Dual Graphics Cards...when will you support it???
 

I keep checking the release notes with each new release for Windows 7 and each time I get disappointed...does not work with dual graphics cards. :(

I have an ATI HD4870X2 and I realy hope you support dual graphics cards soon so I can use my display again. I hate looking at it sitting on my desk black, turned off waiting for software to work again.

+1

I have three monitor setup, therefore, I need two PCIe display card to drive them.

Very tempted to install W7 and try out new DisplayLink driver. Hope to have some kind of beta support on multi-monitor setup asap.

Just came back from holiday, hoping to see a driver which can be used in combination with multiple video cards. But unforunately, the new RC driver still doesn't support it.

Could someone at Displaylink (Seb?) please inform us what the problem is?

When I install the drivers for my videocards, 2 Ati Radeon 4870's) I need the Ati Catalyst Control Center to switch Crossfire on and off (off setting to accomplish my three monitor setup). However, after I install the new Displaylink driver, I get an arror that the Ati Catalyst Control center is not supported by the Displaylink software (why should it be?), and consequently refuses to work completely, with one of the problems being that my second video card isn't detected by the Ati Catalyst Control, thus preventing me from using my three monitors. My Mimo 740 Displaylink does work however.

After uninstalling the Displaylink drivers and software all Ati software starts to work again, as are my three monitors, but no Mimo ofcourse.

My question to you: why are you interfering with the working of videocards and software which you shouldn't even touch?

Or is there something I am completely missing here? An answer from your position would be greatly appreciated. In any case, any answer, even a negative one, is better than no answer at all, and might help relieving the growing sense of frustration I am experiencing right now.

Thanks in advance, Jack

As mentioned in the release note there are unfortunately known interoperability issues with the use of ATI Catalyst Control Center, Cross Fire graphics cards and DisplayLink drivers. These problems occur due to changes in the OS (from Windows Vista) in the way that it handles multiple graphics adapters. We are looking to resolve these issues in a future release, but at this time I am unable to give you a timescale for this work.

Seriously, how can you call a driver a RC when it doesn't even support dual graphics card???? An RC is supposed to be nearly complete, tell us if you find any problems folks, not something that is missing a major feature....compatibility with dual graphics card configurations.

I am not alone in this, tons of us gamers have dual configurations, this really needs to be resolved soon as in by Oct 22nd when the rest of the world gets Windows 7 unlike those of us that have had the RTM for over a month. You are seriously going to hurt your customer satisfaction and thus follow-on sales if this is not resolved soon.

Forgive me, but after reading the release notes from the latest so-called RC driver I cannot help to wonder why you are calling this a release candidate.

After seeing all the things that do not work or do not work completely this driver is an early beta driver at best, and does not, I repeat, does not warrant the term release candidate.

I am a software developer, and have been for the last 20 years, and I do know a thing or two about the various stages in developing software. If I were to call one of my programs a release candidate with as many caveats and problems as your latest and "greatest", my boss would give me the boot, and quite rightly so.

So Displaylink, be honest, and rename the driver back to beta 5.something, or solve the glaring omissions and problems which are troubling this release before WIndows 7 officially launches.

And oh, you do know that the official release of Windows 7 is just over two weeks away don't you? How's that for a timescale?

Let me preface this by saying I was very impressed up to a point.

I was going to recommend these mini displays and software to a sizable office, who has been looking for a solution like this. Everything was wonderful - the price, the build quality - and hey! their website has drivers that'll even support my Win7! Awesome!

Except for this support. I'm very pleased to see you respond to the lack of Win7 support, and I'm POSITIVE you understand the need for developing multiple GPU support. While I understand the need to not make promises you can't keep, I do feel you owe it to your customers who have purchased product that is now sitting around useless. Similarly to several others on this thread, I have a 3 monitor setup that I can't accomplish without my two PCI-e cards.

You've got our hands tied, but realize we're the type of customer you want. You've got great solutions that'll work for the majority of people who might not be as tech-savvy as us, but remember who they go to for purchasing advice.

