konstareal konstareal

Multi Monitor setups

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Multi Monitor setups

from WinCustomize Forums
I'm currently using a multimonitor setup - I have a 24", and a 17" in portrait mode at the side of it. I'm using an Nvidia 8800 GTS 320MB.

I am able to run dreams on both screens, but it has to be the same dream, which obviously looks daft if it is a dream with some sort of central focal point, as it is appearing twice.

I'm curious to know if there are any plans to implement some level of support for multi monitor setups - ideally the ability to run a different dream on each screen, but failing that, at least the possibility of using a dream on one screen, and a static wallpaper on the other. Regards
22,437 views 29 replies
Reply #26 from WinCustomize Forums Top
First off thank you stardock for deskscapes. I too run dual monitors. On my main monitor some dreams look amazing. Unfortunately for most dreams they look horrible on my secondary monitor. I am using a 30" and a 20" rotated into portrait mode. About the only Dream thats acceptable is Mana Shades and Blue Plasma.
As konstareal already said it would be great to be able to "disable" the dream on one monitor.
I'm guessing this is up to MS to handle this though. What Agrabren explained about Multimon is what I've been doing manually with background images for years. I'm sure I'm not the only one. If that isn't handled within Windows by now I guess my request for Dream functionality is pretty far fetched
Reply #27 from WinCustomize Forums Top
If you want to try different videos on different monitors to see what the CPU load would be (or just to see what it would be like) you can try my SSDream application. It doesn't support the .dream file format, but it will play different WMV and MPEG files on each monitor.

On my:
6600 Core Duo 2.4ghz Over clocked to 3.2ghz
NVidia 8800 GTS

I get a 14% CPU load when I run two MPEG2 videos:
Ripple Purple Rays MPEG2(1152x720) on the 24" 1920x1600 Monitor
Apollo v2 MPEG2(1024x768) on the 21" 1600x1200 Monitor

I get a 25% CPU load when I run two WMV videos:
Ripple Purple Rays WMV(1920x1200) on the 24" 1920x1600 Monitor
Apollo v2 WMV(1600x1200) on the 21" 1600x1200 Monitor

These numbers a on par with what I'm seeing if I add the CPU loads together when running them separately.
End of quote


ok, what i have realized that with dual moniters, and having a killer pc, is that on mine i use about 5% on 2 of 4 CPU's..Is that i barely use any CPU when running Dreams, my spec's are on my profile, www.xfire.com/profile/logitechdude69

everything on my vista has been customized with Stardock app's, and most of them work, but the best that works for me, is the dreams
ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #28 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Neil Banfield said "Regarding the performance problems with multiple display adapters : Deskscapes is designed for systems with 1 or 2 monitors on a single video adapter. If you have more than 1 card then things are going to need to be sent from card to card and that can be slow."

I can confirm this. I was running two monitors off the same card, with a second card going unused/in reserve for SLI gaming. Deskscapes were running smooth and easy this way. However, I thought to myself that it made sense to have one card on one monitor and one on the other, so I switched. Sure enough, now Deskscapes are chugging along instead of baby smooth.

So if you are a multimonitor user, two monitors on the same card will give you much better results that one monitor for each of two cards. Seems counterintuitive in some ways, but apparently sending the video data across the PCIx bus from one card to the other SUCKS. :)
Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Well I was able to make a triple monitor dreamscene but I had to run eyefinity and fraps just to make the video the right resolution so that it would not stretch and distort.  I'm still having issues transcoding into .wmv if the video is too long there's always some form of distortion so the video must be short like 10-20 seconds which isn't really that short at all.

 

This is my desktop note that the jumpiness from the video is not the fault of my computer, but the Droid X I'm recording with in low light: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5G5rlXHFEo&hd=1