PC trouble, Dual monitor and slower performance?

Just a question for those with Dual monitors, did you notice any performance changes?

I have an AMD Athalon XP2600+ 512mb of Dual channel DDR Ram and slightly fried Nvidia GeForce4 MX440 AGP 8x.

I picked up a free monitor from my landlord who didn't want to ship it over seas.
My primary monitor is hooked up to the card via the digital outpur and an adaptor that came with it, and the 2nd monitor is hooked up to the VGA output on the card.

It works perfectly, except since I set it up the whole system seems to have slowed down.
PS proccess take longer to work, it takes longer to refreash the desktop after closing applications etc etc. Anything display related is slowing down.

Iv done a spyware and virus scan, so I know they are not the problem, and there are no odd process running that shouldn't be.

Anyone else experianced the same problem?

Do some performance tests, remove the 2nd monitor, repeat the tests.

I've not been aware of Dual monitors slowing things down perceptibly...

They'd certainly make the graphics card work harder. Yours is a low spec card, but even that shouldn't break a sweat kicking out 2048x768 or whatever resolution you ended up on in 2D. It really shouldn't be giving you a performance hit.

As Tim said, remove it and see if things go back to normal. It'll help you to track down whats causing this problem.

get more ram, at least 1 gb, get a better video card, try ATI, 9800xt should be good for ya. That old video card isn't gonna cut it. if you gonna get tricky, get a pci express mother board, try finding x850 l 512mb, i have 2 but it will cost ya. pci express is the wave of the furture man.

.. er,
A 32 MB Matrox G400 can run dual monitors with no hiccups,..

I must agree with CDS. PCI Express cards with fast processors and lots of memory are great for games, but for PS work you simply need fast 2D performance with good colour accuracy. You are better off spending your money on more system memory.

Cool man


Thanks CDS and Ken, Ill try some tests tomorrow with only one monitor set up, see if I can narrow down whats causing it.

I thought the card would be able to handle it easily, was more curious if others had experianced a similar problem.

The card has been over heated in the past, so its possible its the cause of the problem.

I assume the only change you've made is to add the second monitor, if so then what could cause the computer to have to wait for the card? Is the dual monitor set up as one big desktop, two different ones or two of the same- probably shouldn't make any difference. Check that the card is not trying to drive the two monitors at different refresh rates, that may give it some grief.

My system is also slowing down, but that's coz it's nearing my annual reformat time.

I use pcpitstop.com
Seems to do fine tests, and can easily retest online after changing some settings.
I'm still running PIV 2.4Ghz with 1Gb DDR, and 128Mb Geforce 4, all bought back in Feb 2003. (man I thought it was fast back then)

I checked the refreash rates, the card limits them both to the fastest possible setting for the slowest monitor, which is 60mhz (the 2nd monitor was a freebie )

I then had a look in device manager, and discovered my PC thinks it has four montors installed!
I dsiabled two, and then three of them, which made no differnce, so I don't know what happened there.

It took me some time to figure out how nView worked with two monitors, and how I wanted to set it up. (I went with dual view, which leaves the primary monitor as if it hasnt canged, and then just displays the same background in the second monitor, and but leaves it clear to put what ever windows, icons etc I like in it, not even any tool bars show up, unless I put them there.


But another half gig or ram wouldn't go amiss

Moppie,

What do you mean by 'slightly fried' GeForce? No doubt that more RAM almost always helps, but...

By virtue of your platform spec, RAM and video card stated there should be no noticeable hit on performance. I'd wager that you've turned on a little more of the nView apps than a default config usually installs. nView has a lot of functionality in it beyond just turning on a 2nd monitor; but that functionality is bought with a CPU hit when you're playing with MX series Nvidia cards.

Two weeks ago, I installed a triple monitor config on an old Dell PII 400Mhz w/512MB RAM. The cards were a 3D Prophet II GTS 32MB AGP and two GeForce2 MX PCI. Even with Windows 2000 Pro on that machine, all three monitors purred along quite nicely and apps were as snappy as they can be on that sort of aging platform. However, turning on any one of the additional nView apps brought the system to its knees. That's because with the lower horsepower cards; the graphics processing is offloaded directly onto the processor and available RAM.

Right now, the main workstation in my home office is an AMD 1.4Ghz T-bird with 1GB RAM. I'm running triple 20" LCD's ala ATI 9600 AIW and a Nvidia Geforce2 MX and it runs smooth as butter.

So, both of my configurations have Nvidia tech in them, are less powerful than your stated rig and they perform flawlessly. I'll stick with my wager that your enabled nView apps or driver configuration is just confused.

BTW, depending on what options you've selected in the nView app - you may see additional drivers installed as secondary/tertiary devices in device manager. This is common for both Nvidia and ATI cards that have multiple video out and or virtual monitor options. Deleting them may further confuse your system if you don't also remove the apps that created them in the first place.

Let us know what you figure out!

Mate!

You might have just solved the problem.
I certianly did turn on a few extras. Ill turn them off and see what happens.
It would certianly explain why it was effecting heavy resource users like PS.

My PC is a bit of mongrel, it started life as a 900mhz Duron, then the M/B and Chip were upgraded, but the HDD styated the same, as did the case. My old graphics card went with the old M/B and another was found amongst a pile of bits in the garage (mate used to build and sell PCs).
When all of this was set up and running it soon over heated in the new case, and shut down.
I did a little resurch and soon found that while he M/B, Chip, and HDD never came close to exceeding thier maximum operating temp, the graphics card probobly did. Its never really worked as it should ever since. Hence its been Fried, literaly.
Iv since installed a few fans, and it now sounds like a 747 doing a full power run ready for take off

Get rid of that Nvidia thing and get yourself a nice Matrox, and you'll live happy with up to 3 monitors. Of course, it depends on which Matrox you'll get, the G450 handles only two, while the most recent P750 and - best of breed - the Parhelia can handle 3 of them.

I live really happy with a Parhelia and 3 17" LCD displays hooked on, this gives me a display resolution of 3840x1024 and its really handy. I do a lot of NLE with Premiere and being able to arrange everything on such a wide screen gives me the ability to have a larger timeline (on the center screen) and all the rest distributed on the sides.

If you do - as I suppose - a lot of Photoshopping, its really handy too... just place whatever you do not really need out of the center screen and keep it available on the sides.

Or you can use just the center screen for your main application and have other stuff running on the sides (I normally have my stock ticker/grapher on one side and my email program on the other, while working with wathever I need at the moment in the center).

I'll tell you, once you have tried a triple head you'll never get back to one or even two monitors.

Here is a pic of my setup (I know, the desk a real messy place but we are in the middle of a job and there is no time to keep it clean )

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Thats a very nice set up, mines certianly not that neat, or that tidy
Two monitors is more useful than I thought it would be, its fantastic for running multiple applications, and of course photoshop become so much easier to use when the screen is not cluttered by toolbars.

I just got a very nice promotion at work, Iv actualy been earning less when I was a student for the last 18mnths, but things are slowly changing. A new graphics card is on the list, and I have lots of good things about Matrox. But I also need something that will run games, even if its only just.


I disabled everything in Nvidia, except the dual monitor, and so far its running much better