Specifications

108 PC MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 6, 2007
SOLUTIONS HARDWARE
Multiple Monitors,
Multiple Questions
Q
Please inform me whether I can
connect two or more monitors to
the same PC. If so, what addition-
al settings are needed?—Shyam S
How do I go about getting dual monitors set
up at my home computer? I do a lot of CAD
work, and having the extra space would be
great!—Timothy Hold
A
You should consider several
important factors before connect-
ing multiple displays: the graphics
card, the operating system, and the physi-
cal connectors.
I’m going to assume that you have
Microsoft Windows XP or Windows
Vista. Given that, you’ll need a graphics
card or graphics subsystem that supports
multiple displays. Any video card manu-
factured in the past three years—even
the budget cards—can do that. But take
a minute to refer to your PC’s manual if
your system has only integrated graph-
ics hardware—that is, a graphics adapter
that’s built into your system’s mother-
board chipset. Some integrated graphics
systems can handle more than one dis-
play, but others can’t.
The bottom line is that you need a
graphics adapter with two physical con-
nectors—either VGA or DVI—and two
displays with appropriate connections. If
you have a video card with two DVI ports,
but one or both of your displays has only
VGA connectors, you can obtain DVI-to-
VGA adapter dongles.
Once you connect both displays, either
Windows or the graphics driver control
panel should autodetect the second dis-
play and walk you through setting it up.
If the autodetect message doesn’t pop up,
you can set up the dual display yourself,
either through the Display control panel
or the graphics driver. The Windows
control panel is simpler, but the graphics
driver may give you more options.
The biggest problem you may encoun-
ter is physical space on your real-world
Here’s why:
When you see “800-MHz FSB” (front-
side bus), what you’re seeing is the effec-
tive FSB clock frequency. The FSB is
actually running at 200 MHz. That is,
there’s a clock control in the chip that
runs the FSB at 200 MHz.
Intel processors, like the one in your
ASUS, can move four data items per clock
cycle, however. This is commonly referred
to as a “quad-pumped bus.” To simplify
labeling, this is often called an 800-MHz
FSB. But it’s really a 200-MHz FSB mov-
ing four data items each clock cycle.
Similarly, a 1,066-MHz FSB is really
running at 266 MHz but is also quad-
pumped.
Oh . . . Blue Screen of Death
Finally, an update. In “Blue Screen of . . .
Wait, What?” (October 2), I gave reader
Theodore Miller a checklist that might
help keep his blue screens at bay—updat-
ing graphic card driver, checking memory
settings in the BIOS, checking and reseat-
ing RAM modules, and ensuring the CPU
fan was operational.
What Mr. Miller had actually asked for,
though, was a way to read the blue-screen
information before his machine rebooted.
And it is strange that a screen meant to con-
vey critical system error messages should
disappear before the average human could
possibly read it, much less copy down the
often huge amounts of information on it.
My colleague Neil J. Rubenking chimed
in: “You can keep that blue screen visible.
Right-click My Computer. Choose Prop-
erties. Click to select the Advanced tab
(or the Advanced system properties link
in Vista). Click the Settings button in the
Startup and Recovery pane. Uncheck
Automatically restart, Click OK | OK. Now
the blue-screen information will remain
visible on your screen until you force a
reboot with Ctrl-Alt-Del.” Thanks, Neil!
NEED ANSWERS? ExtremeTech.com’s
editor, Loyd Case, tackles readers’ hard-
ware problems in each issue. Send your
toughest to [e-mail].
desk, particularly if the displays are old-
style CRT monitors. But once you get
used to having dual displays, you’ll never
go back. The additional screen space is a
tremendous productivity asset.
Why So Slow?
Q
I build my own computers and
usually figure out things on my
own, but my most recent PC is
causing me some problems. I
used an ASUS P5V800-MX motherboard:
The front-side bus is supposed to run at
800 MHz, and the PC has a 3.2-GHz pro-
cessor. The machine should be running a lot
faster than it is. My BIOS tells me it is run-
ning at 800 MHz, but I have a utility pro-
gram that I really like called Belarc Advisor,
and it’s telling me that the FSB is running at
only 200 MHz, which would obviously slow
things down.
I’ve racked my brains and tried to get
answers from ASUS, but I am getting
nowhere fast.—Tasman1067
A
This is a pretty common mistake
to make; bus speed is an oddly
confusing issue. Both the BIOS
and your Advisor software are correct.
WINDOWS DISPLAY CONTROL PANEL
You can check the Extend the desktop
onto this monitor box to enable your
second display.
Your graphics driver control panel
offers more options but is also more
complex.
Ask
Loyd