Random Video Question
By
Call Me Awesome,
Posted on: 2010-07-08 08:41 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
You can extend the display to the second monitor and it should allow you to set the resolution independently on each one. I've been running dual monitors for years now under XP and now Win7 and haven't had any issue.
Right at the moment I have one 24" 1920x1080 monitor and one 20" 1680x1050; both work fine at their individual resolutions.
Under Win7 right click on the desktop and select screen resolution. It should show two displays... select one of them and choose the "Extend these displays" option from "Multiple Displays". Once you've done this you should be able to independently adjust the resolution of each monitor. If you managed to connect the monitors backwards so that your main monitor is shown as the secondary simply click the "use this monitor as main" box below the multiple displays dropdown.
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The orientation of the monitors respective to one another can be adjusted by simply clicking on the display and dragging it to one side or the other of the other display. If you've managed to get them backwards so the left hand monitor is on the right simply drag the icon for the monitor to the correct orientation. I'm guilty of this myself on many occasions... it's easier to change it that way than to reconnect them correctly
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I'm not up on SLI since I've never run multiple cards but I guess you want both monitors connected to the primary card; that may be your problem there. I have both of my monitors connected to the DVI ports on my video card and the steps I described above work perfectly under XP and Win7.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
The problem is that most applications, when they try to go full screen, assume you have only one display. Really, your best option would be to simply use windowed mode and maximize the application on the first monitor.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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With dual monitors going full screen puts it full screen in the monitor it was showing when you clicked it, it doesn't span both monitors. To do that you would need to go windowed and drag it across both monitors.
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
The problem is that most applications, when they try to go full screen, assume you have only one display. Really, your best option would be to simply use windowed mode and maximize the application on the first monitor.
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COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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I didn't say it spans both, just that you'll get really odd behavior. A lot of games, when they go into full screen mode, will shut off the second monitor unintentionally, as most are written without being tested with a two monitor configuration, or have extremely limited testing on multimonitor setup, that assume a specific configuration and no others.
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Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
With dual monitors going full screen puts it full screen in the monitor it was showing when you clicked it, it doesn't span both monitors. To do that you would need to go windowed and drag it across both monitors.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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I haven't found a game that behaved that way; true if it reduces the resolution of the target monitor it will also reduce the resolution of the second one while it's running... but if you've set the games resolution to the monitors natural resolution it won't have any effect.|
Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
I didn't say it spans both, just that you'll get really odd behavior. A lot of games, when they go into full screen mode, will shut off the second monitor unintentionally, as most are written without being tested with a two monitor configuration, or have extremely limited testing on multimonitor setup, that assume a specific configuration and no others.
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Now there are a couple games I've played (Mass Effect comes to mind) that won't let you move your mouse to the second screen while the game's active... you'd have to alt-tab to do that... but COH isn't one of them. I've played COH on dual monitors with the game fullscreen in the left monitor and Ventrillo, Herostats, Firefox and so forth on the right since issue 3 without any problems.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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It was extremely common on older games. The oddities will also vary from brand to brand (less so from card to card by the same company or driver revision, though it does happen).|
Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
I haven't found a game that behaved that way
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| true if it reduces the resolution of the target monitor it will also reduce the resolution of the second one while it's running... but if you've set the games resolution to the monitors natural resolution it won't have any effect. |
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Hmm, I just loaded up Civ Call to Power and had no issues with dual screens. I'm not questioning that it may well happen with older games, just that I haven't seen it and I've been playing dual monitor since about '03.|
Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
It was extremely common on older games. The oddities will also vary from brand to brand (less so from card to card by the same company or driver revision, though it does happen).
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Let's see, no issues with any of the Fallout series, Civilization 2-4 (haven't tried Civ1 in years), SWKOTOR 1 or 2, COH or Mass Effect 1. What games have you found problematic?
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| Which is the exact problem the OP is trying to solve, and due to the way most games are coded & tested (generally assuming only a single monitor), they don't really care much what they do to the second monitor, so you're often stuck with that situation. |
Anyway I think we may be moving a bit far afield from the OP's question. To the OP, if the instructions I gave originally don't solve your issue then make sure both monitors are connected to the primary video card. I doubt you'll have much problem with games and dual monitors unless you're playing games from WAY back.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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Short version: No. Windows does not work like that.|
Originally Posted by Soulwind
So, I figured I'd ask our extra impressive guru's here in the hopes that I'm just being dense.