Please be considerate of your customers and give them as much information as you can about what steps you are taking to solve what shouldn't be a problem. Thank you.

I'd like to second the above statement. I am sitting here with two displays I cannot use. I have already turned off two people who were interested in DisplayLink screens from buying them because of my situation.

Let's Give Displaylink some slack
 

Hey guys, I have a few of these displaylink adapters in use, two for work, and now a third i use occasionally 'for play'.

For work, they're used at home and in the office where I add a third monitor to my dell laptop which it wouldn't otherwise support.. (the E-Series laptop doesn't have a dock with pci slot option available).

Now.. moving forward. I am fooling around with a 6 monitor setup now, 3 via Radeon 5870, 2 via Geforce 6200, and I was hoping the sixth was via a Displaylink adapter. Obviously it doesn't work.

I'd say out of the market for displayports, maybe 5-10% of us actually have dual graphics cards AND want additional monitors. Those that need more monitors (i.e. engineers) are going to use high end graphics cards that support all kinds of displays..

So I'd say I'm happy to see displaylink has several revisions of a driver for Windows 7 before it's out (that's better than many other vendors), but it would be REALLY NICE if Displaylink had a multi graphic card driver working.

I would like to ask displaylink if we could get put on a mailing list for when this support becomes available?

Thanks,
John

Tick tock...
 

It is now a week from the official release of Windows 7.

As a customer I really dislike being kept in the dark about any developments in this area.

Therefore, I would _really_ like a representative from Displaylink to give a clear and concise timetable for the support of multi display adapter computers.

The alternative for me is to sell my display, which would be a shame, because for the brief period of time I did have it working with the old drivers on the Windows 7 RC track, it worked great.

Hi guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates. Sadly, 5.2 will not offer acceptable multi-adapter support but there may be scenarios in which it works. We have plans to improve support in 5.3 (due next year) through incremental updates, some of which may be released into maintenence releases of 5.2, but no promises.

Regarding CCC, the reason you will see problems in 5.2 is that it causes the machine to BSOD when there are displaylink screens attached, so we disable it in order to prevent this. Things will improve in future maintenence releases and 5.3, but not just yet.

Best regards,
Martin
DisplayLink

NEXT YEAR....NEXT YEAR...You do realize Windows 7 goes to the WORLD on October 22nd?!?!?!?

I don't understand how in prior versions of Windows the driver could handle a dual graphics card setup and now your developers can't get it working until....SOME TIME NEXT YEAR....MAYBE!!!!

Dear Lord you folks need some new programmers.

Thank you for your reply, Martin.

Please do make this a priority - we'd all like to be happy customers. ;)

A recommendation: mention this on descriptions of all products you sell. This problem will only get worse if you put others in the same situation we are already in.

Someone earlier mentioned putting together a mailing list for updates on multi-gpu drivers. I think this is a great idea as well. If you folks at displaylink value your customers, I believe you'll see the value in making this already painful experience a little less pestering to us.

Thanks again.

Due next year? What, the 31st of december 2010? If I remember correctly I asked for a clear an concise timetable, not a vague reference of something that might be supported sometime in the near or not so near future, or not be supported at all. Furthermore, after reading a lot of threads in this forum I've never read a case in which the latest driver worked completely and flawlessly in combination with any multi-GPU systems, not only Crssfire, but SLI systems seemed to have a lot of problem too.

Really? Not just yet? Does CCC BSOD? Although I don't like CCC, I've never had any problems whatsoever with it, and really need it to en- and disable Crossfire.

The BSOD and problem part only started after I installed your drivers. And they stopped again after I removed your drivers. Whilst not claiming to know nearly enough about driver development for a reasonably new operating system, simply stating other manufacturers and their software are the cause and reason for the failure of your own efforts sounds a bit childish to me.

But never mind, as I've reported in earlier messages, the official release date for Windows 7 has come and gone and you still don't have a driver which even resembles a workable situation, and frankly, I've had enough.

I'm selling my device, as there is not a single indication that it is going to be supported any time real soon.

