Dual Head (and other) Questions

[GoofBall]

I'm considering (actually, just waiting for the money ) purchasing a G400 and this dual head thing really interests me. My current system is a Dual celeron setup on a BP6 running NT4 and Be. I realize Be doesn't have drivers for the G400 yet, but that's not a huge deal to me. Just go ahead and tell me anything you think I should know (remember, I have no clue about any of this) and anything I should be careful of with my particular setup.

Now, the dual head questions. How exactly is the multimonitor display approached? I read throught the Matrox site, and alot of it said "NT4 support to come." Here's basically what I want to do...

I'd like to have a full screen visual <a href=http://www.geisswerks.com>plugin</a> (for winamp) running on one monitor and be able to work on the other. Is that even close to being feasible? Is there anything similar to that in Win98 right now?

Could someone just give me a rundown of what you can actually do with the Dual Head thing? I see on their site that Win98 has full support, NT4 has limited support, and 2k will have full support when released. What can you do with the full support? What does NT4 limit you to doing? Will I actually enjoy this feature?

[Warchild]

I think there is a driver for the G400 in Be, I don't know if it supports dual head or not, though.

Warchild

[yurgis]

See the topic "Dual-head feature???" about my experience in Win2k (NT4 works in the same way). I do not recommend you to buy this card until full support is released. And we all know well, you can wait Matrox very long for something solid and done completely. Personally, I do not beleave they can make this support before Feb, 17 (the win2k release date). I think this may take months. Although, Win98 support is done, it is very difficult to implement such tricky things on NT/Win2k system because of its comlicated internal security stuff.

[GoofBall]

That doesn't really answer my question. I realize that the dual head use is limited in NT4 and 2k, but how limited? And what can you actually do with it in 98 that you can't in 2k?

[gbm]

While in dual-monitor desktop, NT treats both monitors as one, very wide. This means that maximizing the window results in a window occupying both monitors. Both monitors must work with the same resolution.

[Genom]

Dammit people, READ THE DOCS. Powerdesk includes (at least for NT4, an oficially released OS/driver combo yurgis) utilities in it to enable maximizing to one display only, and having requesters apear in one monitor only. The onbly limitation is cannot get past, and this is TOTALLY NT based, is having different resolutions on each monitor. But this is frankly, minor. To do what you want goofball, is totally feasable, and even more productive stuff. Trust me, once you get used to a desktop spread across 2 monitors, there's no going back. Soon as Yurgis botehrs to TRY and read the docs, he might change his mind too.

------------------
Asus P2B-F, P3-450~556, 512MB PC100 8ns SDRAM, G400MAX (yay!) at 160Mhz, Teac 58S CD-R, Toshiba SM-1002 DVD-ROM, Toshiba 40X SCSI CD-ROM, 8.4GB IDE primary drive, 9GB Micropolis Tomahawk UWSCSI, 9GB IBM U2WSCSI, 18GB U2WSCSI Cheetah, Diamond MX300, 3COM 10/100TX, 3COM Gaming Modem, Adaptec 2940U2W

And a partridge in a pear treeeeeeee.

[GoofBall]

Ooooooh... that sounds promising. Can someone link to these docs for me?

[yurgis]

Genom, I cannot find any useful documents regarding PowerDesc, what I see in the Help is just a few words about dual-head like:


Use this property sheet to control the DualHead features of your Matrox graphics card. With these features, a single graphics card can control two displays at the same time. The second display device connected to your Matrox graphics card can be a traditional computer monitor (CRT), a flat panel monitor, a TV or a VCR.
For information on each control of this property sheet, see context-sensitive help.
This property sheet is only available if your Matrox graphics card has DualHead support.

Copyright (c) 1999 Matrox Graphics Inc.

[Genom]

In windows NT, go to your powerdesk settings tab. There you will see such things as Maxi-View and Center Dialogs. I beleive they pretty mych explain how to use themselves. I mean, they are like, half the options for NT powerdesk after all.

If you want screen shots and stuff, email me. I'll be glad to send them along.

------------------
Asus P2B-F, P3-450~556, 512MB PC100 8ns SDRAM, G400MAX (yay!) at 160Mhz, Teac 58S CD-R, Toshiba SM-1002 DVD-ROM, Toshiba 40X SCSI CD-ROM, 8.4GB IDE primary drive, 9GB Micropolis Tomahawk UWSCSI, 9GB IBM U2WSCSI, 18GB U2WSCSI Cheetah, Diamond MX300, 3COM 10/100TX, 3COM Gaming Modem, Adaptec 2940U2W

And a partridge in a pear treeeeeeee.

[yurgis]

How can I get to PowerDesc Setting tab? It seems Win2k does not have something like this. The only dialog I found is the following:
<img src = "http://www.prophetfinance.com/temp/3.jpg">

It is called from the matrox display popup menu available in the Windows tray. You can see that there is no Maximizing setting here. :-(

[matroxsuxs]

take my advice...wait for voodoo 5 or a better g-whatever!

[Phoenix]

Yurgis, go to Display Properties->Settings->Advanced. All the PowerDesk pages are located there.

Phoenix.

[Dyre]

Dual Head ****en RockS!

I was running two vid cards before the G400 and it was the biggest selling point for me. If youve never used a dual monitor desktop, you just dont understand. If you do any work with your PC youll absolutly love it! The only thing ive ever used it for is desktop spread... the clone is cool for tv-out on huge tv's, i just dont use the zoom stuff. Anyways, it rocks! If it ONLY spread the desktop onto two screens i would have STILL bought this card.

And it looks better the a GeForce DDR in UT. At least the guy sitting next to me at the LAN party with the geforce looked like crap.

Muahahahha!

------------------
PIII 450 @ 464
generic BX6 motherboard
G400 MAX : )
Maxtor 13 gig UDMA 33
Maxtor 13 gig UDMA 66
Creative 36x CD-ROM
HP 2x2x6x CD-RW
64 megs PC100 RAM
Intel 10/100
Soundblaster 32 AWE
DiamondMAX 56k
Logitech Wireless Desktop (best $50 ive ever spent)
1 92mm Sunon Fan
4 80mm Sunon Fan's

[yurgis]

Phoenix, I know there is an advanced setting dialog, but it still does not have a Maximizing setting.



<img src = "http://www.prophetfinance.com/temp/4.jpg">


<img src = "http://www.prophetfinance.com/temp/5.jpg">



<font size=5 color="FF0000"> [b]
So, does anybody really can point me to this setting by which I can maximize only to one display???
</font>

[GoofBall]

While those screenshots are up, can someone explain to me exactly what clone, zoom and DVDMax do? I read the Matrox site, but didn't get a good feal for what those functions are.