Looks like laptop manufacturers are starting to take the hint that more screen real estate is a good thing, and multiple monitors it the way to go.
On Lenovo’s W700ds the screens are 17″ WUXGA & 10.6″ WXGA TFT which is good for messaging or other frequently used apps, but 10″ is a bit small for my Outlook. The W700ds is so wide it has a dedicated numeric keypad and the room for extra cooling fans.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/21/lenovo-thinkpad-w700ds-dual-screen-laptop-details-and-pics-unear/
With NVIDIA’s gracious new fall driver I decided I cannot go any further without SLI.
Before the driver update, enabling SLI would disable all of the video interfaces on your SLI cards spare one. After the update the remaining interfaces on the master SLI card have been re-enabled. This is great if you want to dual-screen, but I must have triple if not quad displays!
Join me in my path to SLI and get some handy tips along the way…
Nvidia added a particularly useful feature to their Release 180 driver, SLI Multi-Monitor Support.
Download the NVIDIA® GeForce® Release 180 driver to enable NVIDIA® SLI® Multi-monitor
support, giving you the ability to use two monitors with your GeForce® graphics cards in SLI mode. Now you can easily switch between multi-monitor desktop mode and full screen 3D gaming mode without any additional system settings. Multi-monitor aware games – such as World in Conflict, Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, and Flight Simulator X – surround you with amazing graphics to immerse you in the game. In addition, you can enjoy the flexibility of having 2, 4, or even up to 6 displays based on your GPU and motherboard configurations.
In a nutshell this driver update enables the remaining display connector on the primary card running SLI. It also allows you to add other Non-SLI Nvidia cards (counting the on board mGPU if you got it) to run displays without using the old method of disabling and re-enabling cards to get it going.
Thanks to Dragon for the tip!
Anandtech.com has recently posted a great writeup discussing this and its other features.
Update: Thanks to Dragon’s tip we are currently undergoing testing of Nvidia’s newest driver.
The short answer is you can’t. But for a dedicated enthusiast it is possible…
When you enable SLI it disables all but one video port (on the SLI bridged cards). This is fact. But there is a way around this limitation by having a 3rd card not running in SLI.
For more SLI FAQ’s check out this great writup at the EVGA forums.
Aug
28
MultiMonitor.net stumbles upon NVISION 2008
Filed Under Gaming, Hardware, Industry News, Review
While out in San Jose for my main job (aka the job that makes money) I found out that I was merely 4 miles away from a long lost New England college buddy who was attending the NVIDIA’s NVISION Conference and GeForce LAN. So I quickly skipped out for a couple hours so this New Hampshire boy could attend his first real computer conference, and possibly try to make a couple contacts in what little time he could spare.
NVISION’s slogan was “The World of Visual Computing” but could be just as easily titled “All the cool stuff of NVIDIA partners”, because ATI and Matrox was nowhere to be seen. But don’t get me wrong,it is a top notch event, and I plan on paying my way to attend next year so I can experience everything.
HIPerWall is the first thing you see entering the convention center.
The event truly covered all corners of visual computing, from hardware vendors, cutting edge technologies, famous speakers, to the largest LAN party I have set eyes on. Any geek will find lots to love here.
GeForce LAN. “The Guinness World Record for the longest continuous LAN party with over 100 participants was set today at NVISION 08. 203 hardcore gamers kept going for 36 straight hours!” - NVISION Highlights
k|ngp|n attempting to break world records right on the showroom floor at the EVGA booth.
Wallace Santos, President & CEO of MAINGEAR, checking out the friendly competition over at the SIM Factory booth.
I met with some of the best case modders in the world including fellow [H]ardForum member craigbru who completed Project: Rogue (on right) which was featured on the HardOCP.com homepage.
Later this week when I return from my trip you can expect full writups from the booths that were MultiMonitor related.
Harun asks:
“I would like to run up to 10 monitors on one screen, is this possible, and if not
what is the maximum i can run?”
10 is the maximum for Windows XP and Vista. This is due to a limitation in “Display Properties”. I have not tested it myself, but I have herd of enthusiasts breaking the 10 display barrier after using UltraMon. And other 3rd party applications.
Side note: Windows NT does not support multiple monitors.
Aug
12
NVIDIA actually does the cool thing and gives away PhysX.
Filed Under Gaming, Hardware, Industry News, Software
I’ll admit when I’m wrong, and here it goes. I was wrong. When NVIDIA aquired Ageia and their PhysX last Feburary I was pretty confident we were going to see NVIDIA pushing that I not only need to buy 3 of their GPU’s, but I will also need to buy a NVIDIA Physics card too! My friends at HardOCP Forums and I argued that it was not needed and it seems NVIDIA agrees.
NVIDIA enabled PhysX with their GeForce v177.83 graphics driver, Geforce 8 and higher only, sorry. This driver package will also install v8.08.01 PhysX System Software. The PhysX control panel can be accessed through the Windows Start Menu under ‘NVIDIA Corporation’. In proper celibration they released a ton of free apps, demos, and a full game through The Force Within Site.
