Best solution for dual monitors

[brucek 38]

I hjave 2 monitors, one is a widescreen LDC, the other a conventional 4:3 LCD. I have previously used them both with DualView, which offers the advantages of letting each monitor be set up for resolution separately, plus the ability to drag-and-drop applications between the 2 monitors. However, I have found it to be a resource hog, and I guess that's just being that you don't get something for nothing :). Video card was a 7950GT.I have just completed a new build (Q6600, 2GB DDR3). I have the same video card fitted (7950GT). The single monitor performace is awesome and I'm addicted to it, but I would like to also get back to using my second monitor- usually used for non-FS stuff like e-mail, web browser, etc. (it's much closer to my keyboard).My understanding that the potentially less resource hungry oprions of Clone mode won't work because of the lack of similarity in screen ratio and resoltion. I'm wondering what are any other options available to me for using the second monitor? An external switcher maybe? Or- what's involved in installing a second video card, and what are the performance consequences of this? (The second video card would potentially only be used for e-mail, etc.). OS is WinXP (32).Thanks- Bruce.

[january 19]

Bruce- you asked about multiple video cards. I'm running triple monitors/ triple views- LFwd,Fwd,RFwd, using triple video cards. System is an ancient AMD 1.8GHz with a dual head AGP GeForce FX5200 and a same type single PCI card. In some benchmark tests, this config cuts FPS to about 50-55% of single card operation- NOT 1/3 as you might expect. As long as the displayed FPS remains above 13-15, the imagery is very smooth and I'm happy.That means I'm getting 3 times the number of pixels to my eyes (3 monitors) with only a 50% drop in the rate of pixel generation. That's a very substantial increase in TOTAL pixels seen by my brain! No wonder FS9 seems so much more realistic.Once you've flown with a 48" 180

[brucek 38]

Hi Alex,Thanks for your reply. The frame-rate drop compared to the additional monitors is interesting. I actually have another PCI-e card that I could use (my mobo has 2 of these slots), however I have no idea of how the drivers for each card interact, and what this would do for performance- however your experiences are encouraging.Thanks- Bruce.

[january 19]

Bruce- one of the tricks to make this work was to retard the Hardware Accel sliders 2 notches for the secondary monitors. (NOT main monitor). That totally eliminated some bad stutters and I've never looked back. I think this regulated the flow of data from main mem and provided for an orderly data distribution to the 3 GPUs.The other things that seemed to help were setting Virtual Memory to Let System Manage and FS9 @ FPS Unlimited.A really surprising thing is that I don't see any difference in quality of image between 15-17 FPS on triple mons and say 25-35 on a single mon. Yet I know many simmers will say 15 is not acceptable. It must have something to do with the brain receiving 3 times the number of pixels!Perhaps this is why simmers are raving about large monitors with high resolutions. In effect, that's what I have- it's 48" wide with a resolution of 3072x768 & has a 180