ATI® Radeon 9600XT in Sony Vaio Desktop PC PCV-RZ504 Dual Head?

[globalinsites]

Hello,

I have a question regarding the ATI® Radeon 9600XT (VRAM 128 MB). I am interested in purchasing the Sony Vaio Desktop PC PCV-RZ504 that comes with the ATI® Radeon 9600XT. Because of the nature of my work I need to work with two monitors (on one PC) at the same time and be able to drag windows from one screen to another (dual head) and I would like to know if this is possible with the ATI® Radeon 9600XT (VRAM 128 MB). I know that the 9600XT has one VGA and one DVI port, but I am not sure if that is enough to be able to do what I want to do. The technical support from Sony has told me that it is not possible (they say that the graphics card does not support dual-head and only one monitor can be used at the same time), although people in hardware newsgroups and other forums are telling me that I probable should be able to get it to work the way I want to. Before I make my purchase I would like to make sure if it can be done. Can someone please tell me more about it?

If it can be done, can you tell me what would be the best way to do it (one in VGA port and other one in DVI port with DVI->VGA cable?)?

Thanks,

Rik.

 

[Runningbear]

I have a Vaio and I believe the confusion is due to the fact that the Viao can only run one external monitor, but with the inbuilt LCD that gives you dual screens.

All the new Vaio's from the 32 meg cards up have this functionaily I believe.

The Viao doesn't have a dual head card as such but functions the same as a dual head card when you add one external monitor.

If you need to run two external monitors plus the inbuilt LCD (three screens in total), then you will need an external card that plugs into you PC slot.

See the following sites for further info.

http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon

http://www.multiplemonitors.org/Pag...eo cards.html
http://www.appiangraphics.com/products/?page=traveler

http://www.margi.com/products/prod_dtg.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/customize/multimonitor.asp

http://www.digitaltigers.com/sidecar.shtml


Runningbear

 

[MarkB]

Do you mean one of these models?

http://www.vaio.net/models/desktops/rz/details.html

The rz-56g comes with that vidcard. The 54 does not. I bought the 56g about 6 weeks ago and am very pleased, and yes, it does dual monitor.

I put a 19" LCD on as primary monitor on the DVI port, and my old 19" CRT as secondary on the VGA port. Of course you could put an analog LCD on as secondary too.

There are several options for desktop expansion, which is what you are referring to. Works great. And there's also a preloaded program called Hydravision, which is distributed with several multihead vidcards, which lets you specify all sorts of things for individual programs... where they open on each monitor, etc.