Find out why we recommend solid state hard drives for ultimate computer performance.

Solid State hard drives have been around for a while now however there is still not a great understanding of the benefits of using them in PC builds amongst many of our customers.

What is a Solid State Drive?

An SSD is basically a storage device similar to a standard hard drive or a flash memory card which holds data.

The difference between a SSD and a traditional hard drive is how it stores the data. Traditional drives have magnetic platters to store data and use a spindle, similar to an old record player, to read the data from the platters.

In an SSD the data is stored in microchips which greatly increases the rate at which reading and writing data to the drive occurs.

The Benefits of SSD

The use of microchips to store data has a few benefits over the more traditional magnetic storage solutions.

• Much faster data access times meaning data is read from the disk almost 3 times quicker than using a standard hard drive
• Fewer moving parts means  much quieter operational noise and greater reliability
• Ability to withstand drops and jolts

One of the main issues with solid state drives is the cost, they are far more expensive than traditional hard drives.

For example in larger drives you can be paying just 5p per gigabyte, for solid state drives the cost is more like £1.30 per gigabyte, a substantial difference.

Typical Setup Route

Due to this increased cost one of the best ways of utilising an SSD in a PC without breaking the bank in the process is to use a combination of an SSD and a traditional hard drive unit.

We recommend using an 80GB or 160GB SSD as your ‘C drive’ (boot drive) and installing your operating system and programs on it. Then install a larger and cheaper magnetic hard disk as a secondary drive for your larger file storage requirements.

This combination gives your operating system and programs the benefit of the massively increased read / write speeds of the SSD, and for larger file storage requirements such as photos, music or videos the traditional drive offers the space required.

Real World Performance

The most noticeable difference between 2 identical PC’s where one has an SSD boot drive and the other has a traditional hard disk boot drive is the speed difference in booting up the machine and running programs.

When you open a program (or boot up a computer) what is actually happening is that the program files are being read from the hard drive and placed in your computer’s RAM, the massive speed boost in reading the files given by the SSD makes booting up a PC and opening programs a much snappier process.

Often boot up times are cut in half and once logged in opening programs feels instant rather than the sometimes sluggish performance associated with computers that have just switched on.

Basically any computer process which involves reading data from the C drive will benefit from using an SSD making them a worthwhile addition to any performance PC.

Intel have just released (Jan. 2011) their latest generation of CPU chips on to the market, this new family of chips is codenamed ‘Sandy Bridge’ and they are pretty amazing.

The new chips are confusingly badged up as i3, i5 and i7, the same as the previous generation of chips, however you can identify the new ones as they have 4 numbers in their designations rather than 3.

I.E. i5 2500 = New generation – i5 750 old generation.

One other thing to note is that some of the new chips have a K at the end i.e. i7 2600K, this K indicates that the chip can be overclocked which is a method of achieving faster performance by manually changing settings on your motherboard.

The standard performance of the i7 2600 and the i7 2600K is the same though so the majority of users will not need to pay the extra premium for this overclocking ability.

Performance Increases

We have put the new i5 2500 and the i7 2600 CPU’s through their paces in our workshop and have found them to be phenomenally quick compared with the older chips they are replacing.

To give a quick example, the new i5 2500 chip beat the old top of the range i7 980X CPU in many of our tests, this is unbelievable as the cost of the new i5 is 5 times less than the i7 980x making it well over £550 cheaper.

The new i7 2600 CPU takes performance even further and is comfortably the fastest consumer CPU on the market today.

Graphs and Charts

Whilst we have conducted our own tests it is probably easier to link to the more in-depth analysis and coverage provided by experts in this field:

AnandTech - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/15

You can scroll through the various different tests which clearly show how quick these new processors are in various scenarios.

Note, check out how fast they are compared with not just the old i5 and i7 chips but also to the AMD CPU’s, it really does highlight how good they are.

Multi Screen Computers

Due to the impressive nature of these chips we have moved all* our Ultra and Extreme level PC’s across to them.

