ATI Radeon Multi-Monitor HELP PLEASE!

mrpisca · Post by **mrpisca** » Thu, 18. Dec 03, 15:31

I have a Radeon 9800 pro, and 2 monitors. I want to get the multimontor capability running. How do I do it? Please be as specific as possible.

jingram1@kc.rr.com

xp2200, w 512 mb ram
ATI RADEON 9800 pro

SteveMill · Post by **SteveMill** » Thu, 18. Dec 03, 15:33

You can't - only works with geo cards for some technical reason connected with radeon not x2.

Sandalpocalypse · Post by **Sandalpocalypse** » Thu, 18. Dec 03, 18:56

Egosoft has a partnership with Nvidia but not ATi, unfortunately..

GnatB · Post by **GnatB** » Thu, 18. Dec 03, 19:32

Egosoft, apparently, is supporting multimonitors in the standard fashion. ATI, for whatever reason, doesn't.

If you want Multiple Monitors, any card (that supports multiple monitors) other than an ATI card will work, not just NVidia ones. Additionally, I've read posts saying there exists a program called Multimon that can get ATI cards to support multiple monitors.

Just another example of the dodgy nature of ATI drivers. Glad I decided to go with NVidia... (though I had actually done some research about multiple monitor support, and general consensus is lack of support for multiple monitors in games using ATI cards is a general ATI flaw, not specific to X2.), so the lack of ATI support actually was part of the decision to go with NVidia.

Sandalpocalypse · Post by **Sandalpocalypse** » Thu, 18. Dec 03, 19:34

let's not get into any video card holy wars here... I could go on and on about nvidia's buggy untested driver releases

Dhruin · Post by **Dhruin** » Fri, 19. Dec 03, 01:00

I've tried MultiMon (actually it's UltraMon - MultiMon is the site name) and it adds some excellent multi-monitor GUI support (ease of moving Windows between monitors and so on) but it doesn't give multimon support for X2. Sorry.

I'd love to see a dev response on the technical feasibility of adding ATI support.

The source of the problem is that nVidia cards span but ATI cards extend (by default). When you look at a spanned nVidia setup the desktop wallpaper is stretched across the 2x monitors and the Windows res is registered as a "widescreen" resolution (eg, one 204x768 desktop). ATI OTOH sees is as two distinct monitors with independant resolutions.

ATI does support multimon directx 3D acceleration so it should be possible with the right support. Please?

solid · Post by **solid** » Fri, 19. Dec 03, 01:07

Hang on a second. The term "standard fashion" presumably expands to "works under windows in the normal way and without any additional software"? I have a Radeon 9800XT that does multimonitor under Windows XP with no problems at all and no extra software other than the latest Catalyst drivers from ATi. But do you think I get the option of a 3200x1200 resolution for monitor spanning? negative.

(actually the 2nd monitor i have here is weedy it would be more like 2048x1024 ... hence i don't usually do multimon

)

it's a pain though. I would like for it to work. I'm sure other ATi owners feel the same way.... any hints anyone?

I do get the impression that true multimon support is a relatively recent 'innovation' for ATi. but in theory if the card does it natively enough for the OS to notice it, then X2 should pick up on it, right?

--a

moore+ · Post by **moore+** » Fri, 19. Dec 03, 01:59

No, because ATI does it differently. Not differently just from nvidia, but differently than everyone. A parhelia for example, does it the same way gforces do, so a parhelia (matrox) would be fine.

Basically, anything other than an ATI card that has multi monitor support can do it in x2. Has nothing to do with Nvidia.

Dhruin · Post by **Dhruin** » Fri, 19. Dec 03, 02:49

solid wrote:Hang on a second. The term "standard fashion" presumably expands to "works under windows in the normal way and without any additional software"? I have a Radeon 9800XT that does multimonitor under Windows XP with no problems at all and no extra software other than the latest Catalyst drivers from ATi. But do you think I get the option of a 3200x1200 resolution for monitor spanning? negative.

(actually the 2nd monitor i have here is weedy it would be more like 2048x1024 ... hence i don't usually do multimon )

it's a pain though. I would like for it to work. I'm sure other ATi owners feel the same way.... any hints anyone?

I do get the impression that true multimon support is a relatively recent 'innovation' for ATi. but in theory if the card does it natively enough for the OS to notice it, then X2 should pick up on it, right?

--a

...And there's the problem. Windows doesn't see the ATI setup as one big widescreen 2048x768 (or whatever) monitor. The ATI setup is technically "superior" because each desktop can be a different res and refresh rate because Windows still sees them as discrete monitors.

Windows sees the nVidia setup as one single widescreen setup @ 2048x768 (or whatever) so X2 doesn't have to do anything.

Unfortunately...

Still like to know if Egosoft might ever look into this for us ATI owners.

GnatB · Post by **GnatB** » Fri, 19. Dec 03, 06:02

Not quite true...

The NVidia drivers give you the option to use either dual view, (which is how ATI works, giving each monitor it's own resolution/refresh/etc. Heck, even position relative to the other...), but it also has support for the "windows seeing it as 1 widescreen monitor" option.

Oh, and... uhm... drivers = extra software.

