Running 2 x 1920x1200 monitors off a Sony Vaio VGN-CR353

G'day All,

Guess which idiot went out and bought one of these:

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/dh2go/ (The digital edition)

without checking whether his graphics card (ATI Mobility Radeon) could support 2 monitors both running 1920 x 1200 displays.

Yep, that'd be me

Anyway.... so I'm happy with the laptop, and with the two 24" monitors in front of me - but unless I want to drop to 2 x 1600x990 or similar (yuk) then I can only use one I guess.

Do I need an update to the graphics card? Any recommendations for what it need to be upgraded to?

Or is there any way I can hack this to work (methinks not - but am open to being surprised

Cheers, James

 

3840x1200 from one analog port is going to look horrible.... do you happen to have HDMI or DVI out on your laptop?

Also that resolution only uses ~18mb of ram in 32 bit color depth, so the issue is with your GPU (not lack of vRAM, not that you suggested this was the problem). I can't find the specified resolutions in AMD's spec sheet either. There might be a way to force it that I do not know.

 

Thanks for the quick reply Unreal!

Alas I don't have anything bar s-video and analog out of the laptop - I was kinda hoping that the matrox box would fix that up (being a digital version and all that, it's connecting to each monitor by DVI.)

I am getting a sinking feeling that there might not be a way to sort this out with the current machine, do you reckon that might be the case?

 

It's possible, and IMO very likely (that it won't happen with this laptop). You only have analog out and you really can't go higher than 1680x1050 before noticing fuzziness.

Hopefully you can return it and get one with HDMI or DVI?

If you can do 1920x1200 on a single monitor on your laptop's VGA port, the only other solution I know of is the fairly expensive VTBook ( http://www.villagetronic.com/vtbook/index.html - $149 for open box, $249 for retail box)
With this you would be able to use one monitor on the VTBook at 1920x1200 and the other on the laptop's built in port at 1920x1200.

 

what graphics card do you have in your laptop?

I have an X1400 in my dell e1505, and I have it hooked up to the same matrox dual head digital edition, and it runs two screens fine.
The graphics card can only do 3200x 1200 or something like that but that is a graphics card limitation.

If I plug it into my other laptop, I can push 3840x1200 resolution without a problem. (It has a Quadro FX2500M, a much more powerful card)

You may be able to work around this by setting up a custom profile with ATI Tool or the catalyst control center.

K-TRON

 

it's an X2300 in there I believe.

 

Yes, it's an x2300 - you guys rock the house!