Furthermore, I am going to start discourage anyone I know (and don't know) to purchase products which have anything to do with software which should be or should have been supported by your company, as I've totally lost any confidence in your abilities.

I have some good new guys,

The next maintenence release will incorporate the bug fixes I have been making over the last couple of weeks relating to multi-adapter support. I got the go-ahead to merge them over to the release branch today!

The changes include fixes for DisplayLink displays coming up black when attached, and for CCC being disabled.

I cannot gurantee that these fixes will solve all of your problems, but they go a good way to improving the very limited support we provide currently. The next release is due in around 6 weeks, but as always, no promises.

Best regards,
Martin

unfortunately the last driver had the same symptoms as the last drivers. It would work only the moment I installed the driver. But if I reset windows 7 then CCC will not work properly and a lot of programs have a hard time loading.

To make matters worse, it caused my gadgets to randomly crash and even after uninstalling the software & driver the windows 7 gadgets will not load.

Someone finally listens... Sounds cool... that means we got minimal multi-adapter support, which may breaks or not, depends on your luck...!

Anyway, at least you guys show some form of support and continue to improve that during tight product cycle. :)

I am running a laptop with switchable graphics (ie not SLi or Crossfire, only one unit active at any one time) which is apparently supported according to your latest release notes. IT IS NOT.

Although I can install the drivers, and get the additional screens running, the drivers still cause havoc. Simply running WMP will cause the systm to BSOD. Also, and quite strangely, when the drivers are installed I can not open Protector Suite 2009 Control Centre (Fingerprint/Biometrics software). Have no idea why this should at all be affected.

The worst part is my choice of laptop, purchase of new screens, were partly influenced by the preface that your software was tested and worked with Windows 7. Products sitting in computer stores everywhere using your drivers are labelled "Windows 7 Compatible" with no notice of any of these issues.

Given that almost all manufacturers are using your drivers in their products (HP, Toshiba, Targus, etc, etc, etc....) and labelling the products as W7 compatible - when they are not - you may soon have more to worry about than unhappy customers. The cost of product returns, both in financial terms and in the damage that it will cause to these brand names, may mean the manufacturers paying royalties to use your technology may just get a little upset. For your own sake, pull your heads out and get it sorted.

Hi NSB,

Could you please elaborate on the specification of your system, and how you're ensuring that only one of the graphics cards is enabled at a time.

Our release note should state that switchable graphics is not supported in Windows 7, and only one architecture (lenovo t400/t500/w500) is supported on Vista. Our next release (due in 3-4 weeks) will have increased support for multiple-adapter systems.

Martin.

Hi Guys,

Our multi-adapter fixes are now available. Go to http://www.displaylink.com/support/downloads.php to download the latest version.

Martin.

This latest update seems to work fine for me and my ATI 4850x2 win Win7 x64. Previously installing the drivers would severely degrade my games and mess with my ATI CCC installation. I'm happy to report that neither of those are a problem now. THANK YOU for fixing this issue and letting me use my 740 again! I missed it sorely.

I am running into an error installing the drivers.

I get the error message "Failed to install DisplayLink Core. Installation of DisplayLink Graphics cannot continue."

Hi stormbreaker,

Windows installer creates installer logs for installation packages which I will take a look at for you. Navigate to the directory %temp% and there should be two msi*.log files from the time of the aborted DisplayLink installation. Please attach those to this thread and I will see if I can work out why the installation has failed.

Regards,
Martin

Thank you for the prompt reply. Could you define this directory's location for me again? C:/Windows/Temp?

I have GeForce 7600 + 9800GT for existing triple monitors setup. Bought I-O Data USB 7" monitor for ~6 months, and now finally get it working on Windows 7 64-bit. Million thanks to you guys!

Tested applications (all running smoothly):

• Windows Media Player, playing maximized windowed and full-screen 720p WTV
• Windows Media Center, playing windowed 1080p WTV (h.264)
• World of Warcraft, maximized window

One thing, it seems if I have multiple user logged on while I running the setup, the setup will hang at "2 seconds remaining" for ~5 minutes, then resume and say failed to install. After a reboot, it works fine. I can't find the install log so can't send it to you.

