Nice guide there, i know a few guys that have tried dual monitors and it does give a big advantage. Especially things when they are playing games, they no longer need to alt tab out of the game which can be a pain for guys with low memory.
Very handy to have though i don't know of any performance issues.

-HellFire

how many monitor can be connected
How To Connect Dual/triple Monitor + Advantages

I have an english language multi-media cafe. I would like to have the following available for students to choose from: a tv showing video, three monitors showing different windows.

Is this possible? will I need three graphic cards? will there be any loss in speed, I.E., will videos showing become jerky or will they have the same quality as if 1 monitor was used? thanks.

Also, does sandisk's new taketv give better video quality than svideo from computer? oh, and are long 15' svideo cables available or expensive to have made? thanks.

-john jackson

Connect multiple screen
How To Connect Dual/triple Monitor + Advantages

Replying to WeaponX
Hi, I would like to know if I add a pci graphic card on my pc, will a be able to add another screen to it.

-reply by codeblix

2 monitors and 1 TV
How To Connect Dual/triple Monitor + Advantages

I have a dual display radeon card at home however for the time being I have my monitor and tv hooked up as an extended desktop. I would like to hook up another monitor all the while still have my TV hooked up as well. What would be the best way to go about this? use my video card and hook up both monitors and then make other arrangements for my TV? or to hook up a monitor and a TV to my video card and buy another card for my second monitor? I have a radeon x1650Pro any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-reply by Slayter

I am working with a system integrator to put together a machine for heavy use of virtualization. He has put together lots of desktop and server systems with multiple monitors. His comment is that it is much better to get a single video card with multple monitor support, instead of adding another video card to a system that already has video support.

The problem with multiple video cards is that each makes heavy use of interrupts, and there is the potential for many conflicts at the system level.

That said, it appears that some careful shopping is appropriate. NexTag currently lists a Matrox G200 MMS Quad VGA/TV Tuner for only $119, but the description has a raft of strikeouts, and Matrox does not currently list it. A current offering is G450x4 MMS, which NexTag has for $449.

There appear to be 3 markets for 4x video cards: financial, server-workstations and gaming. Before selecting such a card, you need to decide how much speed, resolution and 3D multithreading capability you need, because the fancy cards get expensive fast.

Triple, or quadruple monitors seems a bit much. I use a laptop, and when I'm doing anything related to photography, I switch on an external monitor which works with the lapotop screen to give me more space. I usually maximise a program like GIMP on the external monitor, and also use the external monitor to test how my web design looks at other screen resolutions, which is useful and easier and quicker than changing my screen resolution on my laptop screen.

Hey I too would like to jump on the mulit-monitor band wagon. I am currently using a 27inch Sony TV at 1360x768 with a VGA cable. My question is how does HDMI come into play. Like say if I want to invest in a 32-46" wide screen. What do I look for in a TV. And what would be compatible as far as video cards go. How would I get the best performance across all monitors? Hows does SLI or Crossfire come into play in multi-monitor configurations? Are there any good web sites out there which someone can refer me too>

My current usage would be for photo editing (high resolution), photo studio (live camera caputure/display), gaming (graphic performance/response). And maybe video editing once I acquire a video camercorder.

Recently, I bought a computer with an ATI 128MB video card that has 2 ports, 1 DVI and 1 VGA. I was wondering if it was safe to connect 2 monitors to both of the ports. There is also a yellow video out port, but I think that is for plugging in a VCR player.

I have a Radeon 9550 video card which has one analog and one digital output. I bought a second analog monitor (cheaper than digital) so I could double the screen real-estate. All that was required was an adaptor to plug the second analog monitor into the digital plug. The next time Windows 2000 Pro booted up, it noticed the second monitor and asked me to configure it. Basically, Windows wants to know where it is physically located (left, right, top, bottom) and what resolution it should have.

I suggest you give that some thought. My normal configuration is stock market windows on the right (original) screen, and browsers, etc. on the left screen. I use a Zone Alarm firewall. I have it set so programs that want to use the internet have to ask permission of me. "Permission" is granted in a pop-up window in the lower-right corner of the right screen. If I had thought more about it, I would have located that in the lower-right corner of the left monitor -- in the middle of the extended desktop, reducing mouse travel. (Yeah, I could change it. Yeah, I'm lazy. )

All is not roses with two monitors. This computer also boots SuSE Linux 10.1. SuSE was installed with just one monitor. Now, when it boots up, it recognizes the second monitor, but it doesn't really understand what to do with it. The initial bootup splash screen comes up on both monitors, but when it brings up X-Windows for the desktop, the second monitor goes blank except for the message: OUT OF RANGE, meaning that SuSE has told the video card to use a higher frequency than the monitor can support. It is presumably using the (higher) specs for the original monitor.

There are some more cautions if you are using Linux and an older monitor, or a basic video card. About 8 years ago, I fried a monitor running SuSE (about version 6, as I recall). Older monitors may not check whether they are being overdriven, and Windows is better than Linux was at avoiding the problem. An overdriven monitor can literally melt the electronic components in the drive circuits.

More recently, I fried a video card using a Linux screen saver. SuSE has (or at least had) a Matrix screensaver, which did an excellent imitation of the computer screens you saw in the movie. I liked it so much that I left it up on this computer. After about a month of that, the text on the monitor started getting "jumpy." I finally realized that the vector graphics in that "screen-saver" were driving the video card so hard that it began to fail.