1 PC, 2 Monitors & 2 Displays Problem

I have a computer and 2 screens. I would like to be able to send a Powerpoint presentation to one of my screens while using the other screen for my day to day work. Is it possible to send a different signal/application to one monitor while working away on the same computer at another monitor?
Do I need a special graphics card? software?
Any help is greatly appreciated,
jonny

Yea, it should be almost set up by defautl. If it isn't working, check your setting for something like maximize to 1 screen.

but do I need a special graphics card with 2 outputs? are these available?
Thanks

yep you'll need a dual head graphics card. a lot of the newer ones with both a VGA and DVI outputs support dualheads, you just need a £2 DVI->VGA convertor cable...

ummm..

What is your second screen connected to right now? Is this a theoretical question only?

M.

Yes, it is fairly theoretical. At present I have 2 computers. One I work on daily and the other plays a presentation which is displayed on a plasma screen. I had wanted to free up the second computer by running the presentation on my day-to-day work computer, however I wanted to know if this was possible and if I would need a new graphics card or not.
If I get one of these graphics cards with 2 outputs where do I configure which signal/application goes to which screen, in Windows - or is there software to do this which comes with the cards?

Thanks for all the help,
jonny

Both.
Windows XP supports multiple monitors and graphics cards natively, i.e. you get advanced options in your standard system settings.
All older versions need special software, and the graphics card drivers usually come with such a program.
I worked with Matrox, nVidia and ATI in configurations with up to six monitors and three graphics cards

M.

You must be using multiple pci graphics cards? i'm using a dual head agp video card but how do you configure in a pci video card with that? Can you make it stretch accross all of them. Right now i've got my screen set up at 2048 by 768 making it virtually 1 screen. Can you do that wiht even more if i got a pci video card. Can i stretch it accross all 4 monitors making it virtually one desketp? That would be incredible.

On a side note, how do pci cards compare to agp? agp are a hella lot fast arent they?

Yes, I was using one AGP and up to two PCI cards.

Basic configuration is trivial. Use Windows 98 or newer, setup the BIOS so the AGP is primary card, put them other cards in, install the drivers.

I didn't even need to install additional drivers since Matrox had one-for-all. The present drivers from the AGP card simply worked.
Not 100% sure about Win98 though. I think it supports multiple cards, but I only tested it with W2000 and XP.

My first 6 monitor setup was one G550 AGP DH + one G400 PCI QH. (i.e. the AGP card has two connectors, the G400 four). Later we switched to 2 x G450 DH PCI because the G400-QH card died and replacing it would have cost twice as much as two dual-heads.


Yes. But I dislike using the driver's features to simulate one big screen because it always gave me lots of troubles with 3D and video acceleration not working correctly. Also certain programs would be confused about the irregular resolution settings and such.
I needed individual control of each monitor's resolution since I was changing it during the presentation, so this was not an option anyways.

Use the cards in windows XP, in the XP native multi-monitor mode. This works best from my experience. (also see my post directly above yours)


I didn't notice any difference. But in the beginning, we weren't using any live 3D yet, so the speed of the graphics card was only marginally important. The G400 was an old and slow card already then, but 2D graphics doesn't need much bandwidth either.
(The G400/450/550 didn't have any 3D acceleration at all)

I was looking for boards with multiple AGP or AGP cards with more than two monitors. Found nothing. PCI was the only choice then.
Later, Matrox released the "Parhelia" (AGP, 3 monitors, the most powerful 3D card at that time). We switched to one of those to support interactive 3D animation.
This was when the real fun started...

HTH,
M.

I think Windows 2000 does this too. I was using 2 cards at my previous job. My home machine and new work machine use a dual head card though.