Dual Monitor question

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Dual Monitor question // Tech Forum

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Post by splinters // Jan 16, 2009, 8:15am

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I recently sold my dual Sony monitors that I run off a Geforce 9800GT and out a single Dell 20" on there. It looks nice and is an improvement but I do miss having two monitors.

Today I 'inherited' another widescreen monitor so I fixed it on the wall next to it...nice!


Now, my mobo has Geforce 7050 graphics built in and the monitor is only VGA so I connected my smaller monitor to it and put the Dell on the 9800GT.

It works but the picture on the second monitor is a bit fuzzier (the Dell is a pretty good monitor though!). Only had it on an hour but the mouse occasionally stalls as if something is hogging resources but nothing shows up.


Anyhow, is there any benefit to this system: using the onboard to run a monitor for web n word and leaving the 9800GT free for games/CAD/PS etc. or am I better putting both on the 9800GT?


Any input very welcome...:D


One thing I did notice is that the 9800 is 256bit while the onboard is only 32bit.

Post by TomG // Jan 16, 2009, 8:27am

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I've always been told its important to disable the onboard graphics when you install a standalone card. The onboard should be switched off in bios, is my understanding, to prevent conflicts and confusion.


There's something of an exception coming up these days, where these days NVIDIA have onboard graphics that work alongside the newer cards - what happens is the cards detect whether any demanding 3D is being done, and if not, in order to save power they swap to the onboard chipset. If things are indeed demanding, then they swap to the standalone card.


There is mean to be a small "hiccup" when swapping back and forth as the resources switch from one to the other, but this would just be once when you fire up your game, or once when you are done with your game and the machine decides there is no more intensive 3D.


Note I haven't read up on this in detail, certainly haven't tried it, but that's my understanding of it - more research would be wise though rather than just taking what I say here as correct!


And also, that would not use both cards at once of course for different monitors, but swaps between chipset and card on the same monitors.


So my advice is to disable your onboard, and run both monitors off the graphics card. Others may have other advice though, so let's see what they say!


HTH!

Tom

Post by splinters // Jan 16, 2009, 8:58am

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Given how jerky the mouse is Tom, I am going to try them both on the same card. Just thought it might increase performance as they are both Nvidia but it seems not...:o


Cheers

Post by splinters // Jan 16, 2009, 11:51pm

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Put both monitors on same card and mouse was still jerky...then I realised I had swapped the USB receiver and Space navigator USB connections around at the back to accomodate the VGA connector to the mobo. Seems they caused some conflict so I swapped them back and all is right now.


So that leaves me the question of whether there would be any advantage to running the second monitor off the onboard.


I know what Tom is saying about avoiding problems etc. but considering for there were no problems, would stuff run better on the Dell for the fact that the 9800GT is not having to drive two monitors??


I appreciate it is a pretty unique situation..but I am a die hard dabbler...can't resist experimenting!!

:D

Post by W!ZARD // Jan 17, 2009, 2:24am

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The 9800GT is a reasonably grunty card - should run both monitors without any problems. I'd avoid using the onboard graphics at all as this will probably just use memory and CPU cycles that would be far better handled by you graphics card alone.


I'm a long way from being an expert in this but from the understanding I have you are better to use the stand alone GPU and disable the onboard graphics.

Post by v3rd3 // Jan 17, 2009, 5:27am

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I would suggest that the onboard graphics goes as well. I think you would find that working side by side the lower end performer would drag the higher end performer down.


When using dual cards with SLI the cards have to be identical because the overhead of running two different cards would be too high.

Post by splinters // Jan 17, 2009, 6:41am

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Sound advice guys so that is what I will do. Running nice and smooth at the moment so no need to rock the boat eh?

Post by W!ZARD // Jan 19, 2009, 12:36am

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Sound advice guys so that is what I will do. Running nice and smooth at the moment so no need to rock the boat eh?


Sound advice? If you want sound advice you should get a separate sound card rather than using the onboard sound.... (Sorry, couldn't resist!):D;)
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