Span Across Monitor's with Radeon 4350

[clifford_cooley]

Not too long ago I was interested in spanning desktop across multiple monitors. I was looking at the "Radeon HD 3650" with two DVI ports. I had read somewhere for dual support to look for the two DVI ports. I decided to wait for the dual support and went with the "Sapphire Radeon 4350 HD HDMI" card with 512MB memory. I was under the impression this card would not span across monitors because there was not two DVI ports or two VGA ports. This card has 1DVI, 1VGA, 1HDMI.

Today I was looking for a key combination for something else. When I tried the "Windows logo + P" there was a selection box. My options was Desktop only, Duplicate, Span, or Projector mode. This was a shock because of the impression I was under with this card. I have now spanned my desktop across 1DVI and 1VGA monitor.

The only question I have now is if there is a difference in "Dual Mode" and "Spanning Desktop across Monitor's". The Radeon box I have says to enable Dual Mode. I must have a second "Radeon HD 4350 series card" with CrossfireX and a supporting motherboard. I was in the market for Dual Mode because I thought this was needed to support spanning desktop.

 

[Ian]

I thought Dual Mode just meant using Crossfire, which means you can use multiple graphics cards together to improve gaming performance. There's a good explanation of it on this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_CrossFire

Spanning your desktop can be done on many graphics cards (often ones with a DVI and VGA port).

It's always nice when you find your hardware can surprise you like this

 

[clifford_cooley]

So what you are saying the dual mode is in reference to the two cards not the monitors. Spanning would be across video ports. Dual mode would be locking the two cards in Crossfire (SLI for nVidia). Bridging the two GPU in much the same fashion as MultiGPU card.

I understand crossfire. I didn't place Dual Mode with the same definition though.

Please forgive my ignorance - Before the purchase of this 4350. I really didn't know anything about the graphics industry. I think I googled what I do know very well. There are a few area's left uncovered.

 

[Ian]

That's what I understood it to be Clifford, but it would be worth double checking with someone more knowledgeable with GPU's. If Thrax sees this I'm sure he will know the answer, as he sure lives up to his Thraxipedia avatar