog monitors plugged into the 5200’s. Both monitors show really bad shadowing, so bad that they are pretty much useless.
And yes, I’ve swapped the monitors around.
I just installed the latest NVidia drivers and verified that all 3 cards are using them.
Suggestions?
I have stumbled across the strangest work-around ever. My flat screens support both analog and DVI. It seems that they run better plugged into the analog ports on my video cards. When plugged into the DVI ports there would be the odd screen blanking. So I thought, let’s try the CRT’s in the digital ports (using DVI-Analog converter plugs). Yup, you guessed it. The analog screens on the 5200 cards are now crystal clear also. I now have 5 monitors running. The 6th one is in the basement and I’m too tired tonight to carry it upstairs.
I would still like to understand why the analog ports on the 5200 cards do so poorly displaying CRT’s.
One thing I haven’t checked is if the problem is caused by running multiple video cards. I guess I could test the cards one at a time to see it makes a difference.
Any ideas?
The DVI circuitry isn’t always integrated into the video chip itself; less expensive and/or older video cards sometimes use an external (discrete) chip for the DVI interface.
More on this here: “ExtremeTech DVI Compliance Shootout”
I have dual 7800GTs in SLI mode and a Radeon 9200 sapphire PCI card for an additional monitor. My OS recognizes the PCI card but it has an initialization error and cannot be used.
I’ve tested the 9200 on another machine and it’s still functional. Is there any particular reason these don’t play nice?
I originally thought I didn’t have enough power to run it, but have since put a 620W power supply on my machine so I should have plenty of juice.
For those of you wanting dual monitor NVIDIA SLI and to add a 3rd monitor or 4th check this out…
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=6269
For those who want to use 2 or 3 monitors at a time from a laptop or SLI-enabled system, or don’t want to install a new graphics card, check out these external multi-display upgrades…
DualHead2Go:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/3dws/products/dualhead2go/dh2go.cfm
TripleHead2Go:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/3dws/products/triplehead2go/overview.cfm
What is recommended between 3x17" or 2x19"
Definately 3x17" if you had to choose.
But obviously 3x19" would be cooler… I am about to upgrade from my Matrox Parhelia 512Mb for a dual card option with more juice… perhaps 2xnVidia cards outputting to 3x19" Lcd.
For the last three years my Parhelia and 3x17" lcds have made my life a million times easier. I am an animator/filmmaker/editor, so I use a lot of different programs all at the same time… the extra space is a must!
“While I would like to see some taller monitors I don’t think a 4th up on top would be all that useful. I think only about half a monitor worth of additional height would be comfortable.”
You could probably use a large widescreen monitor mounted sideways and use the NVrotate funtion of Nvidia’s drivers. this would give a ‘taller’ monitor
Hi Jeff
Thanks for the writeup on multi-monitors! Found this when trying to research, I’m planning on moving to the three monitor setup. I do SEO and web development work and I am tired of having to switch windows all the time.
I’ve heard some other people who have multimonitor setups rave about Ultramon as well.
This is great information and very helpful. I’ve been trying to get two cards (AGP and PCI) to work for about a week now and this thread identifies the possible problem areas and solutions.
Ironically, my first attempt at work with this went fine; I just stuck an old card in the Dell Desktop system I use and it worked. However, at home I have not been so fortunate so the problems are definitely based on compatible chips/cards and/or drivers.
[quote]The MultiMon utility is kind of expensive. You can get the additional taskbar for a 2nd or 3rd monitor with this free utility.
http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm[/quote]
I downloaded this free MultiMon utility and installed it. I have the new taskbar on my primary monitor but it does not show on my secondary monitor. I have tried using the CNTL + ALT + arrow key to send the screen to the 2nd monitor but it does not go. I can’t drag the taskbar over to the 2nd monitor either.
I can and do use the 2nd monitor for extra windows and applications. Anyone have any recommendations?
I’ve found that the best thing for me is to use dual monitors for “real work”, and then have an old handheld or two sitting around for email monitoring and status updates.
They can even be connected via USB or WiFi so they are constantly showing me project status, or incoming emails. I can also reply to any of the emails without using any memory or screen space.
I have a 5 monitor setup using a Matrox triplehead2go for the lower tier and a dualhead2go for the upper displays. All of this runs off of 1 eVGA Nvidia 7800 OC.
That’s right, 1.
This is all mounted to an ergo-on-demand 2x3 stand and I LOVE it!
I know, Matrox doesn’t support the use of these box’s on the same machine but I don’t care because it works flawlessly. I do my own support anyway so whatever to the support thing.
I am a full time Unix admin and working from home is a dream now, I’ll never ever ever go back to a single monitor except at the office where most of my clients are to cheap to provide their consultants with proper hardware setups.
If you haven’t tried it, you are missing out.
And if you have and are going to boast of what a real man you are by NOT using it, whatever. You probably don’t do this kind of work for a living anyway.
Try it, you’ll love it.
I recently started using 3 monitors when I bought my new computer. I am a student as well as run small ebay business and I will never go back to 1 monitor. However, for your everyday home user this setup might be overkill. When not concentrating on work the other 2 screens really seems like a waste, but when actually working my multitasking has gone through the roof. I can only imagine what a difference this makes to all you programmers and developers. And it looks way cool, I mean 1 21" widescreen looks cool, but surrounded by 2 smaller monitors it just looks bad a$$.