One Laptop and Two External Monitors

[Oculez]

Guys,

I am new to multi-boxing and i just purchased two external monitors to use for my three boxing team. I just purchased this


http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...odsPerPage=60#

I hooked up to laptop with both external screens and it does not allow me to make a third screen in the display settings, instead it thinks the third monitor is monitor two so therefore i cannot split each character to its own separate screen. The plan was the laptop screen main toon , the first external screen toon 2, and the second external screen toon 3. I am not hardware savy so i am reaching out to the community for some help. Can you see a reason that in display settings it only recognizes the two external displays as combined how can i split that last monitor to three? Thank you greatly in advance for any help!

[Vociferate]

I would advise against powering that many monitors off a laptop, due to heating issues.

With ISBoxer, you could have both your slaves on one monitor in a smaller scale and have your main on your laptop.


Just my $0.02

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I would advise against powering that many monitors off a laptop, due to heating issues.

lolwut? Could you explain the technical reason behind your assertion?

/bated breath

[Sajuuk]

lolwut? Could you explain the technical reason behind your assertion?

/bated breath

The tubes will obviously explode!

Here's something to look at.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1522180

[Vociferate]

lolwut? Could you explain the technical reason behind your assertion?

/bated breath

Personal experiences mostly, but without an adequate source of cooling supporting 3 monitors would cause a fair bit if heat inside the laptop.

Sure it's possible, and probably works very nicely with some laptops. But as a rule of thumb, it would need to be a fairly beefy laptop with cooling to be able to last longer than a year for boxing.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Personal experiences mostly, but without an adequate source of cooling supporting 3 monitors would cause a fair bit if heat inside the laptop.

Sure it's possible, and probably works very nicely with some laptops. But as a rule of thumb, it would need to be a fairly beefy laptop with cooling to be able to last longer than a year for boxing.

I'm still trying to figure out how hooking up extra monitors has anything whatsoever to do with laptop internal heat generation. Yes, I understand that a larger desktop stresses the laptop more than a smaller one (duh) but I could stress the GPU just as hard with Crysis or something like that. Edumacate me.

[Oculez]

I would like to thank everyone for taking the time in enlightening me, I have a clear understanding now.

[Hivetyrant]

I'm sorry, It looks like I have to be the one to tell you..

A VGA splitter does not exactly "split" like most people think, it only clones the VGA output to two screens, but don't feel bad, MANY people fall into the same trap as the naming can make it very confusing (Hell I work in IT and one of my operations team suggested we buy the same thing for an extra screen until I told him how they work.)

The good news is, not all is lost, there are devices out there that can add extra monitors to your machine and only require a USB port like this:
http://www.lindy.com.au/news/USBtoVGAAdapter.htm

If you google "USB to VGA" you should get results in your own country.

The bad news is, there are a few problems with these devices;
1) They aren't cheap (In comparison to the splitter, I purchased a high end one for about $130AUS)
2) They do not use your GPU - To put it in non technical terms, these devices do not use your laptop video card, instead they rely on your CPU for power, so each screen that you add drains more time and power from your CPU which can have a noticeable impact on system performance.
3) They are not designed for 3D content, due to the way they work, they do not advertise the ability to display 3D content (games, etc.) because that would require massive work by the CPU.

But don't get discouraged by the negatives, I have not yet tried mine for WoW but I will give it a shot and let you know how it goes, as even though they say they aren't mean to be used for certain things, I know it works (mine displays our 3D apps and 1080P video content just fine)

So for the TL;DR, a splitter will only clone the output to two identical displays, it can't make 1 turn into 2, but there are devices that let you add another screen to your machine, however it would help if you could tell us what kind of laptop you have as it might not be able to handle multiple wow's anyways.

Also, also, as Vociferate said, ISBoxer would be the best thing for you anyways, it is an amazing program, and while it's a bit daunting at first, this community will always provide the care and help you need to get it running, and it will save you money and frustration trying to get a 3 monitor setup working on your laptop.

Hope this helps

[Bollwerk]

@Vociferate (and anyone else curious)
You seem to be confused as to how things work in this regard. I think maybe you're thinking of a scenario where you add a 2nd graphics card to a desktop PC, which could require more power and cooling, depending on the card.
Most (if not all) laptops can only output to 2 screens (either 2 external or 1 external and the laptop screen). The main factor that determines how hard the graphics chip works is the software you are running (such as games). The amount of monitors (and resolutions) have little (if any) impact.