Hooking Up Two Monitors on a Laptop

I have an Alienware Laptop and would like to hook up two monitors. There is only one HDMI port though. Would that still be possible? If so, how can it be done?
 

Okedokey

Well-Known Member
If you want to span the screen and make a large desktop area across the monitors, you'll need two independent outputs such as mentioned by Cisco above. If you just want two of the same desktop environment then a splitter will be fine. If you want to game, you'll need something even better.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
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beers

Moderator
Staff member
It's the same graphics card with multiple interfaces. Looks like you can choose from VGA, HDMI and DisplayPort. If you wanted multiple monitors just leverage multiple interfaces.
 

Intel_man

VIP Member
To clarify, the one to the right of the hdmi port is a mini displayport. So be sure to have the proper cables if you choose to use that.
 

ssal

Active Member
That's exactly the laptop I was looking into. The Asus GL752vw.
The specs said:
Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 530
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M with 2G/4G GDDR5 VRAM
That is TWO graphic cards. Would that give me two external monitor connection so I can display, in Photoshop, the editing panel on a larger monitor, while having the controls like layer panel, history panel, property panel on a separate monitor?
 

ssal

Active Member
How do you "leverage multiple interfaces"?
Doesn't that mean you need more than one graphic cards?

And would the Asus GL752vw do it because it listed:
Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 530
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M with 2G/4G GDDR5 VRAM
 

Intel_man

VIP Member
Only one of the 2 video cards are being used at any given time. It's more to extend the amount of time you can get in the battery per charge. When you're not in a graphically demanding program, it will use the Intel Integrated graphics (low power, and low performance). When you're running a graphically demanding program, the Nvidia GTX960M should kick in and take over from the Intel integrated graphics and start doing it's job (high power, high performance). The transition between Intel integrated to the discrete Nvidia graphics should be seamless.

What @beers is saying is that if you want to plug in multiple external monitors to the laptop, you'll need to have 2 external monitors for a start. And on top of that, the 2 external monitors must have an hdmi connection and/or displayport. (It's probably best to leave the VGA one alone). Ideally the easiest is to have 1 that supports displayport, and the other supporting hdmi. If both only has one of the two outputs, you'll need to buy an adapter so it can plug into the laptop.
 
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