Is Clone mode straining my 6600GT?

[axess68]

I have an eVGA nVidia 6600GT 128mb AGP card. It has the S-Video out. I have an S-Video cable attached to it that is an adapter for HDTV. I am using the VIDEO (yellow) connection and putting that through to my TV. In the options section (video settings, advanced) I can set it to output to either my Monitor or TV or BOTH (clone). Is Clone mode a strain on my card? Or is it no big deal to run 2 video sources at the same time?

[Eddyisgreat]

it depends on what you do with it. Basic stuff like mabey surfing the net and such, not at all. Trying to play games though (if it will run in the first place) will put some slight strain on it, but running on dual heads will produce no more strain then playing COD 2 on a 5200 in DX9 mode (just a little humor there ;) )

[axess68]

LOL! Well, CoD2 doesn't like the idea and doesn't run well. However, Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. run well. FEAR runs the best. I set the mode to 'clone' ,turn my monitor off when I am playing a game and use the TV set only. Does that reduce any strain?

I noticed that when I turn my Monitor on to switch it back, it makes the image on the TV wiggle a for a second.

[JigPu]

I doubt that displaying to a TV will cause much extra strain. The card likely just uses the framebuffer as the source for both outputs. The only way I see it causing extra strain would be from resizing the framebuffer to fit the lower resolution of your TV. Slowdows in CoD are probably a result of driver problems with clone mode enabled (as evidenced by good performance in Quake and FEAR)

As far as turning off the monitor, it won't reduce strain one bit. The card has no way of determining if the monitor has been turned off, so it will keep sending data out to it regardless. The wiggle you see when you turn your monitor back on is likely it degaussing itself -- the magnetic field made durring the process will effect other nearby monitors/tvs.

JigPu

[axess68]

Thank you, Jig Pu! That clears things up for me. :)

Thanks for the help guys. :D