Why should I configure dual monitors?
My onboard card has dvi and vga
my monitor too
I'v got a dvi and a vga cable

And if the gfx card has dvi and vga? 

I cant even use the latest last few, they reduce my screen to 4 bit color in 320*240 for some reason. 

seem pretty solid compared to nvidia. I know i was positively surprised with my first ati (9800something i think), until it fried after a year or two :( 

Yeah... you don't really want to mess with dual monitors. It's just the only way i can imagine getting windows to use one card and linux the other, as the bios will generally designate one video card as the main one. ... I've never actually done it.

Ati drivers are meant to be improving anyway, but imho Linux + Nvidia is great. 

I just found out that there is a 9600gso with 256bit si and 48 shader units with a 55nm core. That card should be ideal for my psu. 

How is it bad?

It's kind of like going from dial-up to cable/dsl or whatever... you can't really go back once you've lived the good life!

In all seriousness, I've had almost zero issues with dual monitors in winxp/vista with either ati or nvidia cards/drivers.

Unless you're talking about linux or something, in which case well, of course it isn't going to work without extreme pain and misery, it's linux yeah? 

I had some issues with dual monitors and Windows XP on my Macbook Pro. The Apple provided Boot Camp drivers don't support it properly, so I had to install a hacked driver. NVidia, in all their wisdom, don't provide generic laptop drivers anymore, which sucks.

But then, I hardly use Windows and with the hacked driver, everything works great. I have to agree with Frib on how you can't really go back from dual monitors once you used them. Especially if you are a designer or programmer I guess. 

i've had dual monitors working on my macbook pro for months now. (i'm assuming you are talking about using the built in lcd + external monitor? not 2 externals?)

i didn't have to get hacked drivers either, iirc, i got mine off of apple's site (my mbp has an ati card). 

It worked fine in my old MBP that had an ATI card, but doesn't work well in my NVidia card. You can activate dual monitors, set it to extend the desktop etc, but you cannot set the external monitor to be the primary monitor... 

I use dual monitors on my Macbook Pro in OSX and I would have a hard time going back. Just being able to do things like write code and debug on the main monitor and have the log file running on the laptop screen add so much to productivity. 

Sleepwalkr - Do you have Linux on the mac too ? How's it go. I'm thinking about buying a mac keyboard (to use with linux). Those new things are great.
Frib - Sure linux can suck sometimes. I dunno about dual monitors though, my desk is way small. 

No, I don't run Linux on my MBP and can't give you any hints. Sorry. 

http://en.expreview.com/2009/01/21/specs-of-nvidia-geforce-9600gt-green-edition-leaked.html 

"green edition" that uses less wattage? 

Yes does not even need a power connector 

external power connector 

Got myself a shiny new laptop recently, both for work and play (graphics card on the desktop melted, might actually play through recent releases now ;)

However, I have a problem. The graphics chip in it is an Intel X4500 with 128mb dedicated. This in itself isn't a problem, however, I do a lot of live music video mixing using fairly specialist software. The latest version of this software refuses to support the intel chipsets (since everything below the X4500 is complete arse, and I'll admit, the X4500 still isn't a great chip), however, I believe my chip is easily powerful to run the software.

Therefore (yes I ramble at 7am ;), does anyone know a good wrapper to convince the software my chip is a nvidia or ati chip? 

I just saw this note about the 4700, which suggests that the 4500 may not support all hardware video decoding.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

<quote>
� Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4700MHD small and light

Onboard (shared memory) graphics adapter that is integrated in the GM47 chipset. Technically a higher clocked 4500MHD and therefore a bit faster. The integrated video decoder can support the CPU in decoding HD videos (AVC/VC2/MPEG2).
</quote> 

Actually, maybe i misread that. It says a simliar thing about the 4500. 

I searched and searched for a laptop which didnt have an intel chipset graphics card of any kind. From what I have read they are all horrifically underpowered. Not for games..... Probably old games will run OK, but current titles I dont think are supported. S00ry :| 

Strangely it's not a gaming issue. Yeh, it struggles with very top end releases, but I have have a 360 for gaming tbh.

As I say, it's for video mixing. Version 3 of the software was developed for Macs with the PC port as a profitable afterthought. I just need to convince the OS that it's not an intel...

And yeh, finding a laptop without an intel chip for a good price was nigh on impossible, given it's more for image editing and video editing/mixing than gaming I just went for intel in the end. 

Okay, i've got some strange thing going on here.

After installing windows xp sp3, the system just spontanously reboots once in a while. like, 2-5 times a week. I ignore it, because it's not THAT annoying.

Now in the last few days i have been using gtkradiant (1.4 at first), and this seems to crash it like crazy. like, what feels like every few minutes. If it does that two or three times in a row, windows already starts to reboot during the loading screen. I can wait a while, or boot into safe mode once or so, then it works again.

So, i decided to install a clean xp. At first i tried a version with sp3 preinstalled. it kept crashing during the installation, at the 'installing devices' stage, im pretty sure always at the same stage, but sometimes it would get farther and then crash later. eventually, i got through the whole installation, so i had a running system... which spontanously rebooted when running gtkradiant. The problem was still there.

This all started with Service Pack 3, right? Next thing to do: install an xp with sp2. reboots/hangs during the install, reboots/hangs with gtkradiant.

gtkradiant 1.5 seems to be better, but still crashes after half an hour or so. q3map2 runs fine, photoshop runs fine, opera runs fine, memtest didn't show an error (1 pass only though, need to let it run when i'm away), quake3 runs fine, stalker runs fine. fine as in 'tested for about half an hour until i get the feeling nothing will happen'. Then again, i've had these reboots once in a while before.

I'm out of ideas. Anyone got a clue why this system might be so fucked up? 

...to test wether it's a hardware defect or not. 

and look at your heat-sink. If its covered with dust and stuff then it will be causing the processor to overheat, which would cause it to go off. I dont know if that would cause it to reboot though.... :| 

If it is overheating it will reboot. (At least, most CPUs and motherboards these days have protection built in that ensures the system will shut down if temperatures get too high, to prevent damage to the hardware).

Most likely suspects are overheating or failing/inadequate power supply, based on what you've said.

Another possibility is that perhaps some of the memory has gone bad - to test this, try running memtest86 or similar and if faults are detected, remove/swap the memory chips until you can isolate the problem piece.