12wx Cintiq w/ 2 monitors
polycounter lvl 18
So, wife just picked me up a 12wx Cintiq, my persistence finally paid off and should be arriving any day now, and now that it's actually on its way, I never thought about me already having two monitors.
For those of you that have one, did you get a secondary vid card to push the cintiq and your two monitors, or get a dvi splitter cable? Which do you prefer? I don't want to continually unplug one monitor just to use this and at 12 inch screen I can't see me using this as a monitor when not in use.
Lemme know your suggestions. Thanks. Also any tips and tricks I should know on setup I've read it's kind of a pain.
For those of you that have one, did you get a secondary vid card to push the cintiq and your two monitors, or get a dvi splitter cable? Which do you prefer? I don't want to continually unplug one monitor just to use this and at 12 inch screen I can't see me using this as a monitor when not in use.
Lemme know your suggestions. Thanks. Also any tips and tricks I should know on setup I've read it's kind of a pain.
Replies
2x PCI-E cards should do the trick nicely. No sense wasting 2 perfectly good cards with that SLI garbage.
I use an additional 20'' monitor and don't want to replace it with a 12''
I'd rather had 3 monitors
let me know what you wind up doing, dekard!
I run the cintiq and one monitor off a geforce 8800gtx, and the second monitor off a geforce 9600.
It works ok, but frankly I should have gotten another 8-series card for the monitor, since 8/9 series cards use different drivers. As a result I can't launch the nvidia control panel - but it doesn't really impact me in any significant way.
So the whole thing became quite expensive, but, point being, I now have my two 24 inch monitors hooked up into one of my 8800 gt's and the cintiq hooked up into the other 8800gt.
I have never had ANY problems with this setup, and I highly recommend you go this route, if you can afford it.
[edit] oh, and I have the cintiq 12wx also
Eyefinity, support for up to 3 displays. HDMI->DVI and you're golden.
Other option if your mother board has on-board video, re-enable it. Although not the best option, I tried onboard, and my cintiq 20wsx gets wavy lines.
So yeah back to the point, plugging in an extra vidcard is really not much work at all and it works quite well. As a matter of fact I think that a dual LCD + 12wx makes a lot of sense (the babytique becomes some kind of nice auxiliary sketchpad, somehow), whereas dual LCD + 21UX would be way too cumbersome to handle (I think?). I guess the ideal would be 1LCD+21UX+12WX but after trying it and hoping alot from it I felt like it was just getting a bit too convoluted, you keep moving stuff around and everything kindof fights for deskspace...
You could even dedicate the 12WX to a specific lightweight (and screen operated only, no kb shortcuts) drawing program like AWSketchbook or SAI, and leave it open all the time to serve as some kind of fancy idea pad...
I might go the PCI route if my mobo has a PCI out, that and the vid cards are probably uber cheap now. All I really want my second monitor for is reference and or movies, and another one for a duplicate window of what I'm working on on the bottom screen/3d.
however, I've also considered buying a small laptop specifically for connecting this baby to so I can chill on my couch and sketch on the 12wx. ah, decisions. expensive..decisions..
My local shop still sells them at about $60 (Canadian) (Geforce 6200 256mb) Maybe you can find one on kijiji or craigslist for cheaper?
I used a spare ati pci card for awhile back in the days of 1 agp slot. Worked, but slow for everything other than more desktop real estate :P
but here's my first pic, so far loving it.
damn i need to clean and dust off my desk.
Ikea?
Yeah!
I should totally bring my Cintiq back to work. My wife bogarted one of my 20" widescreens, otherwise I'd have one on each side of my Cintiq at home.
you stole my keyboard and mouse, asshole
Upgrade your desk!
mines full with scratches and scribbles tho
Test out various software with it. I've found my favorite software programs with a Cintiq is Zbrush, Anime Studio Pro and Corel Draw.
I wasn't big on using Painter, I preferred the Anime Studio/Corel Draw due to the comic book india-inking look of the strokes... which I found less attractive in Photoshop or Painter (but obviously there is a lot of tweaking to get this). Zbrush is a natural for a Cintiq user.
Using the Cintiq as your "Primary" monitor is necessary with other software like Project Dogwaffle Pro, mainly due to the Slider-bars showing up in awkward places if you don't.
I recommend the Cintiq to anyone attempting to make money in Computer graphics. There is a huge difference in workflow and the speed of completing jobs.
For me it meant no longer needing a scanner and the hand-speed of working directly on the screen than fighting hand/eye/brain/screen dissociation of common pen-tablets.