The difference between Windows 7 multi-monitor and multi-display

When a user is developing an application, it may need to have two screens. One screen is used to display the development interface and the other screen is used to display the results of the test. In this way, the user can avoid the trouble of switching between different interfaces. To achieve this, it can be implemented in Windows 7 with multiple monitors and multiple displays. Although they can all fulfill this requirement, multi-monitor and multi-display are not the same function, and there are some significant differences between them. Through this article, the author is going to explain two questions to everyone. One is the difference between multiple monitors and multiple displays, and the other is the point of attention in the process of configuring multiple monitors.

The difference between multiple monitors and multiple displays.

Multi-monitor and multi-display have been supported since the 2000 version. However, according to the author's understanding, in the Windows7 version of the operating system, there have been some major improvements. There has been considerable progress in both performance and display resolution.

Multi-monitor is implemented by installing multiple graphics cards. Users can install multiple graphics cards and configure multiple monitors in the computer, and then extend the display screen to multiple monitors through the multi-monitor display function of the Windows operating system. When implementing multiple monitors, as long as the motherboard supports Users can choose to use PCI or AGP graphics cards. These monitors are divided into a primary monitor and a secondary monitor. The main monitor is the first monitor used after the operating system is started. For example, the login dialog of the operating system is displayed on the main monitor. For this reason, users can also use this feature to determine which one is the primary monitor. The graphics card connected to the main monitor is the main graphics card. The other monitors are auxiliary monitors, and users can install multiple display cards in the computer as needed. If you do not consider the hardware limitations of the motherboard, the 2003 operating system supports up to 9 auxiliary graphics cards; in Windows 7, the number of auxiliary graphics cards can reach 12. By default, the operating system screen is displayed on the main display. If you want to display it on the auxiliary display, you need to log in to the operating system to configure it.

Multiple display is not achieved by installing multiple graphics cards. For example, a video card may have two VGA display interfaces, which can be connected to two monitors. Another example is that laptops can also achieve dual display. Because laptops have LCD monitors, there is often a display interface that can be connected to a VGA monitor. In fact, the notebook does not have two graphics cards, but through the same graphics card to achieve. We call a multi-screen display that is not implemented by multiple graphics cards called multiple displays. In addition, everyone needs to pay attention to the problem of a fake multiple display. Some so-called multiple displays, although they can extend the screen to multiple monitors, show the same content on each monitor. This means that it only seems to repeatedly display the same picture on multiple monitors. This is still a certain gap from the multiple displays we often say. For this we call them fake multiple displays.

Because of the different implementation mechanisms of multi-monitor and multi-display, this determines that they have great effects in using the effect. In summary, there are three main differences.

One is that multiple displays cannot choose which one is the primary monitor and which is the secondary monitor. For example, in the case of a notebook, the LCD display is always the first main monitor. For a desktop computer with a graphics card with multiple display interfaces, the monitor connected to the first display interface is the primary monitor. The second display interface of the graphics card becomes the primary monitor only when physical damage occurs to the first display interface. The use of multiple monitors is different. Users can select the main display according to their needs, such as setting up a better performance PCI graphics card as the main display. So if you display multiple displays, the selectivity is relatively poor.

The second is that the effect of the display is different. The multi-display shows that it is displayed on multiple screens by one graphics card, and the contents displayed on multiple screens are different. In other words, the processing power of multiple screens is concentrated on the same graphics card, which will bring a lot of pressure. When the performance of the graphics card is relatively high, such as 3D games or advanced graphics, a card will be generated on the second monitor. Although the Windows 7 operating system has taken steps to improve the multi-display support mechanism, this hardware limitation will not be obvious by the unilateral efforts of the operating system. If multiple monitors are used, this phenomenon does not occur because the images of each monitor are handled by separate network cards.

The third is the difference in the number of supports. This is mainly a hardware limitation. Due to the limitations of the processing power of the graphics card, a graphics card may only have an interface of up to two displays. For multiple monitors, as long as the motherboard supports this, you can have up to 9 or even 12 graphics cards. For this reason, the number of such monitors also has a large gap.

