Tripple Monitor support

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fahmi1

New Member
Hello all. I have a client who has asked me to build him a gaming computre for his home. He is HEAVY into Flight Simulation, and got an idea from his bussy to get a 3 monitor support for the new Flight Simulation 10 comming out. My question to you, since i am no up to par on 3 onitor Graphic acards, is what is a good card to get for him which will give him the BEST graphics, and how is this setup done? I was lookig into the matrox Parhelia, but dont know if this is a good one and which one of the product line to get. Any support and reccomendations would be greatly apprecieated.
 
I don't know of any gamming cards that support more than three monitors right off. I have never tried this, but I THINK(someone else please correct me if I'm wrong...) that you could use an SLI motherboard and run the cards independently. That way you'd have support for 4 monitors. However...I'm probably not right.

Another idea might be running a PCIex card and a plain PCI card, but that would really drop the performace...
 
I thought if you SLI'd 2 cards,you could still plug ino the secondary monitor and tweak a couple settings to have the 3rd monitor,i've seen 3 monitor gaming computers soo...

EDIT:Read somewhere that you can have like 2 monitors hooked up to one,and then add a PCI card and hook the 3rd up to it,but since he's using it for gaming..that'll be tough with a PCI card,tell him he should stick with 2 monitors that are like,huge.

EDIT 2:Okay heres my last idea,use a mobo with integrated graphics and SLI since he's a heavy gamer,use the 2 slots on one of hte SLI cards and voila 2 monitors,use the integrated card for the 3rd monitor,this way you have a decent card for the 3rd even though its integrated,he should have alot of memory so the amount it takes doesn't make his memory suffer.:)
 
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The Matrox is the only triple head solution available on the market. I've seen it in action at a trade show and it is really nice. I'm sure there are dual head solutions that will kick it's butt, but your friend specified triple head... So that's it.
 
Ok wow, i just read my post and realized there were a lot of spelling mistakes. Sorry about that, i guess its not a good idea to post a topis during the wee hours of the morning. Anyway, whats for all the replies. For the first post, im not trying to get 4 monitors, just 3. As for the most recent post, when i looked at all the different Matrox Parhelia cards and noticed there are several different ones. Which one would be the best one to suite us in terms of graphics and quality for the new Flight Simulator 10? here are the different cards i am seeing

http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/home.cfm

thanks again

Fahmi
 
fahmi1 said:
[...] For the first post, im not trying to get 4 monitors, just 3. [...]
Click to expand...

He was just saying that running two NVIDIA card independently, you could have UP TO 4 monitors, meaning you may connect three if you wish. I'm almost certain that would work, but be sure to do some research on that subject first (Because I think that would depend on how old the card your gonna buy. Newer Card will probably be able to do this.)

I have a PCI card as a secondary graphics card, but I'm having driver issues because that card is old (I'm gonna make a post on that I think ;)) I'm sure using two newer cards would be smoother sailing.

Good luck.

EDIT: Oups didn't notice, old thread.
 
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Just playing with my matrox settings using 3 screens. I know nothing about games but is it this game you using a full screen application, or is it online game in a browser, or whatever.

If it is full screen gaming i can only play a game on 1 monitor. But in saying this, if it isnt full screen application you can drag the gaming window across the 3 monitors, which in fact if there is more viewing area on the game you will see this new area you usually wouldnt see until you scroll across. (unless there is a setting i am missing i dont think you can configure full screen gaming over multi displays, which would be most optimal, correct me if i am wrong)

http://www.computerforum.com/5484-post-your-desktop-up-533.html

Here is my desktop screenshot from earlier. If i want to expand iTunes for example over the 2 or 3 monitors i would need unmaximise the window and drag until resized over the screens.

http://www.computerforum.com/105460-question-about-multiple-monitors.html

In this thread my image shows how you can arrange if you want 3 accross, or if you decide on 4 you can make it a 2x2 square setup. I can have 5 monitors if i wish on mine, but 3 is plenty.

EDIT: LOL same as you sniperchang, old thread...........well at least it gives readers options
 
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pip1011261 said:
[...] i dont think you can configure full screen gaming over multi displays, which would be most optimal, correct me if i am wrong)[...]
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Actually there is a way! I've done it before! (With NVIDIA anyway). If I set my monitors to span mode. There's three option with NVIDIA panel. Clone mode, span mode and multiple display mode (Wich is what winodws usually does). Span mode makes window believe that your multiple monitor are actually one big monitor. So if you start a full screen application, it attempts to use all screens. If you try this with video it might not work do to an overlay issue or something. But lots of games run fine like this.

