CC Multiple Monitors Under Windows 98: Part II

Multiple Monitors Under Windows 98: Performance and Compatibility
by David Yee


In the last article we described our experience in setting up Windows 98's multi-monitor feature, but we neglected to talk about two important issues: performance and compatibility. Here we will try to address both matters by showing you some benchmark numbers and a list of graphics chipsets that currently do or do not support the feature. In addition, we will also describe some more problems we've encountered that weren't mentioned in the last article. As a side note, I would like to apologize for forgetting to mention in the last article the fact that Macs have had the multi-monitor capability for more than a decade. I was aware that Macs have the feature, but I simply forgot to touch upon it. Thanks to those of you who reminded me :-)!

How We Tested
Test system was a Pentium II-300 with an Asus P2B motherboard and 64 Mbytes of PC100 SDRAM, Quantum Viking 4.5 Gbyte ultra SCSI drive with a Diamond Fireport 40, ATI Xpert 98 (8 Mbyte AGP), Matrox Productiva (8 Mbyte AGP), Hercules Thriller 3D (8 Mbyte PCI), and a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 (2 Mbyte PCI). A Panasonic S17 was used to connect to all the video cards. Ziff-Davis' Business Winstone 98 ran using a resolution of 1024x768x16 bit color, while 640x480 was used In both Quake II and Forsaken. Drivers used: ATI Xpert 98 (Version 5.20, 06/30/98), Matrox Productiva (Version 4.11 beta, 06/30/98), Hercules Thriller 3D (Version 0.85, 06/30/98), Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 (used S3 Virge 325 drivers that came with Windows 98, dated 05/11/98)

Performance
Multiple monitors and video cards on one computer is nice, but does it create enough of an overhead to slow down the machine? Well, the answer is yes and no. Business applications do slow down by approximately 7 to 8%, depending on how many video cards were used, but there was no significant change in Quake II and Forsaken framerate. The video card for the one-monitor configuration is the Hercules Thriller 3D PCI. The Thriller 3D and the Matrox Productiva were used in the two-monitor set up, and the Stealth 3D 2000 was added in the three-monitor configuration. The Thriller 3D was always the #1 video card for all configurations. The slowdown is actually a small price to pay for a larger desktop that increases productivity. [update 07/14/98] Since the performance of the Rendition V2200 does not depend as much on the CPU as other cards, I would like to say that game performance may indeed be adversely affected if another video card were used. Next week when I get the chance I will run some benchmarks with a Voodoo 2 card. Thanks to Steve Chan for reminding me of this! [update 07/22/98] Kevin Reems has some nice information for those of you who want to install a Voodoo card in a computer with multiple video cards. Check it out here. [update 08/07/98] The Voodoo 2 numbers are up, and as you can see there is basically no difference in game performance. Test notes: 96 Mbytes of PC100 and Creative Labs 3D Blaster Voodoo 2 12 Mbyte were used, and the Forsaken demos were ran at 800% normal speed to slow down the framerate. a bit. The setup of the video cards was the same as before.


Voodoo 2 results

Quirks
One curious phenomenon I encountered was that when I switched the PCI slot placement of the Thriller 3D (originally in PCI slot #4) and the Stealth 3D 2000 (originally in PCI slot #1), multi-monitor support failed for the Thriller if no other video card was present. Although if the Productiva were added, there is dual monitor support between the the Matrox card and the Stealth 3D 2000, but the Thriller remained incapable of multi-monitoring. Upon returning the PCI cards to their original positions, the Thriller worked again. Therefore if any of you have problems getting PCI video cards to work even though you know they're compatible, try swapping PCI slots.
Image was cropped
Image was cropped
An interesting problem is the apparent inability to set the AGP card as the #1 video card. Even if the AGP board was the first card in the machine, the pattern was that the PCI video card in the highest slot number became the #1 video card. This can be very annoying since for many of you the best video card you have is AGP, and games for now can only be played on video card #1. Hopefully Microsoft can address this problem with a fix of some sort. Or if any of you out there know of a solution, I would love to hear about it. [update] Stuart Arndt pointed out to me that the inability to set the AGP cards as the #1 video card is because the standard motherboard BIOS supports the PCI bus as primary and AGP as secondary, and so the PCI bus is loaded first. Andy Hicks also mentioned the same thing and confirmed the pattern where the PCI video card in the highest slot number became the #1 video card. Andy also indicated that some people were able to set their AGP card to #1 via a BIOS option. I think most people probably do not have this option in their BIOS yet, updates should solve the problem. In fact, Neil Champagne told me that the new BIOS update for the Chaintech 6BTM BX has this option. Marcus Chinn told me that Asus also has a BX BIOS update for supports this feature: ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/Pentium_II/i440BX/P2B Thanks to Stuart, Andy, Neil, and Marcus for their valuable information. [update 07/14/98] I installed and tried the new Asus BIOS (version 1005 Beta 011) and there was indeed an option in the Award BIOS that allows AGP cards to be the #1 video card. Specifically the option is called VGA BIOS Sequence under PNP AND PCI Setup. The default setting was PCI/AGP, but once I changed it to AGP/PCI, the machine booted the AGP card #1. But it was strange how the Thriller 3D PCI refused allow multi-monitoring regardless of which PCI slot it was placed. The Stealth 3D 2000 worked flawlessly, however. By the way, I ran into some problems in updating the BIOS of the P2B, but it turns out that the correct flash BIOS program is not pflash.exe (which is what ASUS mistakenly wants you to use according to the P2B home page) but pflash2.exe instead. [update 08/25/98] Michael Larsen reports that the latest BIOS for the LX6 also allows you to set the AGP card as primary. Thanks Michael. Just for fun, an experiment I tried was to place a windowed-Quake II screen between two monitors to see how things would look. Well, the results were not too spectacular as you can see below. Click on the images to see a larger picture. The left image is 1/2 on the Thriller 3D monitor and 1/2 on the Productiva. The right image is the result of 1/2 Thriller 3D and 1/2 Stealth 3D or ATI Xpert 98.


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