We find many of our customers are either traders or professional types who are demanding of their systems and technology as a whole. These new spec computers are perfect options for them and you.

If you want to run 3, 4 or 6 screens then chances are you will be running a few different programs across them, as such a base computer which has great individual and multi-tasking performance is crucial.

The new Sandy Bridge chips are the best thing available right now and for the foreseeable future so make sure your new PC has one in!

View our full range of Multi Screen Computers

The Matrox DualHead2Go product is essentially a small box which allows you to connect two monitors to a PC or Laptop’s single monitor output.

Its advantage over a standard splitter cable or box is that it allows you to view different Windows content on each connected screen rather than just cloning the same output across them all.

The TripleHead2Go version works exactly the same as the DualHead2Go however it allows 3 monitors to connect to your one monitor output.

Installation & Setup

Installing the kit is straightforward, simply install the drivers onto your computer / laptop and then connect the supplied USB and video cables from your PC to the Matrox box.

You are now able to connect up the 2 or 3 monitors into the other side of the product.

Windows setup is simply a matter of accessing the display properties settings and setting the correct screen resolutions, the settings chosen depends on the number and size of the monitors connected.

The way the kit works is by making Windows think it has one large screen connected rather than 2 or 3 separate screens therefore you have to set a resolution which incorporates all the screens.

For example, if you have three 19” monitors and you want each to have a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 then you should set the resolution to 3840 x 1024.

General Usage

Once setup of the equipment has been completed you are ready to take advantage of the extra screen space. Like with standard multi monitor setups, you can drag your mouse and programs to any position on any screen by simply moving left or right of the edge of you main screen.

Picture quality is good across the screens and it has no problems displaying video or other graphically intensive software such as games or 3D animations.

Issues to Consider

One drawback of using these kits is that hitting the standard ‘Maximise’ button found in the top right of any Window or program will expand the program across all the screens connected through the Matrox box.

The reason for this is that the kits make Windows think it has one large widescreen connected to it so it rightly maximises programs across the full widescreen monitor it thinks it is hooked up to.

Another consideration is that all the connected screens must have the same resolution settings. Although you can physically connect a 19” and a 24” screen up to the same DualHead2Go box, the resolutions must be identical so you lose the extra screen real estate benefit of the 24” panel.

One final thing to mention is that the screens should be physically positioned next to each other on your desk, there is no way to tell Windows that the screens are not situated together so you will experience weird mouse behaviour if you don’t co-locate them.

Versions Available

There are both analogue and digital editions of both the DualHead and TripleHead2Go kits.

Analogue versions support only VGA monitors up to a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 per screen which is basically 17” or 19” (non- widescreen) panels.

The Digital editions support DVI monitors and VGA (with adapters) and can reach 1680 x 1050 resolutions (~22” widescreens) for each VGA or DVI monitor connected.

Strangely both the DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go kits can also support dual DVI screen resolutions of 1920 x 1200, but the Triple kit can’t support 3 monitors at this higher resolution…

There are also now DisplayPort versions available however their support screen resolutions are the same as the standard digital edition.

Prices

• DualHead2Go Analogue ~ £120 – Buy Online
• DualHead2Go Digital ~ £160 – Buy Online
• TripleHead2Go Analogue ~ £210 – Buy Online
• TripleHead2Go Digital ~ £270 – Buy Online

Overall Thoughts

Both the dual and triple versions are quick and fairly painless ways of adding extra monitor capabilities to either a desktop PC or laptop computer, and they perform well in terms of picture quality.

As detailed above they have some limitations in terms of screen sizes and positioning however if your happy to operate within these parameters then they can be a useful option to consider, especially for laptops which are traditionally difficult to setup with multi screens.

What are display resolutions?

Your monitor resolution is a setting which basically represents the number of pixels displayed on your screen to make up the image you see.

As you are probably aware, pixels are tiny dots which sit directly next to each other on a screen, when you change or set a new display resolution you are actually controlling the size and number of pixels the computer will use to show the output on a monitor.

