ATI Radeon or Matrox G450 dual-monitors support...
- Thread starter NihabaAshi
- Start date
I followed the link, then followed the note. Here is what it says:
Neither of these seem fatal to me. I _have_ seen some newer cards not work on olders AMD systems, but I was not able to tell what the problem was/is. BTW, those were an ATI and some other card, I don't remember. But the funny thing is that the card that _did_ work was a Matrox
nitro
Neither of these seem fatal to me. I _have_ seen some newer cards not work on olders AMD systems, but I was not able to tell what the problem was/is. BTW, those were an ATI and some other card, I don't remember. But the funny thing is that the card that _did_ work was a Matrox
nitro
i have gone through many gcards matrox dual nvda, was going to go with ati, i did a lot of research. called matrox and ati many times. matrox product support is just far superior. i got the g200mms quad 699 expensive use it with xp and its fine. i would say for trading matrox is the one to go with, for gaming ati is better. easy to install and they have a forum where you can ask questions, and you actually get answers. let me know how it goes.
cartm
cartm
Magna--
You mention that you've had problems with your G450 regarding resolution/sharpness of the secondary monitor. One thing that comes to mind regards Win2k itself. I don't know if this is what is causing your problem, but it's worth looking into. First, check out this quote from the following site: http://www.digitalroom.net/index2.html:
"Note - Windows 2000 does not fully support multiple displays from a single graphics card. Some cards have updated drivers that work around this problem, but you may encounter problems such as windows being extended across both monitors, inability to set independent screen resolutions or color depths etc. Windows XP resolves this problem with a feature called Dualview."
Matrox claims to have a unique work around for this issue. Below is a quote from their G550 site http://www.matrox.com/mga/archive_s...rk_millg550.cfm
"The Millennium G550 supports independent resolutions and color depths, or true multi-display, under the Windows Me and Windows XP operating systems. What's more, the card offers unique support for true multi-display under Windows 2000, thereby ensuring the greatest level of functionality for this popular 2D workstation operating system. "
I haven't been able to find a similar statement from Matrox with regard to the G450, which makes me wonder if Win2K itself doesn't allow you to separately adjust the resolutions, and the G450 doesn't do an adequate job of working around this limitation.
In addition, others have reported a footnote on the G450 site regarding the PCI version of the G450 that mentions compatibility issues with non Intel chipsets. If I'm not mistaken, the chipset issue isn't a processor issue (ie, Intel vs AMD) but rather sets of supporting chips on the motherboard manufactured by Intel, VIA, and others. The compatibility issues mentioned seem pretty esoteric to me (see http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/mill_g450/pci_faq.cfm) but who knows. As far as I'm concerned, anything less than 100% compatible isn't good.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
You mention that you've had problems with your G450 regarding resolution/sharpness of the secondary monitor. One thing that comes to mind regards Win2k itself. I don't know if this is what is causing your problem, but it's worth looking into. First, check out this quote from the following site: http://www.digitalroom.net/index2.html:
"Note - Windows 2000 does not fully support multiple displays from a single graphics card. Some cards have updated drivers that work around this problem, but you may encounter problems such as windows being extended across both monitors, inability to set independent screen resolutions or color depths etc. Windows XP resolves this problem with a feature called Dualview."
Matrox claims to have a unique work around for this issue. Below is a quote from their G550 site http://www.matrox.com/mga/archive_s...rk_millg550.cfm
"The Millennium G550 supports independent resolutions and color depths, or true multi-display, under the Windows Me and Windows XP operating systems. What's more, the card offers unique support for true multi-display under Windows 2000, thereby ensuring the greatest level of functionality for this popular 2D workstation operating system. "
I haven't been able to find a similar statement from Matrox with regard to the G450, which makes me wonder if Win2K itself doesn't allow you to separately adjust the resolutions, and the G450 doesn't do an adequate job of working around this limitation.
In addition, others have reported a footnote on the G450 site regarding the PCI version of the G450 that mentions compatibility issues with non Intel chipsets. If I'm not mistaken, the chipset issue isn't a processor issue (ie, Intel vs AMD) but rather sets of supporting chips on the motherboard manufactured by Intel, VIA, and others. The compatibility issues mentioned seem pretty esoteric to me (see http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/mill_g450/pci_faq.cfm) but who knows. As far as I'm concerned, anything less than 100% compatible isn't good.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
Magna
Administrator
tom,
Thanks for the info, interesting. I've also noticed the "second monitor isn't as sharp as the main monitor" problem in Win98 and WinNT, so it's not strictly a Win2000 issue. And I have another dual-monitor card, the ATI Radeon VE, and I've noticed the same problem there. Shuffling monitors around doesn't help, so it's definitely a video card thang. Recently added a PCI nVidia single-monitor card alongside the Radeon (for 3 monitors) and the resultant display (in both Win2000 and W98) is also not quite as sharp. Again, I shuffled monitors around just to be sure.
