So I am looking to run a dual monitor set up with hardware accelleration preferrably on both monitors but this is not a neccessity. I'm assuming they fixed that bug in XP, is that the case? Currently I am using Geforce2 Pro (Hercules 3D Prophet), single head. Its served me fine but its getting alittle old. I'm a student so I am not doing anythign industrial strength in Max or Maya and obviously I am looking for an optimal price/performance solution though I am leaning more toward performance. Do I just buy a real nice dual head Geforce 4? Keep the Geforce2 Pro and buy say a Radeon 7500 or Geforce4 MX PCI? Wait for the Geforce5 and get a dual head then? Anyone comments from those experienced with dual monitor setups? any other suggestions?
Here's my limited experience with dualhead.
On a single dualhead GF4 (or Q4) windows native monitor management (dualview) has functional OGL on both monitors in max (but not in maya) under the 40.xx drivers (not with earlier drivers).
Nview (nvidia propriatary) software monitor management offers OGL performance across 2 monotors in max and maya at the cost of Windows seeing only one monitor. But OGL works.
As far as I know ATI offers Hydravision (wich is their version of nview, kind of, probably worse) only. I couldn't figure out how to enable windows native management wit ATI - i only worked with a low-end card though. But I would think OGL would work since it's one monitor as far as windows is concerned.
If you use 2 different nvidia cards there's a chance that if you use the same 40.xx drivers for both of them OGL will be functional on both monitors in max, not in maya, but it's a speculation. Normally OGL wouldn't work on the second card.
I think nvidia needs better drivers for dualhead but they are ahead of ATI at the moment. It makes sense to wait for nv30 for a different reason, but monitor management will probably stay the same and evolve for all nvidia dualhead cards at the same time.
I use currently a dual monitor setup with OpenGL on both monitors, running with no problems at all under XP using the 40.72 driver.
There is an option to turn off the openGL for the second one but I couldnt notice any speed difference with openGL on both, which I'm happy with.
The card is aOpen geForce 4 Ti 4200 128 RAM with analog and digital outputs.
If I configure the two monitors through nview to work as one (which means task bar is streched over on both) and windows sees the thing as one big monitor, openGL is still funcitional on both.
hope this helps.
IMHO nvidia finally did a good job with the whole driver thing with 40.72.