Resolutions with dual monitors on G400MAX

[James Thurley]

Can anyone tell me the highest resolution/colordepth you can get BOTH monitors into using dual monitors. Can you get them both into 1280x1024x16 at 85Hz for example?

[MarkV]

I don't actually have a G400 yet (I think my MAX shipped Friday ), so I'm basing the following on reading some PDFs on Matrox's site and toying with Powerdesk on my G200.

The maximum pixel clock on the secondary output of the dual-head G400s is 112 MHz. That gives the following maximum resolutions:

640x480@266Hz
800x600@169Hz
1024x768@100Hz
1152x864@78Hz
1280x1024@62Hz
1600x1200@41Hz

The maximum pixel clock on the primary output is 300 MHz (G400) or 360 MHz (G400 MAX) which is why it can do much higher refresh rates. The amount of memory on the card will also determine how high a resolution and color depth you can use, but on the secondary display, the lower pixel clock (and therefore refresh rate) is certainly the gating factor.

[Ant]

Hmm well my current DualHead multi-display is set up as follows:

Primary - 1600x1200 @ 32-bit 100Hz
Secondary - 1280x12024 @ 32-bit 75Hz

[MarkV]

Ant, are you running the standard G400 or the MAX? If you have a MAX, it may be that it has a beefed up secondary controller too, because the 112 MHz value I got was from the technical PDFs on Matrox's site and all of them speak of the standard G400 only, not the MAX.

Of course, it could also be that the info I got is outdated or totally wrong. But the dual-head white paper clearly says the secondary display can only go up to 1280x1024 at 60 Hz. Again, this could be different between the standard and the MAX.

[MarkV]

The highest resolution possible on the second display is 1280x1024x32 at 60 Hz for a monitor, or 1024x768x32 at PAL/NTSC for a TV.

On the primary monitor, the highest resolution is 2048x1536 at 70 Hz for the G400 and 2048x1536 at 85 Hz for the G400 MAX. You can do 2048x1536 with 16.7 million colors (don't know if it's 24 or 32 bit) on a 32 meg board and only 2048x1536x16 on a 16 meg board.

The settings don't have to be the same for the primary and secondary displays.

Hope this helps!

[James Thurley]

Thanks, that does help, but 60Hz is a bit low! What refresh rates can you get on the second monitor in lower resolutions?

[Ant]

This is on a normal G400, I too am very confused as the original specs I have in front of me say the pixel clock on the secondary output is 100.

[nickk]

So ant,

can your regular G400 do 1280x960 at the pri display?

What's the highest res the second display can produce? 1600x1200x32bit at 75hz?
try it.. can your g400 do it?

[Maggi]

Hi Nick,

1280x960 is not supported, 1280x1024 is though.

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Cheerio,
Maggi

I used to have some posts in my record and hopefully some of the guys 'n' girls will still know me and my system ...

[Ant]

The regular G400 can go up to 2048x1536 on the primary with a maximum 1280x1024 on the secondary, 85Hz @ 16-bit and 75Hz @ 32-bit. Thh 1280x1024 max on the secondary is the limit of the G400 DualHead not of the monitor.