Hi all, I'm going to "upgrade" my GPU from a GF7900 to a GF8600. The main intent is to develop with geometry shaders (which my game could really use, and which will be commonplace by the time I get out). I work with OpenGL (hence the forum) on Windows XP. My current videocard will be faster than the new one in games, but the new one will be the only one working with my own game. Is it possible to use them side by side? I also have two monitors to go with it, one development/optimized-game monitor (24") and a smallish supporting monitor (19") that would probably already bring that card to its knees on my game, when unoptimized. So, I want to use the 7900 on the 24" with OpenGL without geometry shaders (as it doesn't do them) and the 8600 on the 19" with opengl with geometry shaders. Does this work? Can anybody tell me, does anybody know?

Since you are using Windows, you can use the Win32 API to enumerate the monitors and graphics cards that your system has. With this list you can then create a Rendering Context either on your 7900 (for your 24" screen) or you 8600 (for your 19" Screen) and thus have the capabilities of either/or. Or you can create two rendering contexts, one for each screen, with the various capabilities that each support in it's own rendering context.

Not sure if that's any help.

Quote:Original post by AndyEsser
Since you are using Windows, you can use the Win32 API to enumerate the monitors and graphics cards that your system has. With this list you can then create a Rendering Context either on your 7900 (for your 24" screen) or you 8600 (for your 19" Screen) and thus have the capabilities of either/or. Or you can create two rendering contexts, one for each screen, with the various capabilities that each support in it's own rendering context.

Not sure if that's any help.

That helps a lot. I was using SDL up to now but I realised due to your post that it doesn't support multiple monitors at all... so it won't allow geometry shaders anyway. Do you have some pointers for those Win32 API calls, and how to create a rendering context for OpenGL using Windows calls?

Thanks a lot already!

PS: have you tried this setup?

Unfortunately I don't remember off the top of my head the exact API calls you need, and I'm away from my laptop. I will try and post them tomorrow.

I haven't used this exact setup but I've used a similar thing to get the screen positions for all the screens attached, it also returned information about the Graphics Card, and the number that Windows associates with it.

Trying searching MSDN for "Enumerate Display Devices" or something similar.