How cool is it to have 2 Monitors hooked up to 1 PC???

[Detoyminador_]

I'm thinking about connecting another monitor to my PC maybe a 15" LCD so i can do destkop work on that and have a 21" CRT monitor for gaming. If i'm gaming on the 21" monitor, can I have other programs running in the background i.e. chat programs? and is possible to multitask with them? i.e. leave the game running on the 21" and use a word processor on the 15"???

I know i'll need to graphics cards to be able to use the 2 monitors, but isit worth doing this????????

 

[sohcrates]

I've been running dual monitors for years, and used to run 3 monitors on my old rig

if you're gaming on one monitor, you can see the other monitor and what's going on, but you can't reply to messages or anything (since the keyboards is taken up by the game)

only way to multitask would be, like with a single monitor, to alt-tab out of the game or whatever

it's DEFINITELY worth doing. man, i absolutely cannot go back to a single monitor, it's so.....INEFFICIENT!

edit: the link in my sig to "comp pics" shows me running a dualhead system with the third monitor actually hooked up to a second system right now

 

[chansen]

Very cool. You'll get ALL the chicks.

I like it for working on, but it's pretty useless in most games (though I don't play many). I find it most helpful for reading help files and placing toolboxes on one screen while working on the other.

 

[KevinMU1]

I've been running multi-monitor for about a year now, and it's very useful. It's not that useful for gaming, since if games these days lose focus they tend to minimize themselves. But I love to have all my small apps running on a secondary monitor while keeping my main monitor uncluttered, it is very nice indeed.

It's good for freaking out all of your friends too

 

[Detoyminador_]

so did you need 3 video cards to run the 3 monitor setup sohcrates?

 

[sohcrates]

<< so did you need 3 video cards to run the 3 monitor setup sohcrates? >>



actually, i had a matrox g400 dualhead + a matrox mystique singlhead...so 2 vid cards for 3 monitors

but win2k and win98 support up to 10 monitors or so i believe, so the sky's the limit (assuming you have enough IRQ's)

 

[Xanager]

how do you move different things to different monitors? Is it just like one big widescreen monitor, or do different programs open on different monitors?

 

[KevinMU1]

For me, different programs open on different monitors, although you can span programs across monitors if that's what you really want to do

 

[Detoyminador_]

and would the LCD secondary monitor be the way to go so to save on space and power???

 

[sohcrates]

<< and would the LCD secondary monitor be the way to go so to save on space and power??? >>



well, yeah, it would save all of that. question is, do you really want to invest that money into an LCD just to use it as a secondary monitor?

 

[KevinMU1]

Depends on how you define "secondary," -- if you do it right, you use both monitors equally and neither one is "secondary" to the other one.

 

[Hardware]

I have now 2 * NEC LCD 18" 1830 since about one year and I can just say never get back to a crt!