I have recently added a second monitor onto my system, (It's an old 14" lcd one), and I'm using it as a place to display my various system tools (temp monitoring, load monitoring, etc) while my main display is occupied with full-screen stuff. The only options I can find for the desktop display are to either "extend" the desktop or to "duplicate" the desktop on the 2nd monitor. Trouble is, when I'm playing anything that uses full screen, but doesn't use my full resolution level (ie drops back to 1024x768 . . . mostly a couple of older games that need DosBox to run), it also changes the resolution on the 2nd monitor and pushes everything on that desktop area off to the side. Does anyone know of a way to completely separate the displays, so that they work independently of each other? I'm running an SLI setup with 2 GTX 480's and Win 7-64 bit by the way. Thanks |
As of NT6 Microsoft modified their back-end display management system, basically making it impossible to have two separate video drivers loaded at once: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows...y_Driver_Model
All video cards must use the same video driver. Unfortunately, this limitation has other consequences. One of those is that you can only have one Window Management Server running at once.
This means that each of your monitors can only run from one display session. There is no way, within Windows NT6, to force two difference monitors to act independently of each other. It was possible under NT5 if you had two different graphics cards with two different drivers, but you'd have to do quite a bit of tweaking to get it done.
As your monitors are using one display server, any changes to the primary display will affect the status of the secondary display. Sorry, but that's just how Windows works.
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This may be, but you CAN have two monitors run different resolutions... I'm doing just that right now.|
Originally Posted by je_saist
Short version: No. Windows does not work like that.
As of NT6 Microsoft modified their back-end display management system, basically making it impossible to have two separate video drivers loaded at once: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows...y_Driver_Model All video cards must use the same video driver. Unfortunately, this limitation has other consequences. One of those is that you can only have one Window Management Server running at once. This means that each of your monitors can only run from one display session. There is no way, within Windows NT6, to force two difference monitors to act independently of each other. It was possible under NT5 if you had two different graphics cards with two different drivers, but you'd have to do quite a bit of tweaking to get it done. As your monitors are using one display server, any changes to the primary display will affect the status of the secondary display. Sorry, but that's just how Windows works. |
275GTX card
Display 1 - Asus 24" @ 1920x1080
Display 2 - Samsung 20" @ 1680x1050
The only catch is that if you run a program on Display 1 that reduces it's resolution to, say, 1024x768 it will likewise reduce the resolution of Display 2.
I've run dual boxed COH with one fullscreen on display 1 @ 1920x1080 and a second on display 2 @ 1680x1050. It takes a bit of finagling to get the second instance fullscreen on monitor 2 but it can be done. If you're dual boxing I will admit it's much easier in windowed mode though.
On my machine right now the taskbar and desktop programs are all on display 1 while display 2 is just an extension... I have the Weatherbug gadget, Ventrillo and Outlook up on the second display while Firefox is running on the primary.
I think you're getting into technical function while I'm talking about the practical effect... and the effect is to have two independent monitors even if they are interdependent at some level. After all, what we want is more screen real estate to put programs on; that's what we get. They need not run at the same resolution.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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Yeah, pretty much. |
Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
I think you're getting into technical function while I'm talking about the practical effect... and the effect is to have two independent monitors even if they are interdependent at some level. After all, what we want is more screen real estate to put programs on; that's what we get. They need not run at the same resolution.
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Windows can handle putting the displays at two different resolutions, but they are centered off of the same windowing system. Change the resolution on one, and the other gets adjusted in relation to the "new" resolution.
To try and explain what I'm on about, I dove into inkscape. Prepare for bad mouse-drive vector diagrams!
In the top box is the standard Dual Monitor Configuration. Here the window manager has set the main screen at one resolution, and the secondary display at a smaller resolution.
In the bottom is what happens when you suddenly force a full screen effect on the primary monitor. The window manager still treats the display as it's original resolution, and correspondingly shoves the secondary screen off to the side.
You "could" get around this by manually setting the resolution of the primary monitor to the full screen resolution you'll be working the application in.
So, I figured I'd ask our extra impressive guru's here in the hopes that I'm just being dense.
I have recently added a second monitor onto my system, (It's an old 14" lcd one), and I'm using it as a place to display my various system tools (temp monitoring, load monitoring, etc) while my main display is occupied with full-screen stuff.
The only options I can find for the desktop display are to either "extend" the desktop or to "duplicate" the desktop on the 2nd monitor.
Trouble is, when I'm playing anything that uses full screen, but doesn't use my full resolution level (ie drops back to 1024x768 . . . mostly a couple of older games that need DosBox to run), it also changes the resolution on the 2nd monitor and pushes everything on that desktop area off to the side.
Does anyone know of a way to completely seperate the displays, so that they work independently of each other?
I'm running an SLI setup with 2 GTX 480's and Win 7-64 bit by the way.
Thanks
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