Haven't played with the Matrox G450 lately as I don't currently need it, and there were a number of driver problems in NT and Win2000 (no problems in W98), causing total random screen lockups. That's why I've been using the Radeon lately, it's not as fancy as the Matrox, also not quite as compatible (fine in Win2000 and W98, not so fine in NT), but the ATI drivers are rock-solid and that's more important to me.
Thanks for the info, interesting. I've also noticed the "second monitor isn't as sharp as the main monitor" problem in Win98 and WinNT, so it's not strictly a Win2000 issue. And I have another dual-monitor card, the ATI Radeon VE, and I've noticed the same problem there. Shuffling monitors around doesn't help, so it's definitely a video card thang. Recently added a PCI nVidia single-monitor card alongside the Radeon (for 3 monitors) and the resultant display (in both Win2000 and W98) is also not quite as sharp. Again, I shuffled monitors around just to be sure.
Haven't played with the Matrox G450 lately as I don't currently need it, and there were a number of driver problems in NT and Win2000 (no problems in W98), causing total random screen lockups. That's why I've been using the Radeon lately, it's not as fancy as the Matrox, also not quite as compatible (fine in Win2000 and W98, not so fine in NT), but the ATI drivers are rock-solid and that's more important to me.
Just finished setting up this system and it seems to work reasonably well, with few limitations. Not being a computer expert, I really did initially struggle with the setup, partly because of my lack of knowledge. I share this to possibly help others like me. It will work.
Using an ATI 8500 64 MB dual monitor card in the AGP slot. This card runs two crt monitors. In addition, two ATI 32 MB Radeon 7200 PCI cards. Each of these PCI cards will only run one crt monitor each.
The system is Windows 98 on a 450MHZ Pentium 2 processor. The total number of monitors is four.
First, I could not get all four monitors to work without finally figuring out that all older versions of the ATI driver needed to be uninstalled from the system. This required the installation of a generic Microsoft driver for the monitors, by the Windows plug and play feature. Secondly, the new driver contained on the ATI CD did not work properly for me with my system, even after loading and unistalling several times. The newest version of the driver had to be downloaded from the ATI website. This version will not work properly, according to the ATI information, unless the latest version of ActiveX version 8.1 is downloaded from Microsoft and installed.
The system now appears to do the job reasonably well. Each monitor is basically independent, and you can drag and drop across the whole setup as one wide desktop. Each monitor can be adjusted for screen size independently of the others. The monitors on the PCI cards can be independently adjusted to the maximum color performance of 32bit true color. The hardware acceleration performance can be set to the maximum of 100%. However, the hardware acceleration is not independent for each monitor, and all four will be identical for this acceleration setting.
The downside to this setup, is that the second monitor on the 8500 card in the AGP slot, will lock and screen freeze unless the colors setting for this monitor is set to the lower resolution of 256 colors. Not as crisp and clear as the other monitors. The first monitor on the 8500 card will operate ok at the maximum color setting of 32bit true color, independent of the second monitor color setting.
It will work with persistence, even if you're not a computer expert.
Using an ATI 8500 64 MB dual monitor card in the AGP slot. This card runs two crt monitors. In addition, two ATI 32 MB Radeon 7200 PCI cards. Each of these PCI cards will only run one crt monitor each.
The system is Windows 98 on a 450MHZ Pentium 2 processor. The total number of monitors is four.
First, I could not get all four monitors to work without finally figuring out that all older versions of the ATI driver needed to be uninstalled from the system. This required the installation of a generic Microsoft driver for the monitors, by the Windows plug and play feature. Secondly, the new driver contained on the ATI CD did not work properly for me with my system, even after loading and unistalling several times. The newest version of the driver had to be downloaded from the ATI website. This version will not work properly, according to the ATI information, unless the latest version of ActiveX version 8.1 is downloaded from Microsoft and installed.
The system now appears to do the job reasonably well. Each monitor is basically independent, and you can drag and drop across the whole setup as one wide desktop. Each monitor can be adjusted for screen size independently of the others. The monitors on the PCI cards can be independently adjusted to the maximum color performance of 32bit true color. The hardware acceleration performance can be set to the maximum of 100%. However, the hardware acceleration is not independent for each monitor, and all four will be identical for this acceleration setting.
The downside to this setup, is that the second monitor on the 8500 card in the AGP slot, will lock and screen freeze unless the colors setting for this monitor is set to the lower resolution of 256 colors. Not as crisp and clear as the other monitors. The first monitor on the 8500 card will operate ok at the maximum color setting of 32bit true color, independent of the second monitor color setting.
It will work with persistence, even if you're not a computer expert.