I just got a new Dell 2407 widescreen monitor for my work PC. I'm replacing a 17" LCD which I planned to use as a second monitor. I had a nVidia GeForce FX5700LE lying around the house so I decided to install that since it has DVI. Card installed fine, hooked up the new Dell via DVI, set the resolution to 1920x1200 and everything worked fantastic. Next, I turned off the computer and hooked up the 17" LCD to the VGA port on the card. When I turned the computer back on, it automatically recognized the second display and went into nVidia DualView mode which treats each display seperately. Fine.

The problem is, now I can't set the resolution on the 24" to 1920x1200. The higest I can go is 1600x1200. Even when I turn off the second display and set nVidia settings to use only one monitor, I can't set the display to anything higher than 1600x1200. I turned off the computer, completely disconnected the 17" VGA monitor and rebooted. I still couldn't set the display to higher than 1600x1200. I tried hooking the 24" to the video card using the VGA and i found that this would allow me to set it to the max of 1920x1200. WEIRD.

So, for some reason, once I hooked up the second display, it limited my resolution on the main one to 1600x1200, even when the second display was taken completely out of the picture. If I'm unable to set it to the max resolution on the 24" when I have the second display up, thats fine I suppose, but how come I can't get the max res when the 2nd display is off?

Maybe someone has had a similiar problem before. I thought I'd try here before calling up Dell. Thanks.

Do you need to turn off "DualView" in a control panel or something?

My guess is that it would be related to the video card and not the monitor.

The maximum resolution of that card seems to be 2048 x 1536, but the maximum for DVI is 1600x1200. I don't know why you could do 1920x1200 at first.

I've tried going through the different options it has when you hook up two different monitors. None of them get the settings just right. Dualview seems like it should work since it treats each display seperately, but I'm still only able to set a max of 1600x1200 via DVI.

I'm thinking you are correct. I wish there were some sort of workaround or something. I know it can do it, its just a matter of settings. I had no idea that max res via DVI was 1600x1200. I swear I had it hooked up with DVI at 1920x1200, but only until I hooked up the second monitor.

Too bad my 17" doesn't have DVI connection.

Umm, you did your math way wrong there. 1600*1200*24b=44Mb=5.5MB.

Well, I suppose not wrong, but you are implying that Mb=MB. Or at the very least, using a unit of measure no one is familiar with in measuring memory.

I'm running this exact monitor over DVI at 1920x1200. Probably time to upgrade your video card.

Easy to misread and assume Bytes, certainly. And lazy for not doing the 1/8.

But is there any value to coverting to bytes (B) from bits (b) in this particular case? The total memory (256MB or whatever) that the card has isn't all for the frame buffer, it's for textures and other stages of the rendering pipeline.

But ok. Based on the max res of the card given earlier, that would be 12MB for the fb. The LCD needs 5MB at 32bit, 3.75 @ 24. The widescreen 8.79 & 6.59.

In either unit, at 32 bit color Tony's speculation is reasonable.

True, but we're still talking less than 14MB for 1920x1200 plus 1280x1024, both at 32 bits-per-pixel. Was there ever a video card that had a DVI connector that had less than 16MB?

Wasting? Those 8 bits are full of Alpha-goodness.

Anyway, it's unlikely to be memory related. It could very well be pixel clock related. Maybe that card can't run 1920x1200 with reduced blanking interval (that's how they go beyond the VESA spec) while driving the second display. I know a number of Matrox cards had crapppy configurations like this.

I don't remember a single ATI card with dual displays where you could not run the maximum resolution on both outputs in any situation.

Even a current cheapy card should be able to handle both displays at full resolution.

Check in the Advanced properties to make sure there isn't some setting on one of the tabs that artificially limits the maximum resolution.

Darn, then I think I need to order a cheapo card off Newegg or something. I thought this would have worked just fine, and I suppose it does except for this one issue.

The only thing I can't wrap my mind around is WHY i was able to get 1920x1200 via DVI before hooking up the 2nd monitor.

BTW, this monitor is really sweet.

A related question:

I think this might be a bad description of what I'm looking for but, what the hell. You know how you can maximize a window and it fills up the entire screen? Well, I want a program that will allow me to maximize a window on the 24" Dell, but when maximized, it should fit to a designated half of the screen. So the maximized window will fill the right side of the screen. Then i can maximize a second window and have it fill the other half of the screen.

Basically I would like to not have to do the resizing manually. If I maxmize a window now, it fills the entire screen. I want to be able to have two windows side by side filling up the screen, without manually sizing each one.

Do I make sense?

I would have sworn that was the default behavior, but it's been a while since I used a windows computer with multiple screens. Make sure you've got it set up so windows sees them as seperate screens which are arranged next to each other.

As to why it won't go back to working, it beats me. I'd delete the graphics card in the device manager and let it get reinstalled with just the 2407 hooked up.

Matthew

That was a standard capability of fvwm2, back when I used it as my windowing system on Linux. It has roughly similar sophistication to the default MS window manager, plus nifty features like that.

Nowadays I use KDE, and miss that fancy function very much! Though it does have "Pack Grow Window horizontally/vertically" functions, which do almost the same thing.

Cheers

You're looking for something to do "Window Tiling." There should be numerous windows shareware apps that let you control how this works. Windows itself also has a tiling command I believe but I can't remember how well you can control what gets tiled.

Hey! That pretty much works perfect. At first Tile Windows Vertically wasn't working the way I wanted but then I realized you have to hit CTRL and click on each window. Works great. Except for with Access for some reason. lol. Oh well.

Sweet program. I think its a keeper. THX.

Dell 30" LCD, £817 inc VAT

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=25532