Triple Monitor Support..

[TOR_LordRaven]

a little peeved...

Needed 3 monitor support at work, running XP 64bit edition.
(environment not moved to 7 yet)

Ordered a VisionTek Radeon 5450.
Only to find out you can't use three monitors on it if your running XP. You have to have Windows 7.

Why would they disable the third screen in XP? I see in the catalyst software the third monitor, but it wont allow you to drag/drop it in the group. Only allows two at a time. There must be some sort of hack out there to fix that. Ugg!

[Krom]

Windows 7 Passes Windows XP in Just Two Years to Become Top OS

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

[fliptw]

use more than one video card.

unless you want to use three monitors in a single game, then you need to upgrade.

[TOR_LordRaven]

Yeah - as mentioned, its a work PC. Not gaming.

The system i went from had a Quadro Card and (Gasp) Voodoo5 PCI card to push the third screen.
Problem was no matter what new drivers i used (XP64), it always defaulted to the "Windows default" video driver, so anything put on the 3rd screen would lag and sometimes hang my system.

Anyhoo - will find another solution.

[TechPro]

They didn't disable triple monitor support in XP, they just didn't have much (if any) support for that in XP. When XP came out it was actually rare for computers to have more than one monitor. Having three was nearly unheard of. Therefore you typically neede a third party solution in order to do it.

[ Post made via iPad ]

[Krom]

Two and three monitors work just fine in XP. But they won't work if you try to set it up as an Eyefinity display (you wouldn't want to do this for a normal desktop anyway). Just click the two extra monitors in display properties and check "extend my desktop on to this monitor". Windows XP can do this with no extra drivers or support, and you can even re-arrange the monitors in software to reflect how they are positioned for real on your desk by dragging around the appropriate numbered image of the screen.

The problem you had with XP choosing the "Windows default" video driver is a limitation in XP only being able to load a single video driver. If you wanted to drive 3 displays using two video cards they would have to use the same driver, so that means the same brand and same general family. Mixing a Nvidia quadro card and a voodoo 5 PCI is automatic failure because XP cannot load the 3dfx and Nvidia driver at the same time, so the Nvidia primary driver wins out and the 3dfx driver will refuse to load. Now if you picked up a second Nvidia video card (anything that will fit in the system) it would work because it would operate off the same driver as the primary card.

[TOR_LordRaven]

Actually thats not accurate Krom - works just fine in 32bit XP.
I get both the 3dfx Drivers and Quadro Drivers in 32bit. The nVidia control panel even pushs my start/task menu across all three monitors in XP 64 and 32bit.

When running three screens in 32bit XP, it works just fine with Quadro/Voodoo, its the 64bit drivers that never loaded properly.
Hence the switch to the 3 screen card, but i have already sent it back and ordered a GeForce card. so anyway..