GeForce2 MX Shootout

TwinView

In our initial reviews, we were unable to test TwinView, as the driver had no support until the Detonator 3. I planned on extensively testing this feature as soon as the driver and release products were available. That time is now and the results of my testing are a bit startling.

When I enabled Spanning mode to use the second output for DVD playback, the DVD window was purple with no video. This was the case with ALL the cards in the roundup so it was not a limitation with the given output. VGA out or video-out, it still failed. If I dragged the video window back onto the CRT, the movie would be playing fine.

Immediately I was concerned and decided to test this in clone mode. This time things were actually worse as the program crashed when I started the DVD movie. I was annoyed to say the least. One of the best features of the card was failing in my eyes.

Please note that there were no problems with DVD playback on the secondary output when TwinView was not used. I'll address the quality of TwinView output with each card as the second video-output varies on each card.

I would also like to note that while TwinView had failed in my experiments, I had no problems installing a Matrox G400 and completing these tasks. Obviously the G400 isn't in the same class when it comes to 3D performance but its DualHead feature made me realize that TwinView has some growing up to do.