Dual Display Gaming

[bensenvill]

wow, I'm not one to diss tom's staff but Lars Weinand has a serious gripe against matrox.

I have a few points that I need to vent in a friendly manner.

"Matrox christened this mode "SurroundGaming". Sadly, after the initial atmospheric wow-factor wears off, the gamer is left with no real benefit, as this mode would require three monitors for effective gaming.
" -- followed by "Of course, SurroundGaming is the most fun when used in a triple-monitor setup "
--seems contradicting

If matrox is the market leader here, why are you focusing on a card that burns up and one that only has 1 game? It would have been nice if you gave it equal coverage.

And yes, I am die-hard matrox (this systems got a dual and a quad card in it, and my others a parhelia)

 

[pauldh]

He mentions matrox but also states that the 3dperformance of the maxtrox cards is far behind the 9800XT and FX5950. I agree it would have been nice to see them included in the tests just for comparison. When they are known for multi-displays, why not give their top card a spot in the review too. I sure liked the look of Desert Combat on 2 screens. That would be sweet.

ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt

 

[cleeve]

I agree that it was a grievous error not to include the Parhelia in a multimonitor gaming review.

That's a pretty conspicuous omission. And who knows, maybe Matrox cards take less of a performance hit on multimonitors? I'm not saying that's true, but it would have been nice to compare.

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9500 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(hardmodded 9500, o/c 322/322)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>2600+</b></font color=red> <i>(o/c 2400+ w/143Mhz fsb)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,055</b></font color=red>

 

[bensenvill]

well in the articals defense, the parhelia is over 2 years old, so I realize that this just isnt an option for alot of people. But what makes them the keystone to an artical like this is they have always been the future of what your video card can do beyond just pushing pixels. I've been running duals for about 7 years now but for people outside the matrox community, this is still a pretty new concept. I've tried upgrading to the latest FX cards but they are still incredibly finicky to configure properly. Heres a screen shot when I first added my G200MMS quad card.

http://www.mrgoodbytes.com/MMS.jpg

I installed nothing, no need to configure anything, it just booted like that. The only thing I did was open up a few apps give give an idea of scale. That cards a relic by todays standards but it shows you how seemless these bleeding edge cards should handle 2 monitors.

Its a shame that tomshardware does not give alot of press to high end components. Because if there is any community on the net that would be interested in this stuff, they are here. This was the first artical that they have even mentioned the matrox P750 and have only reviewed the original parhelia.

one last rant, so they fried a $500 video card under what should have been average use. thats fine, if it was free, but if I'm going to drop that on a video card, it'd better last until I retire. At least thats my expectations after my g450. heres a photo I took when my motherboards capacitors blew up.
http://www.mrgoodbytes.com/blown.jpg
fried everything, even the monitor had to be tossed. But for some reason, my g450 is still kickn.

 

[Calaveras]

ATI cards dont support span mode? Thats funny. I have been running a moldy old Radeon 7500 that way for about a year and a half on my studio computer. It enables me to view all the elements in my sequencing software(Cubase), and also view a few other programs which are running synced to it(Reason, Frootyloops).
If it is in fact that the newer cards don't support this mode but ye olde ones do, than I would like to know that! I am considering upgrading to a bigger better dual head so I can run 3200 by 1200. Right now I am running 2048 by 768. Which is a little cramped. Yes I am considering a 3 monitor card in the future!

GA7Vn400 pro, Antec 480w, 2500XP+, 512mb Corsair XMS2700 c2, WD 40 gig,2xWD 80g SE raid 0, MOTU828MkII,Alesis Monitor 1 active,Mackie SRS1500 active Sub, ATI Radeon 7500 dual head

 

[grafixmonkey]

Yeah, ATI cards have no span mode, it's really sad - a friend went dualie and got a Radeon, and after hours and hours of trying, even with 3rd party dual-desktop utilities, he gave up and returned it.

nVidia cards all support the span mode, they also support span mode plus window checking routines that will move and resize windows to make them stay on single screens. I think you can also launch a single app with custom settings (i.e. no bounds checking on it) while the others stay standard, and do things like send a single window or entire app to a specific screen. Useful for programs like Photoshop that have little floating toolbars that aren't linked to the window itself.

I think 3-monitor might be possible now... the tricky thing is you'd have to use a TV. Put the TV in the middle, and one monitor on each side. It'd be cool if it worked. (the low res would be a problem though, as well as the mismatched screen sizes.)

BTW - are you sure you're not using the native windows XP multiple screen support? ATI's excuse for not having Span Mode seems to be that XP has built in dual screen support. Problem is that the built in support sucks real bad. Like, if an OpenGL app starts on one screen, and you move it to a different one, the app will no longer update. And I think watching a video has problems going from one screen to another too, as well as some apps check the screen bounds differently than others and outright refuse to be moved to the second screen... (it's out of bounds! quick, jump back!)<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Grafixmonkey on 02/16/04 04:30 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah I'm not really impressed by the review (but haven't had time to do much more than skim it). If you look at nVnews' (a decidedly nV-centric site) review of the parhellia it does OK especially with things like Surround View. You can enable surround view and dual monitor with very little hit to the card, unlike the others. Sure it sucks at single monitor gaming for the price, but get the other monitors going and it sticks in there with the competition.

