And while I'm at it - a dual monitor question

[Jschmuck2]

Currently I'm running a 22" samsung at 1680x1050 but I wouldn't mind picking up a 2nd monitor - I'm thinking either the 23.5 or the 21.5 ASUS' that run at 1920x1050.

My question is - how does that work? Can I just game on the 1080p monitor and have my desktop at 1680x1050 when not gaming? Or should I just give up on my dream of 1080p and pick up a second 1680x1050?

 

[Qbah]

Most games have an option to select on which screen you wish to run them. So just select the 1080p screen.

Some of them don't and will run on the main screen by default. So be sure to select the 1080p as your primary screen and you're set. Also, you can run both screens at different resolutions - it's not a problem. So you can game on one screen and have your MSN, browser or whatever else open on the other screen. Most of the time it will work fine. What I usually did to have a nice experience is to play my games in windowed mode at a custom resolution just a bit lower than 1920x1080. This way I could always click away from the game without it minimizing or anything and quickly respond to the people I was chatting during gameplay or to switch a browser window. Or watch a movie on the other screen It's a habit that's still with me from my old WoW-junkie days Though now I play on my Xbox, so I can do whatever else on my PC.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Originally posted by: Qbah
Or watch a movie on the other screen It's a habit that's still with me from my old WoW-junkie days

I always found I couldn't get movies to play on the 2nd monitor while the video card was in 3d mode. At least under XP I'm not sure if it works in Vista of 7 but in my current machine I have to use a 2nd video card. One for 3d, and a simple passively cooled card for displaying movies on my other 2 monitors.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: OVerLoRDI

Originally posted by: Qbah
Or watch a movie on the other screen It's a habit that's still with me from my old WoW-junkie days

I always found I couldn't get movies to play on the 2nd monitor while the video card was in 3d mode. At least under XP I'm not sure if it works in Vista of 7 but in my current machine I have to use a 2nd video card. One for 3d, and a simple passively cooled card for displaying movies on my other 2 monitors.

I have the same problem when keeping both my projector screen and main monitor on. The strangest thing is in Windows 7 one source game hates when I have both screen enabled at the same time but in Windows Vista it works fine. Both using the same Vista/7 64 bit nvidia drivers too. It makes no sense. It errors out the source game every time in Windows 7 until I select just my main monitor. I prefer to keep both screens enabled so I can watch a film on the projector but still use my pc at the same time.

The strangest thing at all it works great at first in Windows 7 but after about 10 starts and shutdowns the source game develops this problem. I would run it in windowed borderless mode like the other two games but it doesn't support borderless I guess I am out of luck running both screens at the same time on Windows 7 ? What am I suppose to do try all the different nvidia drivers and see if one of them works?

 

[Lonyo]

The video on second monitor thing is probably related to the render mode you have selected in your video player of choice.
If you try switching about with the render mode in your video program you might have more luck outputting video to the second screen.

 

[pcslookout]

Looks like it is a official problem! http://forums.steampowered.com...8921&highlight=Windows

They won't fix it until Windows 7 is officially out either.