So whether to use multiple monitors or multiple displays, the system administrator needs the cost of deployment (multiple monitors need multiple independent graphics cards), graphics card processing capabilities (multi-monitor display) The effect is better than multiple displays. The number of interfaces (the number of multiple display monitor interfaces is much less than that of multiple monitors) is judged to see which implementation is suitable for the enterprise.

Second, configure the four ideas of multiple monitors.

Since the multi-display is mainly done by a graphics card, the configuration is relatively simple. I will not elaborate too much here. I want to focus on the implementation of multi-monitor here, how to do a good job of multi-monitor configuration. In general, there are a few common issues to be aware of when deploying multi-monitor displays.

1, beware of conflicts between graphics cards. Some video cards on the market now support multi-monitor display functions, while others do not. If you want to implement multi-monitor configuration, the VGA graphics card itself must support the multi-monitor display function. Otherwise, the graphics card may be unable to start or restart automatically due to conflicts. The main reason is that if a computer has multiple VGA graphics cards that do not support multi-monitor display, the hardware resources they occupy will conflict with each other. This conflict will cause the system to fail. For this reason, when purchasing a graphics card, the system administrator needs to confirm whether the graphics card used supports multi-monitor display.

2, how to set the main graphics card. Normally, we will set the best performance graphics card as the main graphics card. To do this, the system administrator needs to understand the principles of the operating system to select the primary graphics card, and then perform related configuration. Generally, the graphics card includes a PCI graphics card and a VGA graphics card. By default, in the BIOS program of the motherboard, the VGA graphics card is regarded as the main graphics card. Therefore, the system administrator must first determine whether to use the VGA graphics card or the PCI graphics card as the main graphics card. If you want to use the PCI graphics card as the main graphics card, you need to set it in the BIOS. If you can modify the init display first item in the BIOS program, select the PCI graphics card. If the user has more than one PCI graphics card, then which kind of graphics card is set as the main graphics card? When the BIOS starts the PCI graphics card, it will scan and start according to the sequence number of the socket. For this reason, the graphics card of the plug 1 is often the main graphics card. Therefore, if the user wants to set a PCI card with better performance as the main graphics card, it takes two steps. First, change the default setting of the BIOS, let it regard the PCI graphics card as the main graphics card; second, you need to adjust the position of the graphics card, and insert the graphics card that you want to use as the main graphics card into the slot. When Windows starts, it will use the display card that BiOS starts first as the main display card. To this end, in Windows7, it is still necessary to determine who will act as the main graphics card according to the settings of BiOS and the physical plug of the graphics card. It cannot be implemented through the configuration of the operating system.

3, the impact of the motherboard's built-in graphics card on the multi-monitor configuration. Some motherboards come with their own VGA graphics cards, which can adversely affect multi-monitor configurations. On the one hand, he will deprive the user of the ability to select the main graphics card, because usually the Windows 7 operating system will regard the built-in graphics card as the main graphics card, because it is the first graphics card launched by the BiOS program. Second, if the built-in VGA graphics card does not support this multi-monitor function, it will conflict with other graphics cards and the operating system will not start properly. In order to solve this problem, it is best to disable the built-in graphics card. If you use the jumper on the motherboard or the BiOS program, you can disable the built-in graphics card; or consider the performance of the built-in graphics card, so let it be used as a secondary graphics card (this premise is that the built-in graphics card must support multi-monitor function).

4. Although the multi-monitor display card is mainly controlled by the BiOS program, the Windows 7 operating system still has certain control in this respect. If there are jumpers or DIP switches on some graphics cards, these jumpers or switches can be used to disable the graphics card. After disabling the graphics card, BiOS will not launch these graphics cards. These disabled graphics cards are automatically monitored when the operating system boots. After the system is started, the user can enable the graphics card to be used as a secondary graphics card as needed. Therefore, in the multi-monitor display configuration, it is more common to disable other graphics cards except the main graphics card; then re-enable these graphics cards in the operating system as needed. This can increase the user's control over these graphics cards. Instead of having to go through the graphics card jumper or BiOS program every time.