Disadvantages: I think if I remember, all monitors must be the same resolution.

If you can do something similar on your Matrox, that would kick a$$!

Good luck!
 
Games with multi-monitor support
There are only very few games with explicit multi-monitor support, some examples are Microsoft flight simulators and Star Trek: Armada II. Some games were released with dualhead support exclusively for Matrox cards, see Matrox enhanced games.

If a game has a windowed mode, it is usually possible to play it on multiple monitors either by placing additional views on secondary monitors, or stretching the game window across multiple monitors. You might have to use software rendering for this to work. For more information, see the gaming-related links.

Microsoft flight sims support putting additional views on secondary monitors. To put a view on a secondary monitor, choose 'Undock window' and move it to the desired position. Starting with Flight Simulator 2004, views on up to 4 monitors are hardware accelerated, previous versions only used hardware accelerated 3D on the primary monitor. See Multi-Monitor Support in Flight Simulator 2004 for more on this.

With dualhead video cards or the triplehead Matrox Parhelia (surround gaming), it is also possible to play some games stretched across all monitors by using a stretched (spanned) display mode. This way, the game sees a single wide monitor instead of 2 or 3 monitors (the game needs to support widescreen display modes).
 
pip1011261 said:
Games with multi-monitor support
There are only very few games with explicit multi-monitor support, some examples are Microsoft flight simulators and Star Trek: Armada II. Some games were released with dualhead support exclusively for Matrox cards, see Matrox enhanced games.

If a game has a windowed mode, it is usually possible to play it on multiple monitors either by placing additional views on secondary monitors, or stretching the game window across multiple monitors. You might have to use software rendering for this to work. For more information, see the gaming-related links.

Microsoft flight sims support putting additional views on secondary monitors. To put a view on a secondary monitor, choose 'Undock window' and move it to the desired position. Starting with Flight Simulator 2004, views on up to 4 monitors are hardware accelerated, previous versions only used hardware accelerated 3D on the primary monitor. See Multi-Monitor Support in Flight Simulator 2004 for more on this.

With dualhead video cards or the triplehead Matrox Parhelia (surround gaming), it is also possible to play some games stretched across all monitors by using a stretched (spanned) display mode. This way, the game sees a single wide monitor instead of 2 or 3 monitors (the game needs to support widescreen display modes).
Click to expand...

Aaah, I love that Ultramon website. Very informative isn't it? So did you try the span mode I ways talking about? (And mentioned in your Quote)
 
I cant work it out.........

Maybe im in span mode and dont know.

I know im definitly not in clone mode.

But i dont have a widescreen game anyways, but i cannot get IE to span fullscreen over more than 1 monitor, i must manually expand drag it. Its an old hardware so maybe it isnt supported span mode.
 
pip1011261 said:
I cant work it out.........

Maybe im in span mode and dont know.

I know im definitly not in clone mode.

But i dont have a widescreen game anyways, but i cannot get IE to span fullscreen over more than 1 monitor, i must manually expand drag it. Its an old hardware so maybe it isnt supported span mode.
Click to expand...

Do you have that ultramon program? It's very useful. It adds two buttons on the windows, one that maximizes the window across all monitors, and one to switch the window to another monitor. You can use that program to configure destop and screensavers. And it can add a task bar to other monitors as well. Pretty cool stuff.

Did your graphics card come with some sort of software? It might be an option somewhere in there.
 
The graphics card sorta is the computer....i just use it as a normal pc.....its actually a display computer for shop windows and visual displays, runs with another computer (mine is the viewer and the other the manager) so when one has network/graphic problems the other also does so it is a pain in the butt. Right now i cannot network them so i cannot run the display feature.

Would this ultramon conflict with this system?
 
pip1011261 said:
The graphics card sorta is the computer....i just use it as a normal pc.....its actually a display computer for shop windows and visual displays, runs with another computer (mine is the viewer and the other the manager) so when one has network/graphic problems the other also does so it is a pain in the butt. Right now i cannot network them so i cannot run the display feature.

Would this ultramon conflict with this system?
Click to expand...


woa? what? You have a computer run by another computer?
 
It doesnt need the other computer to run......it only needs the other computer networked to it to use the display software installed....e.g. running 3 monitors in any sequence at once with multi video and sound channels.
 
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