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Dual Monitor Question

M

MagnumXLV

Junior Member
Ok, I finally purchased myself a second monitor. I use WinXP and my video card is a Gainward Golden Sample 128MB Ti4200 with VIVO and Dual Monitor support. I have everything hooked up and the dual monitor displays fine and stuff but one of the main things I was hoping to use the dual setup for doesn't seem to work right. I was always hoping to do something like play a game on one monitor and do some homework or browsing sites on the other during downtime.

However, every game I use that runs in fullscreen (which is just about every game I play), minimizes when I click on something on the second monitor. It also changes the resolution of the second monitor to whatever res I'm running the game in. I looked through all the options in nView which is the software that came with the card. Nothing seems to work.

I want to be able to use the monitors as 2 seperate things. I want to be able to work fully independenley in each of them. Is this too much to ask? Is it possible? Are their some options I could set to make this work? Or is there some sort of way I could force my full-screen programs to operate in a window? Any help would be appreciated. I was so happy once I got the second monitor, but not being able to use it as I wish is extremely frustrating.

 
When openGL or DirectX takes over a monitor fullscreen, there is not really anything you can do on the other monitor without the game minimizing, that is just the way things work. Dual monitors is really nice for alot of things, but there are a few limitations and that is one of them. Pretty much anytime something is using a hardware layer, ie a game or media player etc, you can watch things on the other screen, but interacting with them would be disruptive.
 
Originally posted by: bot2600
When openGL or DirectX takes over a monitor fullscreen, there is not really anything you can do on the other monitor without the game minimizing, that is just the way things work. Dual monitors is really nice for alot of things, but there are a few limitations and that is one of them. Pretty much anytime something is using a hardware layer, ie a game or media player etc, you can watch things on the other screen, but interacting with them would be disruptive.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, what bot2600 says is true. Another limitation of most consumer level cards is that they can not do acceleration of OpenGL or DirectX on both monitors at the same time. Some high end 3dlabs (and possibly ATI FireGL) cards can do the acceleration of OpenGL on both screens. Perhaps they can do what you're wanting, but then again I'm not sure, and even if they do/could, it would not be worth it (imho) to spend more than $1000 on a graphics card like that. 🙂
 
Thanks for the responses. While I am a bit disapointed to say the least, at least I'm informed now and I'm not gonna beat myself up trying to figure out something that's not possible. You'd think that you could at least run a Directx/OpenGL game on one screen and browse email/web on the other but I guess not. By the way, I remember a while back with some older games, that I could force them to run in a window by putting some short -<something> somewhere in the shortcut properties. I know it probably wouldn't work with most games but if any of you remember what I'm thinking of it'd help a ton. Thanks again.
 
Originally posted by: MagnumXLV
Thanks for the responses. While I am a bit disapointed to say the least, at least I'm informed now and I'm not gonna beat myself up trying to figure out something that's not possible. You'd think that you could at least run a Directx/OpenGL game on one screen and browse email/web on the other but I guess not. By the way, I remember a while back with some older games, that I could force them to run in a window by putting some short -<something> somewhere in the shortcut properties. I know it probably wouldn't work with most games but if any of you remember what I'm thinking of it'd help a ton. Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Hey, I have run Unreal Tournament in a window before. IIRC, the option to do so is in the preferences or options (whatever they call it) screen. I'd suggest giving the options section in the games that you play a thorough checkover to see if there doesn't exist such an option.
 
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