I have been faced with an interesting problem with the new school desktop machines; installed in late April but I'm only getting around to asking about it now! Our old monitors were 17" 4:3 VGA and our projectors on the interactive whiteboards (IWB/smartboards) throughout the school are VGA and also 4:3 native. In the past, I used a two port VGA splitter to duplicate the display on the monitor and projector which worked fine. Our new monitors are 19" widescreen though, and using the same setup, a stretched image is produced on the widescreen monitor when using 1024x768 VGA resolution to keep the IWB picture filling the board. Am I right in saying that the only way to achieve the correct aspect ratio on both the widescreen monitor and the projected image is to use a dual port GPU, outputting two different versions and aspects of the desktop? If so then I'm faced with buying 30 low profile dual output GPUs, then installing and setting them up.
AFAIK yes. If you want different resolutions you require a new card. That said do the machines not have native dual output? I know that the Dell I had over 12 months ago at work had hdmi and vga on board. Obviously this would only work if the monitor or board had hdmi or dvi in and the PC had hdmi or dvi out. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
The key question on a workstation like that is: is it capable of outputting to both outputs at once - HDMI and VGA, or is it only capable of outputting to one - HDIM or VGA?
Yes, our Dell Optiplex 3010's have VGA and HDMI on board, but only a certain number of our projectors are DLP and have HDMI inputs. Thankfully I've tipped the ratio in favour of DLP over LCD projectors now, but regardless of what they are, all are running on VGA inputs at present. Whether the 3010's are capable of outputting to both ports at once is another question entirely. My first instinct would be to say no, they can't, but I won't know for sure until I try. An experiment is in order before I leave tonight
I have a vostro PC at work and I thought the same as you, but was pleasantly surprised to discover dual output simultaneously. At least it may reduce the 30 installs to something a bit lower. Do the monitors have hdmi inputs? Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
