Painkiller And NVIDIA
- Thread starter Gambler FEX online
- Start date
I wonder what makes spanned/streched desktop mode so hard to implement that ATI still can't do it? technically, it is just having one large frame buffer that both RAMDACs read, instead of two.
Another wierd thing is that nVidia's Multimonitor support didn't take off the ground on the first try... anyone remembers TwinVIEW? there really isn't many cards that shipped with TwinView, but I have "witnessed" a try to replace Matrox G400 with a one. 30 minutes and Matrox was back in the machine. nVidia's nView tech was released almost exactly year after nVidia and Matrox had made a deal about Matrox pulling off all claims about nVidia stealing their employees. The Funny things is, that nView is identical to Matrox's older Dual Head. It is not hard to guess which employees left from Matrox.
I also think that if there would be games supporting multihead gaming on my 9700, I definately would use it. I can up to dozens of ideas how use just one more monitor to enchance gaming experience. Now it just sits idle. (and usually you even don't see the windows you had there when started the game because 1st monitor resolution is changed and all windows are repositioned on the new size of desktop.)
Another wierd thing is that nVidia's Multimonitor support didn't take off the ground on the first try... anyone remembers TwinVIEW? there really isn't many cards that shipped with TwinView, but I have "witnessed" a try to replace Matrox G400 with a one. 30 minutes and Matrox was back in the machine. nVidia's nView tech was released almost exactly year after nVidia and Matrox had made a deal about Matrox pulling off all claims about nVidia stealing their employees. The Funny things is, that nView is identical to Matrox's older Dual Head. It is not hard to guess which employees left from Matrox.
I also think that if there would be games supporting multihead gaming on my 9700, I definately would use it. I can up to dozens of ideas how use just one more monitor to enchance gaming experience. Now it just sits idle. (and usually you even don't see the windows you had there when started the game because 1st monitor resolution is changed and all windows are repositioned on the new size of desktop.)
"Another wierd thing is that nVidia's Multimonitor support didn't take off the ground on the first try... anyone remembers TwinVIEW?"
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like with everything, it took nVidia a bit to get it right, but now nView is pretty decent, and in some ways (unless matrox has changed things) a bit better than matrox. overall, matrox definatly has an edge, but ati's multimonitor support is poor compared to either company. i don't know if it's hardware or software that's holding them back, but it's annoying not having the option for monitor spanning. even games that don't support multiplt monitors out of the box can be tricked into it by using a spanned desktop. in fact, that's how most of the games on matrox's site do it.
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like with everything, it took nVidia a bit to get it right, but now nView is pretty decent, and in some ways (unless matrox has changed things) a bit better than matrox. overall, matrox definatly has an edge, but ati's multimonitor support is poor compared to either company. i don't know if it's hardware or software that's holding them back, but it's annoying not having the option for monitor spanning. even games that don't support multiplt monitors out of the box can be tricked into it by using a spanned desktop. in fact, that's how most of the games on matrox's site do it.
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I actually don´t understand what you are talking about here, Nappe1 and see colon.
On my 9600 Pro it´s no problem to use spanned desktop, or for that matter to play UT2003 at e.g. 2548x945 over two monitors.
Are you by any chance talking about something else, am I just misunderstanding you? (Or don´t you know how to enable spanned desktop?)
On my 9600 Pro it´s no problem to use spanned desktop, or for that matter to play UT2003 at e.g. 2548x945 over two monitors.
Are you by any chance talking about something else, am I just misunderstanding you? (Or don´t you know how to enable spanned desktop?)
ati supports extended desktop, ie 2 monitors detected as 2 monitors, and the desktop is extended from one to the other. with extended delsktops you can vary the refresh rate and resolution from one monitor to the next. spaned desktop is 2 (or more) monitors detected as one large, widescreen monitor. the advantage of this is that games (and other applications) will only see one monitor and thus will run fullscreen accross the monitors.
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rubank said:
umh... this might sound a bit more than stupid (ja, Jag vet... en dumbom finne igen...
