2 monitors on same comp?

[XenatR]

ok, at the moment i have a 19" lcd, and i want to get a 19" crt for gaming..

how would i switch between the crt (vga - gaming) and lcd (dvi - desktop applications) ?

my friend said i need some kind of external switcher

cant anyone help me with this? possibly link me to one i can buy within the uk (overclockers.co.uk ebuyer.co.uk or scan.co.uk etc)

[Kaze06]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817107511

KVM Switch. You'd need a DVI-VGA adapter though. DVI switches are a bit more expensive (The $170+ range). As for UK buying, you can surely find a similar product yourself in a UK store.

[XenatR]

and with that it will be just the push of a button to flick between the two?

[Kaze06]

It'll actually display the image on both screens, but you can just turn off the one you don't want to use.

[tiro_uspsss]

y cant u use both @ same time? If u plug 'em in @ same time, one will become the primary monitor, the other the secondary - all apps & games will open by default on the primary, but all u have to do is move ur desktop apps over to the secondary & close/exit those apps while they r displayed on the secondary & windows/nvidia drivers remembers this & thus next time u open that app, it will auto put it on the monitor u closed it on, in this case the secondary... make sense?

[ziddey]

what tiro said

why not just use multiple monitors? once you try that out, I doubt you'd ever want to go single again. just so much more productivity.

I used to have two decent crt's years ago, but sold them off and went to a laptop. After moving back to the desktop world, I quickly found a free 17" crt from craigslist and am using it as a secondary monitor. It's quite a pos, but don't expect me to complain because of the price I paid :). I use it for overflow work, or when I need to be able to view two things at once. Also, the secondary makes a good tv, and I use it for full screen video overlay. Quite nice

[tiro_uspsss]

u should try quad-monitor :D:D:D pure bliss!

[XenatR]

y cant u use both @ same time? If u plug 'em in @ same time, one will become the primary monitor, the other the secondary - all apps & games will open by default on the primary, but all u have to do is move ur desktop apps over to the secondary & close/exit those apps while they r displayed on the secondary & windows/nvidia drivers remembers this & thus next time u open that app, it will auto put it on the monitor u closed it on, in this case the secondary... make sense?

that sounds cool.. how would i do that? using the same splitter?

[lawrywild]

No, just have a graphics card with Dual DVI/Vga whatever (which you do, 7900GS) then plug one monitor into each. Then you just choose "DualView" in nvidia control panel and it sets them up as 2 seperate monitors, one primary and the other secondary.

[tiro_uspsss]

u should have gotten at least 1 dvi-vga converter thingy with ur card...

[tiro_uspsss]

u'll need to use the dvi-vga converter thingy to plug into between card & crt... now i dont know about nvidia cards, but with ati cards, the port that i circled red above, is the always the primary monitor, so if nvidia is the same, plug ur crt into to that port. Then obviously plug ur lcd into the other one...

pic of above video card is xfx 7900gs - & thank u newegg for the image hehehehe

[XenatR]

ive just tried this with my old iiyama17" crt (which shows odd colours all the time - no degausing doesnt work) and i ran into one problem...

my desktop res on my 19" samsung lcd is 1280x1024, and is set to 60hz for this... at the same time, my crt is also displaying the same settings, and looks awful and flickery..

any way to set different settings to either monitor?

[ziddey]

Yes, change crt to use a lower resolution that will allow you to go higher than 60hz.

For example, I'm in a similar boat. My main screen (19" hanns g) runs 1280x1024 @ 75hz. My secondary free gateway 17" runs 1024x768 @ 85hz.


edit: I see you have a nvidia card. Are you using spanning or dual view? I'm not sure if spanning will allow different resolutions. If dualview wasn't initially an option you had, reboot your computer. Since both screens are plugged in now, windows will be able to do dual view, which you activate from the display properties tab and set accordingly there

[XenatR]

ok thx.. sweet i did it, and its going great

but i still have a problem... when i play games in full screen on my crt, and try to change a song on winamp for example, the crt flips back to desktop

is there any way of making them independent to that point, when i can control the desktop on my lcd, but still be in game on the crt??

[tiro_uspsss]

theres nothing u can do about that i think - thats what happens when u change application priority/use

[ziddey]

No, that's a problem where you're changing the active application. But, what you can do is enable global hotkeys for winamp. The default keys are quite good already. ctrl+alt+ home/insert/del/yadayada