GraphixMonkey, you can span ANY set of cards, you just need the right software. There are multimonitor programs that let you span ATI cards as well, and I'm not sure whether they work in games because I've only seen them used for video and music editing (yes Fruity Loops and CoolEdit [or whatever Adobe now calls it] are great for that).
The thing lars should have said is that the included drivers and their associated multimonitor software (Hydravision in ATI's case) do not support it. Big difference, really. It's not impossible, you just need to work at it.

Also funny that this review should come out just before the MSI 9100IGP board comes out, with it's promise of ATI's SurroundView.

Oh well, I'm sure people will be linking to that review for some time as some kind of proof of something to be debated later.

Still should have shown Morrwind on it, that looks great, and being able to see multiple attackers is more important to me than the space an slight sim terrain, ooh look at the pretty country side! FPS is the place where peripheral vision would be nice, heck most of us who play online LISTEN for the people coming up behind us, it would be nice to see their shadows if they are back light too!

Oh well, guess we can't have it all, and yes I'm a bit peeved at what I've seen of it sofar as it simply seemed to gloss over what is Matrox's strong point. And what the hell 3 monitors is CHEAP! I could get 2 more 19" 16x12 Cheapos (heck we are talking about peripheral vision here) for under $99 Canadian! That's not an issue anymore, Heck I could get 2 15" LCDs for $249 each!


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[Pandilex]

Must vent!!!!

I read the review on surround gaming, and I just LOVE the way that Matrox was filed under 'Other Manufacturers' !!

I have a Matrox Parhelia, and according to the great review, it has 'Poor 3d performance'.

It plays every single game I've tried perfectly - UT2004 Demo, Jedi Academy, and best of all, Neverwinter Nights in 32 bit across all 3 monitors!!

I think what some people have to admit is that while it's nice to have a gfx card that is the most powerful, the extra power is pretty useless when no games really use it. Sure you can turn some extra detail settings on, but at the end of the day you can't even tell the difference most of the time!! My housemate is an avid overclocker and has his Radeon card overclocked to the extreme, and he plays half-life on his computer (the original!). Big whoop. Parhelia supports directx and plays every game perfectly! Plus it has three monitors, which come on, not everyone plays games 24/7, so you can IM, browse etc over multiple monitors!

I'm miffed it would come under 'Other Manufacturers' and have 'Poor 3d Performance' when its superior to other cards in so many ways. Dual monitor is crap for games, lets face it, so who cares how many fps you get when you probably can't even tell anyway? Like they pointed out, trying to play Unreal Tournament when your gun is half on each screen is impossible and annoying. You can play it over three with parhelia, it's very nice!

It bugs me when people don't even think twice about perfectly good cards...

It reminds me of when 3dfx didn't release 32 bit... I used my voodoo 3 3000 card for years and only upgraded last year... it played every game I had too, only upgraded because c&c Generals would ONLY run in 32 bit :/

 

[CaptainHilts]

I don't really get why ATi cards aren't able to use the spanning mode. Isn't that just the same as extended desktop? I can extend the desktop both horizontally and vertically with my 9500 Pro. Even the Radeon VE was able to do this.

Can someone explain the difference between extended desktop and spanning?

 

[grafixmonkey]

Extended desktop is the Windows XP native multi-screen mode, and has issues... like, I don't believe you can expand a window to cover both screens, I'm not positive about that (I have an nVidia card.) I do know that the Windows XP native dualscreen is incapable of having instances of OpenGL on both screens simultaneously, so people who use 3D Studio or Maya or any OpenGL based application (like say a level editor for a game) can only use one screen. I think it also has problems with video, possibly only with overlay, possibly with something else, but sometimes a video that is started on one screen cannot be moved to the other. It's just because windows breaks the screens up into two discrete instances of a "desktop", each with its own resolution etc. and some technologies will not work with that system. It's pretty much exactly the same as having a separate video card for each monitor, one in AGP and one in PCI.

The Spanning Mode creates one "Windows desktop" which is the combined resolution of all screens, so Windows and the applications it runs just see one desktop (instead of several) that is a resolution like 1600x600, or 2560x1024, or 3200x1200 for horizontal, and 1600x2400 or 1280x2048 for vertical spanning. That way, the Microsoft implementation of OpenGL doesn't have to worry about multiple screens because windows doesn't even know there are two monitors. The video card simply renders its images to a single memory space, and the RAMDACs pick two halves of that memory space to create their two monitor signals from.

The only problem with Spanning mode is that the video drivers have to manage applications a little bit, to make it easier for you to use windows without things ending up right in the middle of the break between screens. (kind of hard to read dialog boxes that way.) But I see that as more of a feature, because the tools you get for managing windows in the nVidia NView drivers are much more powerful than the tools in Windows. One hotkey, and an app flies from one screen to the next. Another hotkey, a zoom window pops up allowing me to see the individual pixels something is made of, and click in a region with sub-pixel accuracy. It also supplies multiple desktops, so that you can hit a hotkey or a menu command and go to a different Unix/Linux style work space, I think with the ability to have certain windows be "sticky" too. They've even implemented a way to let you "throw" a window to a desired corner of the screen, by jerk-dragging a title bar and releasing the mouse button while the mouse is still moving, and the window acts as if it's been thrown, traveling until it hits a corner.

Anyway so that's the lowdown on how dualscreen can work in the two systems. Dual-Monitor isn't perfect in either system, both have problems, but at least with nVidia the problems are limited to things occasionally popping up in the middle of the dead zone between screens, and not responding to nView's commands to move over.