I'm evaluating the best ATI radeon card for my system, it's a chose between 3870x2, 4850 or 4870. I read on another site that ATIs couldn't do horizontal span modes - having the desktop span over two monitors. I wanted opinions on this from you guys that have experience using these cards. Extending the desktop works. Is there a need to span across monitors for gaming? Are there performance issues to consider. I plan to get a large LCD for my system.
ATIs and horizontal span mode
- Thread starter Babylon5
- Start date
I had an older ATI card (X1900xt) and horizontal span worked fine, it is very useful when you have multiple apps running, I haven't seen any games use 2 monitors though, there probably isn't much point, 3 monitors would be nice though, but for that you are probably better off buying one of these http://www.guru3d.com/article/matrox-triplehead-2-go-digital-edition-dvi-review/
Are you talking about dual monitors? Whoever told you that ATI couldn't do that are completely wrong. It's nVidia who have trouble with dual monitors on SLI setups but is meant to be fixed with an upcoming driver release (did the 177 or whatever was just released fix the issue?)
Anyways you won't have any problems with dual monitors with ATI cards. Whatever you do don't pick the HD3870 X2, it's slower then the HD4870 on average and even the HD4850 on games that don't scale well on dual cards and it suffers badly from microstuttering.
If you don't know what microstuttering is, it's just uneven time intervals between frames resulting in a kind of unsmooth framerate. For example you can run the HD4850/4870 at 60fps and it will look and play smoothly at 60fps, with the HD3870 X2 at 60fps it will look like its running at 30-40fps and in some games you'll get a kind of fast/slow reaction constantly.
If you have a 24" monitor then get the HD4870, anything below that I'd probably recommend the HD4850 unless you demand super high graphic levels in games with crazy high AA/AF levels.
As for games that use 2 monitos, I believe Supreme Commander uses 2 monitors. Haven't tried it myself as I only have one 22" LCD but I think it would look kinda cool. Have the map on one screen and battlefield on the other
Anyways you won't have any problems with dual monitors with ATI cards. Whatever you do don't pick the HD3870 X2, it's slower then the HD4870 on average and even the HD4850 on games that don't scale well on dual cards and it suffers badly from microstuttering.
If you don't know what microstuttering is, it's just uneven time intervals between frames resulting in a kind of unsmooth framerate. For example you can run the HD4850/4870 at 60fps and it will look and play smoothly at 60fps, with the HD3870 X2 at 60fps it will look like its running at 30-40fps and in some games you'll get a kind of fast/slow reaction constantly.
If you have a 24" monitor then get the HD4870, anything below that I'd probably recommend the HD4850 unless you demand super high graphic levels in games with crazy high AA/AF levels.
As for games that use 2 monitos, I believe Supreme Commander uses 2 monitors. Haven't tried it myself as I only have one 22" LCD but I think it would look kinda cool. Have the map on one screen and battlefield on the other
