Written By: Cheet
Date Posted: March 6, 2001

There are already great resources for getting started with and configuring nView for dual display setup. It's easy enough that most will not need any help.

I'd like to share with you some of the many cool advantages I've discovered to using a dual display configuration.

I'm testing on a Pentium III 950 MHz based system with 512 MB ram running Windows XP. The video card is a VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 MX 440. This very modern card features dual GPU architecture with two VGA outputs.

The dual display saves time and effort, eliminating much of the selecting, deselecting, maximizing, minimizing, opening and closing of programs. I know you're saying to yourself, "I already do all of that fast enough. Besides, I'm used to the way I do it now." Well just wait until you work through your files and programs with the dual display setup. You'll be in window management heaven.

Setup was a breeze, allowing you to configure your displays with completely different settings.

You can see, taking photoshop as an example, how those tool sets are moved over to the secondary display. That's where they belong, not blocking the workspace to the left.

Nice to be able to reference the knowledge on ViperLair while I show off to my friends in the chat room on the right.

I guess the bottom line is: If you have an extra monitor this sure is handy, though purchasing a monitor and a video card that can do it just for this function may be a step only true enthusiasts are willing to take. The setup is easy. Working flawlessly, dual display increases efficiency in almost any application you can think of, particularly combinations of applications. If pure graphics power is what you're after, then you should wait for the GeForce 4 4600 cards, or purchase a high end GeForce2 or 3 now. If I had to suggest a card, it probably would not be the GeForce4 mx series. For many people it'll be like buying disappointment in a box.

A few things you shouldn't expect to do with dual display are:

• Play full screen games on one monitor and use applications on the other. Full screen games generally capture your mouse and it's a real pain to get it back to use on the second monitor. Often times your entire game must reload in order to do this and then again once you want to continue playing. However, you can keep track of something else going on on the secondary display while you play your game.

• Have two different screen savers running. As far as I can tell, this is impossible.

• Run 2 full screen instances of a game. This isn't possible with the nView configuration. It truly uses the secondary display as just that, a secondary display. The dual display configuration, at least as far as nView goes, is an efficiency tool. It makes the things you already do much easier. It won't add addition functionality to your PC.

Agree? Disagree? Discuss it in our forums

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