Force a full screen application (game) to open on secondary display?

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,751
595
126
I have two video cards and two displays. A monitor is hitched to each. I want to use the secondary display for a game (really, I want to use the second graphics card because the first has horrible bugs with this game) but I can't get it to run on the secondary or even move it after the fact. This seems like a fairly simple concept but I can't figure it out!

They are both ATI cards btw.
 

Qbah

Diamond Member
Oct 18, 2005
3,754
10
81
Unless the application itself has an option to select on which screen it should show up (and which adapter it should use to render) the only way fo have it fullscreen on the other one is to set the screen you wish to run the game on as the primary one before starting the game itself.
 

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
6,893
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qbah is right, just change your primary display to the monitor which is hooked up to the card you want to use.


I do this all the time so i can see how my 8800 gs plays against the gtx280
 

imported_Shaq

Senior member
Sep 24, 2004
731
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If that didn't work you could disable a video card in device manager and force it to use the other one as a last resort. But changing the primary display should work.
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,751
595
126
Sorry I kind of disappeared from this thread...kind of forgot it.

My setup now is a hd4850 in primary (fast) and an x1800gto in secondary slot (actually can play old directx games without massive graphical artifacts or dithering errors). I have it dual booting and disable the hd4850 in my second windows install so that the x1800gto becomes primary. However, rebooting is kind of cumbersome obviously. I could just use hardware profiles to keep it under the same windows install I guess, but that doesn't alleviate the need to reboot.

I tried ultramon because it apparently has shortcuts for this sort of thing. It works great with stuff like notepad...but the game I was testing just jumps right to the primary display.

I guess I could try that primary display trick, but I was really hoping for more of a set it and forget it solution. I really wish new ATI and nvidia stuff didn't stink with old games.