Dual Screen Questions (Windows XP)

[reality]

I used to run Vista RC2 for a while, and one of the nice things I liked about it, with regards to my dual screen setup, was that I could play games windowed, and drag the gaming window over to the second screen and full hardware acceleration was still intact, with no loss of framerate

is there an obvious reason why under Windows XP, this cannot be done? When dragging a windowed game to my secondary screen, the framerates immediately dip into single digits

is this impossible to do under XP, or is there a setting that can be changed or software that's downloadable that would allow this?

ati 1950xt 512MB
core 2 duo e6300 @ 2.3ghz

 

[Roguestar]

Because windows XP is terrible at managing dual-monitor setups .

I have heard good things about Ultramon; it's $39.95 but apparently very good software.
http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

 

[reality]

I've used Ultramon before, so i'm familiar with the software to a point, however I'm not sure if this will solve my problem. Does anyone else have any ideas, or know more about Ultramon and if it will allow this?

 

[AncientPC]

I'm pretty sure that Ultramon will not help your situation (I use it as well).

From what I understand, WinXP uses OpenGL to draw the 2D desktop and most games these days use Direct3D. It's possible that the environment simply doesn't handle a Direct3D window well when moving it from one monitor to another. Vista on the other hand has the desktop running completely in 3D acceleration using Direct3D.

On the other hand, windowed media players playing Xvid or other codecs are usually driven by Direct3D as well and moving them from one monitor to another doesn't result in any problems. However at the same time, the game and media player windows can still be drawn differently.