Running a TH2GO and a DH2GO off of one graphics card

[JimmyGerrard]

Hi guys,

Has anyone tried to run a TH2GO and a DH2GO off of the same graphics card? I currently have 3 x 22" monitors as the external view, with one 22" monitor running Peix's GA Panel software for the instruments.

My current spec is a 3.2ghz Pentium quad core processor, GTX295, 8GB RAM, 1TB hard-drive, and with photo scenery I currently get between 30-50FPS depending on where I fly. I am thinking of adding a 7" LCD touchscreen monitor for use as GPS, but obviously that would involve me buying a DH2GO as it would take my requirement up to five screens.

My question is will it work, and what kind of frame rate hit am I likely to take if I'm interested in doing it?

Answers on a postcard.

[autocadplease]

If you are getting 30-50 FPS and are just going to run a GPS, your framerate shouldn't be affected that much.
My question is can you run two Matrox TH2GO or DH2GO on the same computer? Does the software/drivers allow it?

[Kennair]

Hi Jimmy,

Not sure about a TH2GO & DH2GO but I have seen a photo of a system running two TH2GO with a total of 6 screens off one system (although not supported or implied by Matrox). Each view dragged to an extra monitor will lower frame rates so its a matter of testing and tweaking to meet your systems abilities.

There is another cheaper option however. Why not install a second video card which will give you two extra ports. You can then run the TH2GO + your GA panel off one card and your touchscreen off a port of the second GPU. You would then have a spare video port for another monitor assuming your system isn't dragged to its knees. You would then not be subject to any difficulties or conflicts that might arise from running two Matox boxes on one system.

Ken.

[JimmyGerrard]

Hi Jimmy,

Not sure about a TH2GO & DH2GO but I have seen a photo of a system running two TH2GO with a total of 6 screens off one system (although not supported or implied by Matrox). Each view dragged to an extra monitor will lower frame rates so its a matter of testing and tweaking to meet your systems abilities.

There is another cheaper option however. Why not install a second video card which will give you two extra ports. You can then run the TH2GO + your GA panel off one card and your touchscreen off a port of the second GPU. You would then have a spare video port for another monitor assuming your system isn't dragged to its knees. You would then not be subject to any difficulties or conflicts that might arise from running two Matox boxes on one system.

Ken.

Hi Ken,

I considered it but another GTX295 is going to cost me £371 minimum, and I'll also need to upgrade to an SLI mobo so that's probably another £100 on top. Have seen a Dualhead2go for £79.99, and in my infinite cheap-skate wisdom I was hoping I might get away with the latter.


I might wait for the price on the 295 to drop a bit which I imagine will be some time next year.

[shafian]

G'day Jimmy,

You should be able to using the nvidia feature of configuring the dual outputs of your graphics card to operate independently from each other. However as others have mentioned, the impact on the overall performance can only be determined once you experiment with this stuff.. My advice would be to perhaps either borrow or purchase the DHTG on the condition that as much you would like to keep it you may need to return it under not fit for purpose category incase things don't go as planned. Not so sure about online vendors but your local computer store should be happy to help you out.

Good luck

[Kennair]

Jimmy, you really don't need an extreme 2nd video card such as the GTX295 as most of the graphics crunching is done in the CPU not the Video card (unlike other "games"). You can easily achieve your extra outputs using a cheap PCIE card. Also there's no real advantage to going SLI as FS can't use it. The only advantage it will give you is better visual results if running at very high Anti Aliasing levels. There will be no increase in frame rates however so if your doing it for this reason, don't bother. Most motherboards have two PCIEx ports so will take two high speed video cards no problem. Just configure them in Windows Display Settings to activate and configure the extra monitors.

Ken.

[CyBerkut]

Hi Ken,

I considered it but another GTX295 is going to cost me £371 minimum, and I'll also need to upgrade to an SLI mobo so that's probably another £100 on top. Have seen a Dualhead2go for £79.99, and in my infinite cheap-skate wisdom I was hoping I might get away with the latter.


I might wait for the price on the 295 to drop a bit which I imagine will be some time next year.

Hi Jimmy,

As has already been stated, to go with a 2 video card solution, you do not need to be doing SLI. To the best of my knowledge, you would not be able to use the outputs on the second card if you were in SLI mode.

I have seen video, and postings elewhere, of 2 TH2Go cards feeding 6 displays... on a Win XP machine. I do not recall seeing a TH2Go and DH2Go being combined.

Some possibilities to consider:

You are running a GTX295. If it is like the ones that I have seen, it has 3 outputs... 2 DVI and 1 HDMI. Based upon postings over on the SoftTH forums, the HDMI output can be a third output by using an HDMI to DVI converter. This requires that the GTX295 not be running in SLI mode, as I understand it. You could run your TH2Go off of 1 output, and the other 2 monitors off of the remaining 2 outputs.

Another possiblity... a 7" USB driven LCD display. For instance, check out:
http://www.mimomonitors.com/
They have touchscreen, and non-touchscreen offerings.

Either of the above can probably get you where you want to go, as stated in your posts. If you forsee further video expansion in the future, then you may want to start checking out the latest news on ATI's upcoming graphics card offerings. Google on ATI eyefinity, and you should find plenty of interesting information that has plenty of simmers and gamers frothing at the mouth. Executive summary: Around 9/24 or 9/25/09, ATI's first cards in the new 58xx series come out. The initial offerings will support up to three high resolution displays off of 1 card. We're talking about doing what the Matrox TH2Go does, only much better (No external box, higher resolutions, not limited to the 3 horizontal landscape displays orientation, and not being hamstrung by Win Vista / Win 7). Later on, probably in time for Christmas, the 5870 will be available supporting 6 displays on a single card.

If that last one piques your interest, you could look at selling your TH2Go and GTX295 and getting a 5870 when they are available. The problem you will be up against is the timing. Once the early 58xx cards are out, MatroxTH2Go's are going to be in far less demand, I suspect.

Good luck!

[Airhogg]

Hey Jimmy,
I've personally used 2 analog TH2Go's on a system with 3 video cards. My guess is that 1 TH2Go and 1 DH2Go will work fine. I actually had 8 monitors running at one time... 6 from the 2 TH2Go's on one card and 1 each on the other 2 cards. The FPS hit was not bad when using 1 card with the 2 TH2Go's attached, but when using the other 2 cards as well, the performance got a bit worse. It was still very functional with minimum display settings, but much better with just 1 card and 6 monitors.

I've altered my setup since and am only using the 2 outputs of 1 card now. Also, physically removing the other 2 cards (9800GT's) greatly increased the performance of the dual outputs of the single 9800GTX.

[BHawthorne]

Yes you can run multiple Matrox GXM boxes on a single computer. In my case I've ran 2 DH2G Digital in XP 64. The Matrox PowerDesk software and the installer wizard will detect and configure them just fine. It can see both analog and digital versions and even mix those too. They behave as separate large virtual screens though. It would be like having 1 5040x1050 triple-head screen and 1 1920x1200 dual-head screen maximum resolution. Just be mindful that you'll be pushing a lot of pixels at that many displays. Use an enthusiast spec video card to do it or your FPS will suffer.