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Multi-Display Graphics Suites Compared

Posted by timothy on from the will-the-future-become-simpler dept.

Bender writes "There's an interesting comparison at TR between the major graphics players' multi-desktop software/hardware suites, like NVIDIA's nView and Matrox DualHead. These suites provide monitor positioning, application-level window memory, multiple virtual desktops, and the like. This is necessarily a Windows-centric comparison, but it's interesting to consider how Linux, X, and various desktop managers would match up with these solutions in terms of features and abilities."

4 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Going back to one display might suck... by Sodakar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...not because of the desktop space that you lose, but because applications will still remember your desktop space as being double, and will leave some of your apps stranded off-screen. Maybe I was just unlucky, but neither software package fixed this for me.

    Of course, you can still move main windows via keyboard shortcuts, but certain detachable, child windows of applications (eg, Winamp's Playlist) could not be accessed via keyboard shortcut to move, and were stuck off-screen. The only fix was to re-attach the second display, or uninstall/reinstall Winamp so that it would forget all of its screen positions.

    I'm sure there's another way to fix window position memory configs (via registry and what-not), but really -- shouldn't the software take care of this for me? Neither software did much to help me once the second display was removed, and the screen resolution adjusted down to one display. Somewhat thoughtless, IMHO.

  2. Too much real estate?... by dubious9 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Needless to say a lot of people here will complain that nobody will use more than a monitor of screen space, or that two would be over kill.

    <rant>Seriously though, developers will take as much space as you can throw at them, and they will be more productive. Really, when will managers and procurement people realize that programmers need bigger screens and faster/better boxen? I'm tired of watching our department clerk get the newest machine simply because she's been here 20 years.</rant>

    --
    Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
  3. "Cranky Old Guy" and the Mac by nweaver · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hell, I remember running a dual head/dual monitor setup back on an old, dusty Mac II with 2 video cards.

    Why has it taken >15 years for the Windows world to finally catch up?

    --
    Test your net with Netalyzr
  4. Dual-display cards suck. Use TWO cards by Brother52 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm writing this from a machine with two displays and TWO cards: Matrox G400 AGP and Matrox Millenium II PCI. This is what I came to after a long quest for a dualhead setup.

    Just a few points:

    1. There're still very few dualhead cards on the marked, thus much less chance to find one with the features you need.
    2. They're generally overpriced, probably because they're percieved as a high-end product.
    3. If you go for one, READ THE FINE PRINT. For example, the dualhead Matrox G450 has a DEGRADED DAC, compared to G400, which isn't noted anywhere but in the raw specs (and NOT in pretty side-by-side comparisons on the Matrox's site)

    And while with the dual card setup one card has to be PCI, you can still build a way more powerful combination, compared to any dualhead card.