Problem with Geforce 6600GT on two monitors

[JackDanielsDrinker]

At home, I have a 22 inch CRT running at 1600x1200 and a 17 inch LCD that natively can do 1280x1024. I want to run my desktop across both monitors.

I do this at work with an older Radeon card. It shoots 1280x1024 to the 19 inch CRT, and 1024x768 to the 17 inch CRT. Each monitor runs at its own resolution and my desktop spans the two monitors.

I am trying to get the same setup working at home--run a desktop across both monitors, driving each monitor at its maximum resolution. But when I try to set this up in the nVidia settings, it spans both monitors with my desktop, but the resolution drops to the lowest common denominator, ie 1280x768 on both monitors. This is using the Horizontal setting running the stock nVidia display drivers.

Is there a way to drive the CRT at 1600x1200 and the LCD at 1280x1024 while spanning the desktop?

 

[Nanobaud]

I was running that exact monitor configuration on my BFG 6600GT up until last week, when I switched to an LCD, and I don't recall any particular issues setting it up.
(Edit: Wait, your 12x10 was an LCD, mine was another CRT)

16x12 monitor was connected using rgb/hv coax's only (instead of D-Sub), so the computer could not communicate with the monitor (doesn't seem that would make a difference though).

Think I had 75Hz refresh rate on both.

Driver's were standard NVIDIA release drivers that I grabbed around mid-January (Driver version 67.03)

When I initially replaced 16x12 monitor with LCD (analog, no drivers installed for monitor) it first came up at 12x10x75Hz (I think, it was certainly some lesser resolution) but I switched it to 19x12x60Hz and it stuck with CRT on other port still 12x10x75Hz.

At some level, what you're trying to do must work.

nBd

 

[JackDanielsDrinker]

Yeah, it should work somehow. Glad to hear you have confirmed that it can work.

I'll go home and pound on it some more. I know there are some utilities that let you set 2000 (!) different options that might get me there (Powerstrip, etc.). But I wanted to at least try with the stock drivers.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: JackDanielsDrinker
Yeah, it should work somehow. Glad to hear you have confirmed that it can work.

I'll go home and pound on it some more. I know there are some utilities that let you set 2000 (!) different options that might get me there (Powerstrip, etc.). But I wanted to at least try with the stock drivers.

I'm not sure that NVIDIA supports this with the true "span" modes (where it treats both monitors as one big display) -- when doing this, I'm pretty sure they *have* to be the same size. At the very least, the vertical resolution has to be the same.

You can, however, run the monitors independently at different resolutions without a problem.

 

[Nanobaud]

I'm not sure what constitues true 'span' modes, but I had the CRT pair (and for a short time the LCD/CRT pair) set to 'span' from the windows 'display' control panel with different resolutions. The top edges were aligned. If you drag the mouse to the lower inside edge of the larger display it would stop at the edge, then if you raised it up above the bottom of the smaller screen, you could slide it onto the smaller screen.

There is some setting in the NVIDIA display control telling it how to treat multiple displays (single, clone, span, ...) and I obviously had that set at 'span' also.

nBd

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Nanobaud
I'm not sure what constitues true 'span' modes, but I had the CRT pair (and for a short time the LCD/CRT pair) set to 'span' from the windows 'display' control panel with different resolutions. The top edges were aligned. If you drag the mouse to the lower inside edge of the larger display it would stop at the edge, then if you raised it up above the bottom of the smaller screen, you could slide it onto the smaller screen.

That's not a spanned video mode -- that's two independent displays. Windows doesn't have a "real" spanned multi-monitor mode (where it treats everything as one big display).

There is some setting in the NVIDIA display control telling it how to treat multiple displays (single, clone, span, ...) and I obviously had that set at 'span' also.

nBd

Don't set the NVIDIA drivers to "span". I forget what they call it exactly (I'm not using my 4600 anymore, or I'd check), but you just want the normal multi-monitor setting.

 

[Nanobaud]

Thanks for the clarification of terminology.
It was doing what I wanted, but I didn't really know what it was (or wasn't) called.

 

[Melchior]

Download a program called Ultramon, should solve all your problems.

 

[CTrainBEB]

yes, Ultramon is the king of multi-monitors

 

[JackDanielsDrinker]

Cool, I will look at Ultramon.