Can I run a 19" and a 21" monitors on a raedon x1950 gt card?

[Bongbuster]

My system is an Intel quad cpu 6600, 2 gig ram, Windows XP professional and raedon x1950 gt card. I currenty run a 19" wide screen monitor.

I'm planning on keeping the 19" and adding a 21" monitor. Does my graphics card have enough grunt to run those two monitors at a decent resolution?

What is the general rule for working out what kind of graphics card/system can support a set combination of monitors? (could not find anything using the search function here)

 

[pbmaster]

Yes you can run both monitors at the same time. You should also be able to set the resolutions independently to suit your needs.

 

[sneekypeet]

I ran dual monitors on a 1950 Pro, it did just fine, what I did notice was the res of the second screen sometimes would lessen if the games or 3D Mark app was at load. Other, not so tough games, left the second screen res alone.

You should be fine!, plug it in, extend the desktop in CCC or by the control panel in windows, set the res, and enjoy all the room.

 

[Bongbuster]

Thanks pbmaster and sneekypeet

In general who can you determine whether a given graphics card/system will handle a given combination of monitors?

 

[sneekypeet]

At desktop I ran an X850XT on dual screens, just got alot more second monitor switching as the card had to struggle a bit to do both. Pretty much anything made today should be able to handle dual screens. With mismatched resolutions, I dont think you are trying to game with the screen split on both, so you should be fine.

 

[Mussels]

you can run as many screens as you have plugs for, off a video card made of toilet paper. Its not stressful at all.


Some games get lower performance from dual monitors, or minimise/crash if your mouse cursor goes out of its screen and onto the other one - but you didnt mention gaming, so i'll assume thats irrelevant.

 

[goldfries]

Bongbuster, what do you intend to use the setup for?

for general artwork / graphic and the casual desktop usage, it's more than enough.

I ran Supreme Commander with the 6800 Ultra (older than the X1950GT) running the game on my 20" LCD and the mini-map on 15" LCD. was laggy but it worked.

 

[Mussels]

Bongbuster, what do you intend to use the setup for?

for general artwork / graphic and the casual desktop usage, it's more than enough.

I ran Supreme Commander with the 6800 Ultra (older than the X1950GT) running the game on my 20" LCD and the mini-map on 15" LCD. was laggy but it worked.

supcom is the only game that dual monitor works on - you do take a pretty big performance hit tho (i like using a 40" HDTV as a "mini map" (called megamap when i used it at lans lol)

 

[goldfries]

yeah, huge hit. and 40" LCD for the mini-map is insane!

ironically, I've went from single core processor to dual core processor, 1.8ghz to 3.6ghz and 6800 Ultra to GTX295 and have yet to try dual-monitor since then.

and often I play games with just the single core of the GTX295! blame in on folding@home. i disable multi-GPU.

 

[Deleted member 3]

you can run as many screens as you have plugs for, off a video card made of toilet paper. Its not stressful at all.


Some games get lower performance from dual monitors, or minimise/crash if your mouse cursor goes out of its screen and onto the other one - but you didnt mention gaming, so i'll assume thats irrelevant.

I demand a project log for that videocard!

But it's true, 1280x1024@32 requires roughly 4MB of video memory. Depending on the native resolutions of those screens you can run your desktop on a 16MB card. Once you want 3D images on those screens things change, effectively you're doubling resolution (assuming same res) thus taking a hit for that.
In the example of supcom, CPU is mostly the killer. Graphic wise it's not that heavy. Again, since you're running double the resolution you might have to drop graphical settings.
And of course it's not the only game with support for dual display, there aren't that many though. Flightsim is another.

 

[Bongbuster]

UPDATE

I'm now running a Samsung 2243 and an Acer 19" wide screen of my system (Intel quad cpu 6600, 2 gig ram, Windows XP professional and raedon x1950 gt card).

This set up is sweet and soooo much more fun having two monitors than one so thank you for your help.

Will be buying a new system but that is a story for another thread.......