Vista or XP mulit monitors

[mackenziemi]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place. I could see it going into seveal of the catagories. I am thinking of upgrading to Vista. I have read that you can't do the "Span" thing with the Nvidia cards that you can on XP. Supposedly this is becuase Vista handles multi-monitors better. But I have been doing this too long to put too much stock in MS "doing something better". So which is better Vista or XP for multiple monitors? Any advice would be very very welcome :)



mackenziemi

[opt]

if it works, why change it? Thats the attitude I have :) So im sticking with XP dont need all the extra bells and whistles with vista

[Diamndzngunz]

if it works, why change it? Thats the attitude I have :) So im sticking with XP dont need all the extra bells and whistles with vistaYou could not have said that any better. Simple as that.

[MaxD]

If wow is the only game you play they I would say stick with Xp, I play some FPS games that claimed you need to have Vista to play.THEY LIED, but they do look better. Then again I look at it like this, I turn up the settings as High as I can and say YEAH, WOW, DAYYUM, ect ect then turn them all the way down to play em online for the best possible FPS I can get.

So I say get Vista if YOU want the choice of all the bells and whistles but if your like me you wont use them even if you have them.


Edit* Yes the Used of Muti-monitors is very nice.

[opt]

sorry to bump up an old thread but i was curious about something
I cant find any text about XP handling more than 2 monitors at a time, i have 3 monitors on there way and i plan on having 4 on the same machine. Is it possible to run this setup with XP? My new machine will be using nvidia 8800gt'sx2

[Mac]

I have a 24" Gateway FHD2400 and a 22" LG L226W that I am running off a Nvidia Geoforce 8800 GTS 512mb card plugged into an ASUS P5K MB. I'm running XP with 4 gig DDR2 800 Ram, and an Intel Q6600 2.4ghz quad core processor. The settings on the 24' monitor are 1920x1200, and the 22' is at 1680x1050 in DualView. I am currently using it in this configuration to play my main on the 24' and I'm getting 60 FPS and its beautiful!

However as mentioned elsewhere, when I try to open 5 sessions ( 1 on 24" and 4 on 22") the FPS goes down to the mid teens (~12-15). I reset the monitor to Horozontal Span as recommended, however the image quality suffers at the 3360x1050 that it gets set at, all of the fonts in windows and in the game become fuzzy. I'm getting about 45 FPS in this configuration though so thats good. However the other problem I have , is that in this setting, all of the alt windows only size diagonally, and that means they don't fit as well on the 22" monitor , I have to make the windows much smaller then they are in Dual Veiw.

All of this has got me wondering if I should just bite the bullet and upgrade to Vista to resolve the issue. If anyone knows how I can resolve these issues in XP Horozontal Span, please let me know, or if you think I should upgrade to Vista to solve the problems, I'd like to know that too.

Thanks for your help.
Mac

[-silencer-]

All of this has got me wondering if I should just bite the bullet and upgrade to Vista to resolve the issue. If anyone knows how I can resolve these issues in XP Horozontal Span, please let me know, or if you think I should upgrade to Vista to solve the problems, I'd like to know that too.

Vista? I'd bite the bullet and upgrade to a 2nd 1920x1200 monitor to run in a native 3840x1200. That's what I'm doing - I was in the same situation as you.. one 24" at 1920x1200 and one 22" at 1680x1050. I've got a new Dell 24" Ultrasharp on the way. They had a discount on both their 24"s (the Ultrasharp for $579 and the E-series for $375) but it looks like only their E-series is on sale for $409.

[Djarid]

sorry to bump up an old thread but i was curious about something
I cant find any text about XP handling more than 2 monitors at a time, i have 3 monitors on there way and i plan on having 4 on the same machine. Is it possible to run this setup with XP? My new machine will be using nvidia 8800gt'sx2

yes mate, I run 3 monitors on XP (used to run 4)

[Mac]

All of this has got me wondering if I should just bite the bullet and upgrade to Vista to resolve the issue. If anyone knows how I can resolve these issues in XP Horizontal Span, please let me know, or if you think I should upgrade to Vista to solve the problems, I'd like to know that too.

Vista? I'd bite the bullet and upgrade to a 2nd 1920x1200 monitor to run in a native 3840x1200. That's what I'm doing - I was in the same situation as you.. one 24" at 1920x1200 and one 22" at 1680x1050. I've got a new Dell 24" Ultrasharp on the way. They had a discount on both their 24"s (the Ultrasharp for $579 and the E-series for $375) but it looks like only their E-series is on sale for $409.
Is Vista that much of a problem? I thought upgrading to vista might be the easy solution here because I just bought the 22", I can still take it back though. So just to clarify, the image quality problem I am having in Horizontal view is because the monitors are different sizes and that image quality problem can be resolved by having two of the same size monitors? Will I still have the problem of the window sizing ?

[Mac]

Is Vista that much of a problem? I thought upgrading to vista might be the easy solution here because I just bought the 22", I can still take it back though. So just to clarify, the image quality problem I am having in Horizontal view is because the monitors are different sizes and that image quality problem can be resolved by having two of the same size monitors? Will I still have the problem of the window sizing ? Fry's was having a sale on Samsung SyncMaster (245BW) LCD Monitor for $399. ( after $50. rebate) so returned the LG 22' and picked one up at lunch, I hope that solves the image quality problem.

[BobGnarly]

Is Vista that much of a problem? I thought upgrading to vista might be the easy solution here because I just bought the 22", I can still take it back though. So just to clarify, the image quality problem I am having in Horizontal view is because the monitors are different sizes and that image quality problem can be resolved by having two of the same size monitors? Will I still have the problem of the window sizing ?My understanding of the problem that people are referring to (which is based on what I've read, not personal experience - keep that in mind), is that by having two monitors of the same size, you can have your video card span the two as a single virtual desktop, rather than having XP deal with the two monitors. It is apparently that part of XP (dealing with multiple monitors) that is inefficient.

Vista is supposed to have fixed that to some degree, but it brings other multihead issues to the table of its own, so it's a bit of a ?( whether or not it will work well.

At least that's my understanding. Maybe somebody with personal experience will chime in.