Dual Monitors part 2!

[Rock]

Im after some advice please.

I have sli rig, so as discusssed previous you cant run 2 monitors in sli and have them both working.

I have bought a cheap pic graphics card to run the other monitor, so my question is

When playing a game say BF2142! if i have TS or a programme running on the other monitor and i click it, will this force the game to crash ,continue as it was etc, or should'nt it make any difference as it's running from another graphics card?

[Trooper]

It should just minimize it, but it may also cause it to crash. Clicking on it is basically like alt-tabing out of the game.

[flux]

Being able to click on the other program and switch to it has nothing to do with the graphics cards. Trooper is correct in that it is just like alt-tabbing. The question is can the game handle being minimized. Some don't like it too much.

[PanzerHans]

Armed Assault supports multiple monitors. I´m unsure if it works in SLI mode though.

[freekyE]

Originally Posted by PanzerHans

Armed Assault supports multiple monitors. I´m unsure if it works in SLI mode though.

how do you enable this?

[Rock]

Originally Posted by flux

Being able to click on the other program and switch to it has nothing to do with the graphics cards. Trooper is correct in that it is just like alt-tabbing. The question is can the game handle being minimized. Some don't like it too much.

No unfortunatly it cannot. Dam back to square one!

[PanzerHans]

Originally Posted by freekyE

how do you enable this?

Unless I completely misunderstood the you actually need three monitors to get it to work(that way you don´t get the crosshairs between two monitors. You then just select triplehead in the graphics options. I did not reflect much upon this settings, but it seems the Matrox external Triplehead2Go device is how they support it. Not really a true triple monitor support.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000740.html

Snippet from the above link:
The Triplehead2Go also has one unexpected strength: video games. 3D acceleration across multiple video cards is tricky at best. And there's no good way to tell a game to use multiple monitors unless it's explicitly coded to do so. The Triplehead2Go device neatly sidesteps both of these limitations by externally simulating one ultra-ultra-wide monitor.

PCFormat UK experimented with the Triplehead2Go in a couple recent and upcoming game titles, such as Armed Assault:

[Wimpinator]

Originally Posted by PanzerHans

Armed Assault supports multiple monitors. I´m unsure if it works in SLI mode though.

As Rock said earlier you cannot have 2 monitors in SLi mode. SLi mode by default means that both cards are drawing on one monitor.

[PanzerHans]

I assume you can still use both outputs if each card has two of them?

[Wimpinator]

Originally Posted by PanzerHans

I assume you can still use both outputs if each card has two of them?

Not as long as the cards are set up for Sli.

[Wimpinator]

From the SLi FAQ Here:
http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_faq.html#s7

How many monitors are supported when running in SLI mode?
When in multi-GPU mode, SLI currently supports one monitor. When in single-GPU mode, users have the ability to use up to four monitors using NVIDIA® nView® multi-display technology and Windows XP Dualview.

[PanzerHans]

Thanks Whimpinator. It seems a product like Triplehead2Go would be the only solution for multiple monito support when running in SLI then.

[flux]

I've gotten a bit confused here between threads. What is your current setup? Do you have three cards in your system? Two running SLI and one AGP? If that is the case then that AGP card will be able to output to your second monitor while you run the other two in SLI.

[flux]

Here is the article I linked in your original thread talking about dual monitor using three cards.

[Rock]

Originally Posted by flux

I've gotten a bit confused here between threads. What is your current setup? Do you have three cards in your system? Two running SLI and one AGP? If that is the case then that AGP card will be able to output to your second monitor while you run the other two in SLI.

At the moment i have 2 cards in a SLI setup.

Im hopefully having the 3rd card put in on Tues, its ATI pci radeon 9200 i think!

It only to run the second monitor, but as people have now mentioned, bf2142 will probably still CTD anyway.