Torracat · Post by **Torracat** » Fri, 19. Dec 03, 09:21

dangit,
Thats one more strike against this ATI 9800 I bought two weeks ago. this card maker has too many quirks about it. too many annoyances like this. it is faster, granted. but I cannot do cool stuff with it. it is a nearsighted card.

interax · Post by **interax** » Fri, 19. Dec 03, 10:52

Guys, I have contacted ATI customer services about this to see if there is a workaround or anything which can be done to enable this feature.

I don't know if we will be able to get a solution from them, but this may help. If/when they get back in contact with me, I will post any results here. There may be a solution that we have been unable to find, but thought I'd let you guys know what I am doing on all our behalves.

Chris

Torracat · Post by **Torracat** » Fri, 19. Dec 03, 22:23

cool, let me know. I'd be very interested...

moore+ · Post by **moore+** » Sat, 20. Dec 03, 03:28

lol, they cant change the HW on your cards. If it wasn't a hardware issue, they'd have done it the standard way and it'd already work.

Dhruin · Post by **Dhruin** » Sat, 20. Dec 03, 05:29

GnatB wrote:Not quite true...

The NVidia drivers give you the option to use either dual view, (which is how ATI works, giving each monitor it's own resolution/refresh/etc. Heck, even position relative to the other...), but it also has support for the "windows seeing it as 1 widescreen monitor" option.

Oh, and... uhm... drivers = extra software.

I stand corrected.

I haven't had an nVidia card for a while and some of the info came from MultiMon when I was researching the issue.

What did you mean by "extra software"? That the drivers aren't Egosoft's responsibility? I know that - but ATI support could still be added with extra coding.

There's probably more important issues to worry about but it would still be nice.

bigmac · Post by **bigmac** » Sat, 20. Dec 03, 09:24

Hi everyone!!

I did the whole process with asking ATI for an explanation or a driver update.

I asked ATI Canada directly and also my card vendor Hercules. the response was very different:

Hecules/Guillemot claimed that it is a Windows problem

that came actually from the technical support.

He also didn't get that the ATI tool HydraVision is not supporting widescreen but only dualscreen for desktop

I gave him loads of links and tools but still refused to see that it is a driver(software) issue of the Card and not from Widows.
I really love this typical behaviour of tech supp , to blaim windows for everything if they dont know.....

ATI Canada was different witrh their response:

Got only one mail back from them saying: "we will pass this on to our developement team"

so fingers crossed they will come out with a new driver or extra tool to support that...

GnatB · Post by **GnatB** » Sat, 20. Dec 03, 16:53

My additional software comment was in reference to a previous post....

solid wrote:Hang on a second. The term "standard fashion" presumably expands to "works under windows in the normal way and without any additional software"? I have a Radeon 9800XT that does multimonitor under Windows XP with no problems at all and no extra software other than the latest Catalyst drivers from ATi.

Drivers can implement features however they want, and windows, more or less, couldn't care less. But if the driver isn't implementing the feature in the "standard method" that everybody else uses, there can be issues. Everybody else at least gives the option of making windows see the monitors as 1 "virtual" monitor, (i.e. the "standard method), which makes support for them in a 3D app almost rediculously easy. Heck, Egosoft didn't really have to do anything to support it. People just decided to try running the demo that way, and it worked, so Egosoft just threw in the 1:1 and 1:4 view modes, which was probably an exceptionally easy change, as the support for tiled minimonitors was already there, they just had to change the location of them. Actually initing a second monitor, splitting up the view IN CODE, dealing with different resolutions in different monitors, is a FAR more complex task. I'm not all that familiar with D3D, so I'll assume it DOES give support for dealing with multiple display devices, but even so it's probably far more work than it's worth.... and would almost certainly be far more taxing on resources. (i.e. framerate) than the more... "native" support is.

Reven · Post by **Reven** » Sun, 21. Dec 03, 02:31

ATI was come-lately to the multi-monitor issue, and because of that, they did it in the "right" way. Monitor spanning was a hack introduced by early-comers into the multi-monitor arena in order to get around the lack of Windows support for multi-monitor displaying. Monitor extending is the official way of support multiple displays in Windows, and this is what ATI supports.

It is relatively easy for game manufacturers to support spanning in their games, since they treat it as a single display. Doing it the "right" way, though, they need to treat them programmaticly as multiple displays, and this is more complex. In the end it's a better solution, as each display can be individually adjusted for resoultion, refresh, etc. For example, my second monitor is an OLD piece of $%@#$ that supports 1024x768 only at 47Hz interlaced.

Game manufacturers continue to support the older spanning method, because it's easier. The way that game manufactuers continued to make "dos" games for quite a while after windows came out, simply because at the time it was easier. Eventually all will switch to the correct methodology, and it will be fine for everyone.

Sandalpocalypse · Post by **Sandalpocalypse** » Sun, 21. Dec 03, 02:54

If you go to the Matrox Perihelia site, you can see some good uses of multi monitoring. Imperium Galactica 3 is practically designed around it.... too bad it's been delayed so long

bigmac · Post by **bigmac** » Sun, 21. Dec 03, 14:02

not sure if you ment it is a joking way but Galaktica 3 is not comming at all..... after they had the name right problem, they completly gave up.. sad so was supposed to be brilliant

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

ATI Radeon Multi-Monitor HELP PLEASE!

ATI Radeon Multi-Monitor HELP PLEASE!

au contraire

Re: au contraire

Re: au contraire