Dual monitors from 2 dvi ports possible?

[THE END]

Hi

I am a newbie here and I'd like to make sure on something before I try it. I am an old quad-core system. It has a asus 8800GT graphics card. This card has 2 DVI ports and I now have one spare monitor to use. I want to plug them both in. btw I use windows XP SP3. The monitors I have now are Samsung syncmaster 2232bw & Samsung syncmaster p2370HD. Now my questions are;

1. Is it even possible to connect 2 monitors on the same card through DVI? Will it cause any confusion in system settings?

2. Will it have any affect on the health/life of my graphics card?

I am posting the picture on my card in case I made a mistake. lol

thanks!

[ToneKnee]

Yes, it's perfectly possible. one monitor for each DVI port! :)

[Southern Patriot]

1. Is it even possible to connect 2 monitors on the same card through DVI?

Of course. Why else would they have put two ports on it?

Will it cause any confusion in system settings?

No. In your display properties, you will simply see two displays pictured and you choose which one you want to set the properties on. You can either duplicate the displays, or extend your desktop onto the second monitor.

2. Will it have any affect on the health/life of my graphics card?

No, of course not. They design the card for this.

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wow! thanks for the quick reply

I was mostly worried about performance of the card. I'd surly plug them both as soon as i find my other dvi cable.

[Syn1337]

I used to run my 2 24" on my old 8800GT and it was perfect :) enjoy your new setup!

[chconline Veteran]

People have been using dual monitor (and more) for years :p

[Kami-]

People have been using dual monitor (and more) for years :p

Someone should link him to Terry Pratchet's set-up ;)

[kurupy]

Someone should link him to Terry Pratchet's set-up ;)

[StevenNT]

Now that's just showing off :D

[treemonster]

wow! thanks for the quick reply

I was mostly worried about performance of the card. I'd surly plug them both as soon as i find my other dvi cable.

the only perofmrance hit would be if you stretch full screen games across the two monitors.

but for example if you want to game in one monitor and have a browser window or video open in the other, it should be fine and i know lots of people with this card or a similar one who do this and have no complaints.

[Nagisan]

the only perofmrance hit would be if you stretch full screen games across the two monitors.

but for example if you want to game in one monitor and have a browser window or video open in the other, it should be fine and i know lots of people with this card or a similar one who do this and have no complaints.

I'm pretty sure if your have the 2nd monitor active there is a performance hit period. I mean, how would there NOT be a performance hit if the GPU is rendering the game on one screen and your desktop on another?

Now, how much of a performance hit is a different beast.....if you have a game on one monitor and just your plain desktop on another, the performance hit is going to be negligible at best.

The performance hit from stretching a game across both monitors doesn't have much to do with it being two monitors either, it has more to do with having to run the game at a higher resolution (technically speaking, you should get the same performance at 1600x900 going across two monitors compared to if you ran 1600x900 on a single monitor, but as monitor resolution is often added when a game stretches across them, you would be running the game at 3200x900 if you put the game on both monitors, degrading performance quite a bit compared to the lower resolution unless you manually lowered the resolution).

[treemonster]

I'm pretty sure if your have the 2nd monitor active there is a performance hit period. I mean, how would there NOT be a performance hit if the GPU is rendering the game on one screen and your desktop on another?

Now, how much of a performance hit is a different beast.....if you have a game on one monitor and just your plain desktop on another, the performance hit is going to be negligible at best.

desktop takes so little to render on a card like the 8800 or better it would be like 1-5fps imho.

i've never done it for more than one gaming seession with supcom, and in that game with the second monitor being the map view there was no performance hit that i noticed with my usual settings in that game at the time. i didn't like it either that way or with the desktop though compared to how much desk space it takes up.

also depends on the game. with a more demanding game it's going to be more of a hit, but with the average dx9 game that doesn't use the whole 8800 it's just going to use the unused hardware on the GPU to render the desktop and anything on it.

the people i know that do this aren't savvy enough to bench it or even motivated enough to test it with one vs two monitors in different set ups though. so this is all opinion.

i do know on the 400 series cards with two monitors the idle temps are higher because they don't downclock as much under these conditions, but it's not enough to worry about. shouldn';t affect the 8800 though, as mine doesn't seem to downclock at all according to precision.

as to your edit about the reason there would be a performance hit at all under that condition, you are right on spot. it's the increased resolution which does it.

[Nagisan]

also depends on the game. with a more demanding game it's going to be more of a hit, but with the average dx9 game that doesn't use the whole 8800 it's just going to use the unused hardware on the GPU to render the desktop and anything on it.

The resolution also has a bit to do with it.

Running two monitors at 1440x900 (or whatever) takes much less resources than running two monitors at 1920x1200, therefore the former wouldn't see as much of a performance hit going from one to two monitors as the latter.