Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi guys, as I'm currently planning to upgrade my TripleHead system, I was hoping to get some advice on wether DualHead2Go's actually do what I want them to.
I'm currently running this set of monitors:
17" Portrait mode (1024x1200) - 24" Landscape (1920x1200) - 17" (same as left).

What I'm trying to do is:
17" + 17" DualHead2Go Analog (1920x1200) - 24" Landscape (1920x1200) - 17" + 17" (same as left) for use with EyeFinity (3x1920x1200, obviously)

The obvious question would be, why not go triple 24", and the answer is: I guess it's less expensive to buy some used DualHead2Gos, and 17" TFTs are dirt cheap, I can pretty much pick them up on the street as the local businesses start to throw perfectly functional ones away already just like they do with their old CRTs.
Also, on the technical side of things, this could gain me some additional monitor area, as the native width of those 17"s amounts to 2048 pixels, instead of only the meagre 1920 that my main monitor is offering. That's a whooping 6.66% more!
So as you've probably figured out by now, there is no real technical reason, it's just me being cheap and loving to fool around with seemingly stupid hardware combinations to some extent. However, I'd like to know wether I actually have some kind of a chance to succeed beforehand, and that's why I'm asking you guys.

1. Do the DualHead2Gos support 2 monitors in Portrait mode (I guess they do)? If not, just say so and the project is dead, no further research necessary and no spending required :).

2. Then there is the more complicated problem of the space between the DH2Gs and my main (center) monitor: As I said above, I'd want to use EyeFinity in games, and to do that I'd have to run those DH2G-combos at a resolution smaller than native size (1920x1200 versus 2048x1280). What is the behavior of the DH2Gs in that case, will it just center the image on the screens, or (as I'm hoping very much) is there an option in the PowerDesk software to select the image positioning behavior, to align it to the edge of either screen? If it was just centered, this would of course mean that I'd have a black area of ~50-100 (depends on wether question 3 can be answered yes or no ;) ) pixels between my main screen and both side monitors; if it defaulted to align the monitor always to the left side of the paired monitors, this would be even worse, as then one side would work perfectly, and the other would receive a huge black area right next to my center screen, leaving me with a very asymmetric viewing experience.
So if you know for a fact that it will always align it to the left side of the left screen, say so and the project is dead (pretty much).

3. If the first two questions actually pose no problem, then I'd have to think about the following: I'm introducing two more bevels into my view - but since they're actually on the very edge of my sight anyway, I won't care too much during gaming. It would, however, be nice if the DualHead2Go offered some kind of bevel management - I reckon it doesn't, right? Obviously, if it did, this would mean that the image area actually used would have to be a little smaller - 1024 pixels on the inner monitor, ~100-150 pixels of bevel, leaving only ~870-920 pixels for the outter monitor. I could still live with this, so no dead project call on this one.

Hope there are some advanced DH2G users out there who can help me!

Thanks for your time (I do write a lot),

Chris

Question 1: No.

Question 2: The DH2Go is a Dumb piece of hardware. All it does is slice the images and send the corresponding images to the monitors. The monitors will probably scale the image received to the panels size. Unless the monitors you get have any sort of built in scaling that allows for aspect or 1:1 scaling.

Now will eyefinity work like this? Maybe. It's going to have to find a resolution both the DH2Go's and Center panel have in common. Most likely this will be a single monitor resolution and you wont be happy. One other solution you have is to use them all as extended desktops then use SoftTH. At that point it would be cheap to buy another video card instead for DH2go's.

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Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

Oh, ok, so it doesn't support Portrait - then my evil plans have failed, back to the drawing board so to speak. ;) Guess I'll have to bite the bullet then and buy two more 24"s some day in the near future...

I'm using SoftTH right now, and it's working reasonably well on the older versions (1.07-1.09), just a bit slow for my taste in simulation games. I do get a lot better fps on 2.01-2.03 (as in, 50-60fps with new vs. 28-35fps with the old version) which make me believe there is potential, however some strange problems with my sound (crackling and lower tone whenever I use all three screens) that nobody on the kegetys forum can explain prevents me from using the newer version... Since I've tried pretty much everything including using another PCI soundcard and the onboard one, I'm a bit frustrated and thus considering desperate measures.

Thanks for your help!

Chris