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Questions regarding window management on Parhelia 3-head stretch mode

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  • Questions regarding window management on Parhelia 3-head stretch mode

    So I've been playing with 2 monitor for 4 days now.

    With Ultramon and Powerdesk driven cards Window management is just smoow and natural, now I'd like to know how 3-head Parhelia does it out of box?

    Can you maximize windows to single display, 2 displays or 3 displays with single click or other easy way?

    As I read in realtimesoft's (developers of Ultramon) Parhelia review, taskbar is streched accross 3 displays and maximizing windows disregards the taskbar - similar to 2048x768 stretched virtual desktop on G400.

    Since on 3-head Parhelia falls back to blitting instead of hardware overlay how does video work?

    How do games that don't support triple-head work?

    Are there any glitches with 3D applications (AutoCAD, 3D StudioMAX, Maya)? From my Mill/G400 i imagine there shouldn't be any glitches related to 3-head.

  • #2
    Re: Questions regarding window management on Parhelia 3-head stretch mode

    Originally posted by UtwigMU
    Can you maximize windows to single display, 2 displays or 3 displays with single click or other easy way?
    You will have to option to choose between maximizing across all three screens, or just the current screen, when installing the drivers. I'm sure you can change it in Powerdesk somwhere, but I can't seem to find it.

    Since on 3-head Parhelia falls back to blitting instead of hardware overlay how does video work?
    Video overlay is severly crippled in TripleHead at the moment. You will only be able to play video in the first display, which is a step back from the first drivers that supported video overlay on all three heads.

    How do games that don't support triple-head work?
    Some works better than others (obviously). But, in general, most games that supports it, works quite well. Not a lot of games support it, though, so don't expect to play all your 3D games in TH.

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    • #3
      Re: Re: Questions regarding window management on Parhelia 3-head stretch mode

      Originally posted by albatorsk
      You will have to option to choose between maximizing across all three screens, or just the current screen, when installing the drivers. I'm sure you can change it in Powerdesk somwhere, but I can't seem to find it.
      You can set it up so that it will maximize to a single screen, or if you hold down the shift button, it will maximize across all three.

      Video overlay is severly crippled in TripleHead at the moment. You will only be able to play video in the first display, which is a step back from the first drivers that supported video overlay on all three heads.
      You have the option of using a hardware overlay, where you can play a video in a window on the primary display and DVDmax if you want, or you can disable hardware overlay, and use blit, where you can play a video on any display, but have no DVDmax.

      Some works better than others (obviously). But, in general, most games that supports it, works quite well. Not a lot of games support it, though, so don't expect to play all your 3D games in TH.
      Most single screen games will disable the 2nd and 3rd displays when you start them, but you will get better performance in these games if you switch to singlehead before you start a singlehead game.
      Core2 Duo E7500 2.93, Asus P5Q Pro Turbo, 4gig 1066 DDR2, 1gig Asus ENGTS250, SB X-Fi Gamer ,WD Caviar Black 1tb, Plextor PX-880SA, Dual Samsung 2494s

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      • #4
        Is MaxView there?

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        • #5
          Re: Questions regarding window management on Parhelia 3-head stretch mode

          Originally posted by Kruzin
          you will get better performance in these games if you switch to singlehead before you start a singlehead game
          Just a wee curio, does this require a reboot?

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          • #6
            No

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            • #7
              You can even use Ultramon to have an app specific profile to disable TH.
              P4 Northwood 1.8GHz@2.7GHz 1.65V Albatron PX845PEV Pro
              Running two Dell 2005FPW 20" Widescreen LCD
              And of course, Matrox Parhelia | My Matrox histroy: Mill-I, Mill-II, Mystique, G400, Parhelia

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              • #8
                Any reason in particular for a single-head game to perform a bit slower when using triple-head?

                1.73TBredB@1.67(166X10)@1.6V
                ASUS A7N8X
                Corsair 1GB PC3200
                Parhelia 128MB
                EIZO L685EX

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                • #9
                  I believe, but I'm not sure, that when Parhelia starts running in triple-head, it divides the video memory between the heads.
                  Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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                  • #10
                    Does this also happen in dual-head also?

                    In that scenerio, perhaps a 256MB card would benefit even if clocked lower? 85MB per head instead of ~43MB.

                    1.73TBredB@1.67(166X10)@1.6V
                    ASUS A7N8X
                    Corsair 1GB PC3200
                    Parhelia 128MB
                    EIZO L685EX

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