Free LCD Dual Screen Mount

[Rumble]

Hey guys. In celebration of my gaming squad's newest sponsor Ergotron, we put together a promotion with them to give away a dual LCD screen mounting stand. These guys were nice enough to set up the giveaway and just give us the URL to direct people at while some of us are at various LAN events. I wanted to give the 3D Realms forum users the very first heads up about it.

I'll give you 2 URLs. One is for the mounting stand they are giving away, the 2nd is the URL for the contest entry page. All you need is to be 18 I believe.

Product Page: http://www.ergotron.com/3_products/flat_panel/deskstands/default.asp

Contest Page: http://www.ergotron.com/planb


Oh yeah, since our ability to get other sponsors and other giveaways is based on how we perform with things like this please get all your friends to register also.

I have dual LCDs and this stand completely rocks. Even if you only have one LCD you can always win the stand so you can be ready for when you get a 2nd. LOL

[Reaper]

It's just a mount? What's the point in that?

[Rumble]

I had two LCD screens like a lot of people and this mount is more adjustable and takes up less space on the desktop. So it was a godsend for me.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only gamer with 2 screens.

[avatar_58]

Rumble said:
I had two LCD screens like a lot of people



http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif Some of us don't have that much money to burn. I barely could justify getting the one...

[Reaper]

What would you use 2 LCD screens for? Gaming? Video production? And how would you set them up? Can most graphics cards and programs handle them?

[WillisDM]

this really doesn't belong in this forum, as I don't believe it fits within the rules of the forum (contests are not a part of general hardware discussion, especially when referals are concerned).

[Spyd]

Reaper said:
What would you use 2 LCD screens for? Gaming? Video production? And how would you set them up? Can most graphics cards and programs handle them?



To use multiple monitors, you must have one card with two (or more) monitor outputs (almost every card nowadays has at least one VGA an a DVI output). Then you just plug your monitors and activate them in the screen properties. To windows and all the applications is as the desktop was greater, you can move the mouse from a screen to the other, and you can drag windows from one screen to the other.

I use 2 screens at work (a 19" and a 17", both CRTs). I'm a software developer, and the extra desktop space is marvelous in almost every application.

And the applications where you don't use both screens at once, you can fill the second one with you instant messenger program, your current downloads, your MP3 player with the playlist open and a visualization running, and more stuff, while having the primary screen all clean for the app you're working on. And you can see all without having to switch applications.

But having 2 screens for gaming is useless. Almost no games support it, and even there's some games that doesn't "lock" the mouse on the game and sometimes you lose the focus of the game in the less appropieate moment when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen and click.

[Rumble]

I use 2 screens when I game. BF2, World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike: Source all allow me to browse the web, use MSN and generaly do whatever I want on the 2nd screen while playing. Also, when playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or Doom 3 I keep a web page open with all the walkthrough's or maps on the 2nd screen. While I can't mouse over to the 2nd screen I can still read what I put up there, then I can alt-tab if I need to in order to swtich pages or scroll up and down.

So 2 screens can be VERY useful for gaming.

I use both screens off 1 video card. I see no drop in performance this way. 2fps in CS:S is not a drop in performance when getting 60+ fps.

[Phait]

2 screens is great. I don't have such a setup but I've tried a CRT with my PC's LCD, and my Powerbook it's very useful. Unfortunately I don't remember being able to maximize a window to 1 screen, I think it maximized across both screens. Which means a little more work - manually resizing the window to fill the screen.

Or might I be wrong? It's been awhile.

[Rumble]

I'm using a eVGA GeForce 6600GT card with a single DVI and single normal VGA output. One LCD is plugged into the DVI and the other is in the normal VGA out. In the nVidia display properties I picked the left screen to be primary and now all windows and games maximixed in either window only maximize into the one screen they are in. I can stretch a window across both, but simply maximizing will just use a single screen and display the desktop on the other.

I have not seen a game try to use both screens as yet.

[Spyd]

Maximizing in all monitors...

Windows 98 has this bug.

In Windows 2000, old drivers had this problem; but it has been fixed for a long time.

With nVidia cards there's an option to turn this (annoying) feature on. It's off by default. But if you activate it, you can trick some games to render to both monitors.