multiple monitors support and stutters

[Guest robertsflight]

Hi all,Here is a thing I experience in FS9.I have four monitors. Two are for outside view (horizontal span on AGP GF6800 res 2048x768) -two are for panels (horizontal span on FX5200 PCI same 2048x768). The sim works great. BUT...I have to disable 3d acceleration for PCI monitors in order to avoid stutters in main view (properties->settings->advanced->troubleshoot, then move the slider to disable direct3d and direct draw on the secondary card.)In a previous discussion about atc window, tdragger pointed out that two of my older PCi card could have been too old for undocked acceleration of the ATC window, so I got a new PCI FX5200 with dual head display. ATC window is now undocked and doesn't cause the performance loss , but I noticed stutters. Then I realized that my older PCI cards were fine, but I just had to disable direct 3d and direct draw acclereation to avoid stutters. (Which was OK since I used them for panels only) Now even with the new DX9 card, if I want a stutter free FS, my secondary PCI card has to have some key features disabled in order to get stutter free performance. Hard choice-either have full 3d accleration on all monitors and have stutters ...or disable 3d features for secondary card and have a stutter free fs (which then negates the advantage of having a DX9 card which could be used for additional main outside view)The question is...Could we expect to see some improvements in multiple monitor support, specifically for users who may be using more then one card to run their displays? And why are there stutters when both cards are on full acceleration? Is it becasue DX9 resurces are being shared bewteen AGP and PCI bus? Any thoughts?Thanks and sorry for the long post.

[Guest tdragger]

I'm no guru but I don't think you'll ever really be happy trying to run both AGP and PCI cards. I used a similar setup as yours and never bothered putting stuff (even panels) on the PCI device. You might want to save your pennies for a PCIe motherboard, perhaps with SLI so you can get max bus bandwidth for all your video.

[brynjames 0]

Six monitors on a single 1.8 GHz machine at this site:http://home.nc.rr.com/jrhavrilla/specs.htmHe has *lots* of memory though.The ASRock 939 dual SATA motherboard has both AGP *and* PCIE slots. I don't know of any others which do this. I'm just in the process of building one at the moment because I needed an AGP motherboard to try out an ebay Matrox Parhelia card, but suspect I will soon want to go PCIE. The ASRock permits *both* to be used at once, as well as one or two PCI graphics cards if you can still find them.--Bryn

[Guest robertsflight]

Hi, thanks for your reply.I went to that site and the sim looks great, however when you watch the videos the sutters are just abundant. (one thougth I had for that setup was to replace s3 of those 19inch lcd's with one projector-:) I was also thinking about parhelia but after checking Matrox forum, I concluded that this card can only do around 20 FPS (at best) in three monitor setup, and unless they come up with something new it is realy no match for similar offerings from Nvidia and ATI (New parhelia is around $300-400) Granted 3 monitors on one card is sweet, but those prices...Thanks for the info on AGP SLI setup, I'll look that up too. Keep us posted on your parhelia experience if you get that setup going.Robert

[Guest robertsflight]

Thanks for your reply tdrager.I'll probably upgrade to SLI when FSX comes out.Thanks again for your input and all your work on this great hobby of ours.

[brynjames 0]

When watching wmv files I never know if the stuttering is from the original scene, from the encoding, or from my playback machine.Just to clarify the ASRock board function, the two cards are not working in SLI mode - it is 2 cards driving 2 (or 3 or 4 spanned) monitors, not 2 cards driving 1 (or 2 spanned) monitors. Just powered up my ASRock system for the first time: the monitor stayed resolutely black screen. Major fault finding underway :(--Bryn

[Guest robertsflight]

>When watching wmv files I never know if the stuttering is>from the original scene, from the encoding, or from my>playback machine.I think it is stuttering in the sim since the pilot movemnets and other non view stuff is smooth. Great cockpit though...>Just to clarify the ASRock board function, the two cards are>not working in SLI mode - it is 2 cards driving 2 (or 3 or 4>spanned) monitors, not 2 cards driving 1 (or 2 spanned)>monitors. Just powered up my ASRock system for the first>time: the monitor stayed resolutely black screen. Major fault>finding underway :(You got me to google this board and spend about three hours reading about it. I found lots of interesting information, such as that the AGP support is full, or native, without going thru the PCi (unlike the other boards of that type). I also read that people were able to use both the PCIE and AGP at the same time. Nice little board with an excellent price and great reviews. I hope you can solve your problems. One thing I read is to try changing (in bios) what is your primary board and let windows do the rest unitl the displays are intialized. And yes no SLI mode when using AGP PCIE combo. Good luck, and let us know how it went. This could be a major breakthrough in multiple monitor support if it works as advertised.Robert