The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    M17x R1 dual/ triple monitors - is it possible?

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Kyrmus, Sep 30, 2012.

  1. Kyrmus

    Kyrmus Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    So I recently got my hands on an M17x R1 (the core 2 extreme version, with a SINGLE GTX 280M) and i was wondering... did anybody try to run two external displays attached to it?

    What I would want to do is this: run two external (1920 x 1080) displays alongside the laptop's display via hdmi / display port / vga (any combination of the ports will do), but when I connected two external monitors the nvidia driver said that the video card can only support two displays - the integrated one and another external one.

    To mention that I am not interested in things like Eyefinity or Surround, I just want more desktop space.

    One solution I was considering is buying another 280M off ebay and trying it like that (maybe disable SLI if it comes to that), but I haven't found any info on that config actually working for what I want.

    So, has anyone did this, or does anyone have any advice on the matter?

    Thank you :hi2:
     
    Kyrmus, Sep 30, 2012
    #1
  2. flanders

    flanders Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    4
    Messages:
    113
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    A while back I was able to run one from DisplayPort and one from HDMI. The laptop display had to be off though.
     
    flanders, Sep 30, 2012
    #2
  3. Alienware-Luis_Pardo

    Alienware-Luis_Pardo Guest

    Reputations:
    1,141
    Messages:
    1,459
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    56
    Unfortunately even if it's an Sli configuration it won't support more than 2 monitors at once.
     
    Alienware-Luis_Pardo, Oct 1, 2012
    #3
  4. dellienware owner

    dellienware owner Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    26
    Messages:
    351
    Likes Received:
    11
    Trophy Points:
    31
    you could try tripleheadtogo
     
    dellienware owner, Oct 2, 2012
    #4
  5. Kyrmus

    Kyrmus Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Thanks for all the input so far, but... if I disable SLI all together? The laptop itself has 3 display outs (VGA, HDMI and DisplayPort) - I know that two non-SLI gtx280 (the desktop version of the card) can run up to 4 displays at once, again in NON SLI mode, otherwise they can only run two - as the laptop currently states - my only issue is if the motherboard is wired / configured appropriately to support this, or if there is a hardware limitation.

    Other solutions might work, like the triple head to go - but that would require three external monitors hooked up to it, otherwise I would be left with the laptop to a side and the other monitors next to each other - not really ideal (basically I want to have one monitor on each side of the laptop, and run all 3 displays like that - currently impossible with triple head to go); also I have a ViDock lying around but that somehow isn't friendly with windows not wanting to run on machines with more than 2 GB of ram - and I have 8, won't give up the ram for that to work :D

    Thanks again for the input, I'm still waiting for more ideas till I go out on a limb and try to source the secondary 280m for this machine so that I can experiment.
     
    Kyrmus, Oct 4, 2012
    #5