A typical resolution would be represented as 1280 x 1024, this means that the monitor will use 1280 across the horizontal axis of the screen and 1024 down the vertical giving you a total of 1,310,720 usable pixels to display an image on.

Real world effect of different resolutions

A typical 19” TFT monitor would have a maximum screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 however you could set it to a lower 1024 x 768 or 800 x 600 resolution. Let’s see how these changes would affect the amount of usable space available:

Resolution: 1280 x 1024

At the maximum 1280 x 1024 resolution setting (see right) you can see that a standard Windows control panel is open and takes up a small part of the desktop area.

This leaves plenty of uasable space to display other programs and information sources without having to switch between them.

Resolution: 1024 x 768

Now we reduce the resolution on this screen to 1024 x 768, nothing else has been changed.

You can see how the same Window now takes up a larger percentage of the total desktop space.

Also text appears larger than at the higher resolution.

Resolution: 800 x 600

Finally, see how at the 800 x 600 resolution the same window now seems to take up something approaching 50% of the desktop area.

This leaves little space onscreen for any other programs which you may want to have open at the same time.

What is harder to see in the images above is that the quality of the screen output seems to degrade with the lower settings. This is because monitors are physically designed with a specific resolution in mind which is always the maximum one they can support.

Lowering the recommended resolution can’t physically alter the screen so the monitor has to compensate by making pixels artificially bigger, this often gives a slightly blurry feel to the image displayed.

Screen sizes and typical maximum / recommended resolutions

Following is a list of standard screen sizes and the typical maximum resolution settings you could achieve on them:

• 17” – 1280 x 1024
• 19” – 1280 x 1024
• 19” Widescreen – 1440 x 900
• 20” Widescreen – 1600 x 900 (Occasionally 1680 x 1050)
• 22” Widescreen – 1680 x 1050
• 24” Widescreen – 1920 x 1080
• 30” Widescreen – 2560 x 1600

Note, sometimes screen manufacturers set different maximum resolutions to those listed above, however they will always state a maximum resolution setting on the specification sheets, it’s always best to check before purchasing.

When choosing a new computer to run your multi screen requirements a fundamental choice is which operating system to go for.

Multiple Monitors have been natively supported in Windows since before Windows XP meaning that you don’t need any additional software or drivers to start using more than one screen on your computer.

As far as default features for multi monitors go here are our findings on the various Windows releases:

Windows XP

Advantages: Allows you to extend your desktop to 8 separate screens, you can arrange the screens so that they match your physical layout and you can control individual screen resolutions.

Disadvantages: Sometimes a pain to initially setup the screens. Adding a new screen means a full reboot before you can activate it in Windows, sometimes forgets screen location.

Windows Vista

Advantages: No real advantages over what Windows XP provided.

Disadvantages: Sometimes setup and configuration seems more ‘fragile’ than the XP setup, presentation mode for mobile PC’s can be very hit and miss.

Windows 7

Advantages: Access to settings is much easier, detect button finds all newly connected monitors without a reboot, extra settings to aid setup including rotate display option for each screen, windows can be dragged to different monitors whilst maximised.

Disadvantages: No real disadvantages compared to previous versions. In built multi monitor tools still lacking.

Overall we would recommend that you opt for a Windows 7 installation for your multi screen PC as it offers the most stable multi screen support of all three versions listed above.

Only in a few rare instances when you have some specialist software which demands Windows XP would we advise that you go with something other than Windows 7 as your operating system of choice.

Hi all,

Firstly, welcome to the brand new Multiple Monitors blog!

We intend the blog to become a rich source of information on all things multi screen related and we will post items up here as and when we come across them.

Along with the standard product announcements and setup articles we would also like to bring other related information together which may (or may not) be useful to you and all our other readers.

Occasionally we may veer off into seemingly unrelated pastures however we will try and keep these to a minimum if at all possible!

If you have any specific requests for information, or ideas for the blog simply let us know. You can contact us on the standard website contact forms, by phone on 0845 508 53 77, or through the comments section of every post.

We hope that you will find this new resource useful whether you go on to be a customer of ours or not!

Check back for further updates soon.