How Many Monitors?

Anyone know of a DX filter program, like the frequency changers, which can force
4:3 aspect games to only use the middle portion of the display?

1 37 inch “monitor” and 1 17inch laptop. I am kinda debating getting another 20incher but I think I am gonna hold of.

Two monitors are soo not too useful. I’ve had two of them hooked up and almost no games support dual monitors… also whenever you move your mouse outside of a full-screen game, the game will minimize. argh.

Instead you should hook up your 2nd monitor to a second computer and then use the synergy program to use the same mouse/keyboard between the two computers.

Now if you spring out for 3, you can get a TripleHead from Matrox and play quite a few games in superwidescreen ;). Too bad it doesn’t support DVI :(.

Synergy is the bomb. It’s what I use at home.

Actually, I had problems getting the screen locking from working properly, so while playing battlefield I’d inadvertently spin until I died. I was impatient, so I paid money to Stardock. Works pretty good.

I use it so I don’t have to alt-tab from a 3d game, google up an faq, etc.

Shouldn’t this be a function of your monitor and/or video drivers? Just specify that scaling should be done in such a way as to preserve aspect ratio. Then tell the game to run in whatever 4:3 resolution you desire.

nvidia drivers have this as an option, yes. However, when I try it on my WS monitor, it just messes up. I can’t use it, but the option is there. YMMV, obviously.

I highly recommend people go to their nvidia settings (or whatever you use) and just play around. If it doesn’t work, the screen will revert.

For BG2, I tried running it in window mode, and that worked a bit, but I got errors when rightclicking on inventory. So now I keep an old CRT hooked up at the same time, and I stick with single-monitor but switch between them as necessary. BG2 looks great on my old CRT!

How much did you pay for that Samsung “years ago”?
Cause now, if you want, a 37" Westinghouse from Sam’s Club runs just under $1000. Compared to $1600 or so for the 30" Dell and HP reviewed in the March PC Gamer.

This is a big problem for me, as I recently switched from an Nvida 6800GT to an ATI X1950Pro. Catalyst drivers have an option for “Centered Timings” (as opposed to Nvidia’s nicer “Fixed Aspect Ratio”) but passes the buck to the monitor. So in my 5:4 Samsung’s case, it has no effect. From what I read, Nvidia dropped the ball with its 7000 and 8000 series, and the feature is non-functional on those cards. Hopefully for Nvidia owners, they fix this faster than ATI, whose engineers have been “aware of this problem for some time.”

Fortunately, Baldur’s Gate doesn’t look too bad when it’s vertically stretched a few inches.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would totally buy a TripleHead2Go if they ever made a purely DVI version. Whoever made the original VGA-only must have been only half awake… anyone running 3 monitors will have an expensive video card which will have DVI.

Heh. My old setup…

Alex: Was your workspace surrounded by a wire-mesh cage, by any chance? Replace the computers with reel-to-reel recorders and other analog gear and it would look a lot like Gene Hackman’s “office” in The Conversation.

No cage over the area, but there was a bit of a Hackman-ish vibe to the place. It was an old Safeway warehouse, and this was the engine room, as it were.

Jesus, dude, did you get cancer from all those monitors?

That looks like a scene from Crusader No Remorse, after everyone got all corporate-yed up.

I voted one monitor. But that changed this morning. I bought this beauty today. I love it. I now have the 22" widescreen beside the 19" 4.3 monitor.

I’d imagine it might be more difficult to implement the technology inside the TH2G using a purely digital signal. Is a DVI-VGA adaptor really that difficult to use? I’m pretty sure every video card released in the last 5 years comes with at least one.

If it was DVI I believe you’d need a dual-link in order to handle the resolution anyways. No sense in cutting out such a large chunk of your customer base, even if they could make it work.