Section 3 - Multi-Display modes, Dualhead and Quadhead
There’s three modes. Multiview mode, Span mode and Clone mode. These modes can be used to accomplish different tasks with multi-display systems.
Multiview Mode (Standard mode)
This mode is what windows does on it’s own. In this mode, each monitor is independent, which means that windows ‘sees’ the different monitor and the screens can each hold a maximized window or a full screen program. In this mode, one of the screens must be the primary monitor (See
section 4). In this mode, each monitor can have different settings (resolution, refresh rate, etc.).
Span Mode
Span mode is used to make windows believe that two (or more for quadhead video cards) are one big monitor. This can be used to make windows attempt to run full screen programs across the monitor which are in this mode.
In order to do this,
the monitors must be connected to the same card(in exception of using some of
Matrox’s products ). Dualhead cards can span two (2) monitors, quad cards can do up to four (4). Span mode can be activated by the video card’s drivers (For example in the NVIDIA Panel).
Most games will work in Span mode, however most video formats can only be displayed on one screen due to overlay limitations.
The monitors that are spanned must have the same settings (resolution, refresh rate, etc.).
Clone Mode
This mode is used to display the same thing on each screens. This can be useful for presentations or other similar applications. Clone mode can be activated by video card drivers and certain programs.
Note
The remainder of this guide will assume the user is in Multiview Mode, unless otherwise noted.