The “free” PhysX support plus apps are a pleasant surprise in a world where companies give me the impression that they dont care who they screw to make a buck.
Available for free from this first GeForce Power Pack includes:
- Warmonger — Full free game! Destroy walls, floors, and whole buildings to open up new paths or close existing ones. Destructive power is more than eye candy here-it’s a tactical weapon in this ground-breaking action game.
- Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack-includes three maps with amazing effects that fundamentally change the gameplay (requires full version of Unreal Tournament 3)
- A sneak peek at the upcoming Nurien social networking service, based on the Unreal Engine 3 (with built-in benchmark).
- A sneak peek at the upcoming game Metal Knight Zero (with built-in benchmark).
- All new NVIDIA “The Great Kulu” tech demo that showcases the use of PhysX soft bodies in a real game play environment.
- All new NVIDIA “Fluid” tech demo-a simulation of realistic fluid effects with a variety of liquids.
- Badaboom Media Converter: Beta - formats video and audio files for a variety of devices using a process called transcoding. By utilizing a NVIDIA® GeForce® GPU, badaboom™ enables users to painlessly convert video in multiple formats and view them on their portable media devices - all in a convenient, intuitive application.
- New WHQL-certified drivers that enable PhysX acceleration for all GeForce 8, 9, and GTX 200 Series GPUs. This new driver also adds support for PhysX-accelerated features in the commercially available Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 game.
Upcoming PC titles that incorporate PhysX technology include Cryostasis, Backbreaker, Aliens: Colonial Marines, with close to 20 more PC titles expected before the year-end holiday seasons.
The newest version of Surround Gaming Utility (SGU) by Matrox for the TripleHead2Go just got a little better by adding 2 new resalutions, triple 1440×900 and triple 1680×1050. Not very common sizes, Im sure someone out there is happy they did.
So hurry on over and grab the download, and try not to be offended by the giant nipple background while you are doing so.
Shortly after finishing Crysis across three screens, I promptly got to work on Oblivion.
Oblivion was not difficult to use SoftTH v1.07b to span 3 screens, no configuration changes were needed, although I prefer changing the side monitors to run in 32bit rather than 16bit. This can be done with the following setting secondaryFormat=RGB32
Bonus: Triple Screen Ending (Spoilers)
Our Multi-Monitor Gaming savior, kegetys, has released a early preview of the latest instillation of SoftTH. Adding more compatability, speed improvements, and better automatic support for varying aspect ratios across your side monitor (Yay!) this is sounding like it could be his best release to date!
Read more
Aug
4
Logan Airport (Boston) Using Multiple Monitors in State of the Art Training Facility
Filed Under Hardware, Industry News, Rigs
Close to home, Logan Airport, is doing something close to my heart by mimicking a control tower for training new controllers and workers. In addition to what looks like 7+ rear projected monitors making up the video wall, the interactive simulation has voice recognition so spoken radio commands are translated to moving virtual airplanes for a native feel.
The system, designed by Adacel Systems Inc., will be deployed to 19 locations across North America as part of a $48 million dollar contract. Logan will begin their instillation this fall.
I can see all the Microsoft Flight Simulator fans wanting a piece of this action, so I don’t know any other way to let you down easier than saying it would probably cost you $2.5mil ($48mil / 19 locations) unless you do it yourself.
via. Boston.Com
Digg This!
Deciding to revisit Crysis on triple screens was an easy choice that I am running Vista64 and the game has seen a couple patches. Sadly SoftTH still does not support DX10 or 64bit versions of games…yet. But my time was not wasted, because I have warmed up my writing skills in order to get back to writing fun posts.
Click more for complete step by step instructions.
A group of good hearted gamers have gotten together to raise money for Child’s Play by doing what they love best, a Rock Band Marathon!
Welcome to M-Town L33T’s Rock Band Marathon for Child’s Play Charity. We plan on playing straight from August 1st to the 3rd.
Child’s play is a charity that provides children in hospitals with toys, games , and books.
Feel free to head on over to chat with them and make sure you drop a couple bucks in the bucket for the children!
I have been a fan of gaming cockpits almost as long as I have loved Multiple Monitors. The VRX Mach4 is my idea of a well designed cockpit and best of all they are available for purchase right now.
Featuring 3x 1080p 37″ LCD’s and a 7″ rear view LCD you got all your blind spots covered. Right down to the “Virtual Wind System powered by 2 dual Honeywell fans”
Too bad you have to have one Xbox pet TV and very few games support it.
It was a fun ride. I was planning on switching all my video uploads to you for your high quality HD compression. You pushed streaming video further than Youtube or Apple could have with on-demand HD streaming in faster than anyone else.
You will be missed.
Stage6.com 2006 - Feb 28th, 2008
