Dual Monitors and Full Screen games

[chiapet]

I've got a dual monitor setup and wanted to know what I need to do to be able to run full-screen programs on my secondary monitor. I think i've seen people do this before and want to know if it's possible and how to do it. I play online games (gunbound) and want to be able to check mail, change music songs and such as that during slow waiting periods.

I don't know if this is the right forum or it's been posted before (I looked but did not find).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[rallynavvie]

Depends on what you've got running the two monitors. From my experience with nView, nVidia's dual-display driver, you can use both monitors for different things. For instance you should be able to play a game on your primary monitor and watch what's going on with Winamp or see who's on ICQ. Only problem is how the game you're playing reacts to the cursor going off the screen to that second monitor. Technically it's just an extension of your main display in that mode. So likely you won't be able to interace with what's on that other monitor, just see what's going on. I've used this to monitor temps and CPU loads or with the multimedia keys on my keyboard to control Winamp while playing games. And don't expect your games to utilize multiple displays, most don't recognize them. The only one I can think of is Microsoft's latest two flight sims, but then the reason you can move those around between displays is because everything is technically "windowed".

I have a Linux box running next to my video machine so that I can switch to that during encodes to check email and stuff while waiting. I just use a KVM for the keyboard, mouse, and secondary monitor.

[Piccoro]

No matter if you're using Nvidia's Nview or a true Dual Display setup, the cursor is going to be fixed to the game unless you are in some menu. But as soon as you click on the other screen the game will minimize.
Like rally said, the 2nd display is more for observation during gameplay.
I keep Ventrillo, Xfire, Trillian and Winamp all over there.
Always have visualizer off since that can take away from your frames ingame.

[Faustus]

Reguardless of if you have an ATI or nVidia card, dump their software and install UltraMon, its what I use.

But as stated before the cursur will be stick in the active game... maybe ultramon has a quick key to free it to the 2nd monitor but since I don't use it in that way I'm not sure.

Either Way UltraMon is the best software for dual monitor setups.