10 Essential Tips for Optimizing Your Dual Display Setup

Posted 02/23/2010 at 10:30pm | by Mark Edward Soper

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Since multiheaded graphics cards have become commonplace, it's no longer technically difficult to attach a second (or third, or fourth) display to your PC. However, whether you're looking for a way to fly through your work so you can have some fun or are wanting to immerse yourself in 3D surround gaming, we've lined up ten ways to make your multiple displays work harder and play even harder. Here's how:

1. Discover how to control your desktop layout

Setting up two or more displays requires more than connecting an additional monitor to your video card and turning it on. You must then make sure that Windows knows the additional display is present.

To enable an additional display, right-click on an empty part of the desktop and follow the appropriate steps:

Windows 7: Select Screen Resolution. Click Detect, and Windows will locate additional displays if they're connected and turned on.

Windows Vista and XP: Select Personalization, Display settings (Vista); select Properties, Settings (XP). Click the inactive monitor and select the correct mode (extended desktop, primary monitor, or both.

By default, Windows 7 chooses an extended desktop configuration, which enables you to run programs separately on each display. To clone the desktop, select Duplicate these displays. To enable only one display, select Show desktop only on 1, 2, and so on. If you choose the last option, other display icons are grayed out. Click Apply, Keep Changes to save your changes.

By default, Windows places the display icons side by side, with #1 to the left of #2. If your actual display layout varies, you can avoid frustration when dragging programs between windows or losing the mouse pointer by dragging the #2 display to the correct location relative to the #1 display.

If you have two identical displays, you might lose track of which is which. Click Identify to determine the numbering sequence.

If you want to have even more monitors, check out the available slots on your motherboard. If you have an open PCI Express x8 or x16 slot, you can use it for another graphics card.  Thanks to unified driver builds from both nVidia and AMD (ATI's sugar daddy), it's easy to use the same drivers for two or more video cards: just make sure you buy a video card that's compatible with the original card's GPU and will work with your power supply. If you've filled up all of your PCI Express x8 or x16 slots, keep in mind that you can still get PCI-based video cards that use recent nVIDIA or ATI GPUs.

If you need additional control over your display, such as options to span your displays or adjust color settings, open the proprietary graphics setup program provided with most graphics cards. nVidia's Control Panel or ATI's Catalyst are usually available from the desktop right-click menu, or can be run from the Start menu or from Control Panel.

2. Optimizing display resolution

Windows 7 makes optimizing display resolutions with LCD displays simple: just adjust the resolution slider to the recommended resolution. With Windows Vista and XP, you can generally select the optimal (aka "native") LCD resolution by moving the resolution slider to the rightmost point. Assuming that Windows has correctly identified your display as either a PnP display or by name and model, that's all you need to do to avoid fuzzy text or graphics.

Note: Iif you're still clinging to a CRT monitor, keep in mind that the best image quality is usually a setting or two below the display's maximum resolution, and you'll need to work with vertical refresh rate settings on the Advanced or Advanced settings submenus and with the display's own on-screen controls to get the best picture at a given resolution.

However, if your display is identified as a "Default monitor," Windows won't let you adjust the resolution very high or adjust the vertical refresh rate (which is over on the Advanced Settings) tab. Why? An old-school CRT can be fried (quite literally) if you feed it out-of-range video signals. LCD displays won't fail, but in either case, you won't be able to see your desktop.

If Windows doesn't know what display you're using, check the following:

• Make sure your display cable is plugged in tightly, and doesn't have any bent or broken pins
• Update your graphics card drivers
• Download and install vendor-supplied drivers for your display; even if your display is identified as PnP, this is still a good idea – and if Windows is baffled by your display, it's vital

Keep reading for more dual-monitor tips!