The Three Monitor Club

While I'm waiting on the final touches of the Mame project, I figured I'd share a little bit older of a project.  A few months back, I increased the productivity and effectiveness of my computer by upgrading to not two, but three monitors.

The setup is fairly simple, and many modern motherboards can easily achieve such a setup.  You will need the following:

3 monitors
An external PCI Express x16 video card with at least two outputs
Cables to hook everything up
LOTS of desk space

 Setting it all up was pretty simple.  After hooking up the video card (In this case a 9800GT fanless card), I hooked the center monitor up through the HDMI port, the second through the DVI-D port, and the third on the integrated (onboard) DVI-D port.  Your ports may vary (my previous 3-monitor setup used one DVI output and two VGA outputs), but you will need at least three (although for is even better!)

Restart your computer, and while it is booting up, hit whatever key allows you to go into the BIOS settings (F1, F3, Delete, Escape, etc.).  In the BIOS, you're looking for a setting that lets you choose the default video card source.  This should give you a dropdown list giving the options of "PCI-e" and "Onboard."  Select "Onboard."

Then restart your computer again. It should boot up through the onboard monitor.

After this, you will need to go to your graphics settings.  On a windows PC, right click on the desktop and select either Properties or Screen resolution (depending on your version).

In this screen, you should see your initial onboard monitor.  Now you need to select the additional monitors (which may or may not already be present. If they are not, you may need to fiddle around with the Detect option to find additional displays).  Choose the option that says "Extend my Windows desktop onto this display."

Click and drag the monitors so that they fit the position of the monitors on your desk.  Hit Identify if necessary to make sure you know which monitors are which (this will display a large number on each monitor corresponding to its number on this screen).  Once you've positioned them, hit Apply.

If you did it correctly, you should now see your desktop stretched across three different screens. You can drag your windows from one to another, maximize multiple programs on multiple screens, watch video on one monitor while working on another, and so on.

Below is an image of my computer, running all three monitors.  Notice that each screen holds a different program, and is independent of the others. 


 

 Need help punching your own ticket to the Three Monitor Club?  Leave a comment with your question, or send me an email for even more info and assistance!

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