) but how exactly you setup "spanned" desktop on? with my 9700 non-pro I have only found extended, clone and clone with Theather mode. I would be greatly happy (men inte så glad att jag ska börja talar svenska mera... yeah, I know, that sounded awful. ) to know also how to do it.ati only supports extended and cloned. matrox and nVidia support spanned, clone, and extended. another sweet thing about nVidia multimonitor support (and matrox as well, if memory serves) is you can do extended desktop with video mirroing (what ati calls thearter mode). in other words, have your standard extended desktop, start up a video player and bam, it's fullscreen on monitor 2. drag the playing window onto monitor 2 and the fullscreen video flips to monitor1. it's pretty sweet.
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see colon said:
well, rubank is basically Mr. MurcBank, so I am pretty sure he knows what he is talking about and knows what's "spanned" desktop. Only thing is that I really would like to know how he was able to play set it up with his ATI.
let's make it once more clear: Spanned desktop means that you have one desktop that is splitted on both monitors. when you hit any window maximize button, it goes so that half of the window is in first screen and half is in the second. NOT the way that ATI has it default so that you can have 2 applications maximized: one for each screen.
so, yo rubank, old Murc Brotha, share the secret.
Nappe 1,
you enable spanned desktop very simply through display properties>settings tab> click on the second monitor icon> enable "extend Windows desktop to this monitor" (or whatever it says in your language). PLEASE OBSERVE that you can´t run applications in maximized mode, they won´t span; you run your apps in normal window mode and resize the window to your liking across the two screens. It works, and as I said e.g. UT2003 gladly runs this way, if you so choose.
It´s that simple, not much of a secret.
Cheers mate!
you enable spanned desktop very simply through display properties>settings tab> click on the second monitor icon> enable "extend Windows desktop to this monitor" (or whatever it says in your language). PLEASE OBSERVE that you can´t run applications in maximized mode, they won´t span; you run your apps in normal window mode and resize the window to your liking across the two screens. It works, and as I said e.g. UT2003 gladly runs this way, if you so choose.
It´s that simple, not much of a secret.
Cheers mate!
rubank said:
well, it does work for windowed applications (and so for most OpenGL games.) but it does not help on DX games.
oh well, it is still score for nVidia and Matrox on this frontier.and by the way, that's Extended desktop. not spanned. on spanned desktop, you have start bar visible on both monitors and maximize button maximizes windows to cover both displays.
okey dokey... I need to test this with few applications... my own Glut Cube mini-frame-work didn't like to span even if I forced it with Hydravision... it somehow decided not to span more than 30 pixels to 2nd screen.
does Race Car driver have windowed mode?
well, I will soon find out.
does Race Car driver have windowed mode?
well, I will soon find out.
Another really annoying vNiew thing
I loved the spanned desktop. I use both cards (nVidia Quadro 900XL at work and an ATI Radeon 9700 at home) and I tend to like the nView implementation better.
One really ANNOYING thing about nView is that if you lock your workstation with running applications (doesn't matter what desktop) and then unlock it, ALL of them will maximize to the current view on the current desktop. This truly sucks when you run ten to twelve apps separated by desktop/function.
I wish I could find what's causing that...
Also The spanned desktop for games and video would be good if you run really thin bezel Monitors. The two Dell units I run now at pretty thin but that middle line is still annoying (yeah, I get annoyed a lot)...
I just D/L'd the latest build of the nVidia driver and there are some improvements but that maximize bug is still there....
I loved the spanned desktop. I use both cards (nVidia Quadro 900XL at work and an ATI Radeon 9700 at home) and I tend to like the nView implementation better.
One really ANNOYING thing about nView is that if you lock your workstation with running applications (doesn't matter what desktop) and then unlock it, ALL of them will maximize to the current view on the current desktop. This truly sucks when you run ten to twelve apps separated by desktop/function.
I wish I could find what's causing that...
Also The spanned desktop for games and video would be good if you run really thin bezel Monitors. The two Dell units I run now at pretty thin but that middle line is still annoying (yeah, I get annoyed a lot)...
I just D/L'd the latest build of the nVidia driver and there are some improvements but that maximize bug is still there....
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