You can determine what the %temp% folder is by typing "%temp%" in the start menu (without the quotes). You can also type it in the run dialog box or at a command prompt.

In my case, it is "C:\Users\martin\AppData\Local\Temp\".

Good luck,
Martin.

I have attached a .zip file with the two log files from my installation. Thank you.

I have since installed a clean copy of Windows 7 Ultimate on my machine and had success with the installation of the drivers. I can even get my monitor to work... to an extent.

I've gotten consistent BSOD's while watching extended flash content on Hulu on another monitor. Also, returning from Sleep mode causes my screens to flash repeatedly until I restart. Do you know why I might be experiencing these problems, Martin? Thank you.

Hi Stormbreaker,

Our video testing on multi-graphics hardware has been very limited. I put some effort into it a while back, but that was for SLi machines and also wasn't ported over to the 5.x architecture. If you could give me a description of the graphics hardware and driver version, I'll see if we can reproduce it.

One thing that may help is disabling the aero theme (running in basic mode). I know it's hardly a nice thing to do though.

Best regards, Martin

I am running dual SLI with two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260's. Driver version 8.17.11.9562 with the latest SLI patch from EVGA's website.

I have uninstalled the DisplayLink software, and even preformed a system restore, and I have still gotten BSOD's with the hardware unplugged. None yet today, but yesterday I had two after my system restore.

The problem is the implementation. What the driver does, is plug in between the card and the OS.

Tricks the card into thinking you have another DVI somewhere, tricks the OS into thinking the card has just grown a new DVI.

The problem with the implementation is that it is not scaleable. And... you constantly depend on either the OS or a new driver (from the real video card) to not break things... This does not happen very often.

What they need to do is create a driver that plugs in a NEW VIRTUAL VIDEO CARD from scratch. Then the problems with the cards goes away, and the OS already knows how to handle multiple gpus.

I just bought a Toshiba Dynadock at a reduced price, seems people are RETURNING them like hotcakes.

What they need to do is create a driver that plugs in a NEW VIRTUAL VIDEO CARD from scratch. Then the problems with the cards goes away, and the OS already knows how to handle multiple gpus. But this means they actually need to write a real display driver AND "virtually" support DirectX and others.
So doing this is NOT cheap... essentially the driver is kind of a "hack", a good one. It works as it should, most of the time, as long as you don't push the limits.

dual graphics card with displaylink usb & windows 7
 

I am having problems with my arkview displaylink usb adapter on windows 7 64 bit. At one point I got it to work, but it failed after rebooting the system and it has not worked since. Multiple uninstalls and reinstalls have failed to fix the issue. Things I have tried:

run as administrator
compatability mode - windows vista
arkview drivers 5.2 10/27/09
displaylink drivers 5.2.22663 12/08/2009

I have the following fatal error in my event viewer:

Product: VB Installer Installation -- Error 1720. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A script required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Custom action SMSI_Parse_String_P1_185 script error -2146827859, Microsoft VBScript runtime error: ActiveX component can't create object: 'SMSIConvert.SMSICustom' Line 1828, Column 1,

Even though this event is logged it seems as though the install completes successfully but my monitor does not get activated and the led light on the adapter does not light up. If I unplug the adapter and plug it in again windows "detects" the device and "installs" the appropriate driver, but it doesn't work. The adapter was working on windows vista for a while and I am convinced that this is a software issue.

Btw I have a dual graphics card.

Widows device manager recognizes that there is an adapter installed:
DisplayLink Display Adapter (8060)
DisplayLink Corp.
12/8/2009
5.2.22617.0
This device is working properly.

Ok, managed to get it working again, here is what finally worked:
After many attemps of unplugging and replugging the usb cable to the adapter(windows recognized and installs the device driver etc, but video did not work, led light did not glow). This is what worked:

Then I unplugged the adapter, and disconnected the dvi cable from the monitor.
Then plug in the USB cable with the DVI disconnected.
Allow windows to recognize the device and install the driver, led light on adapter lights up!
Now attach the DVI cable to the monitor, windows recognizes the new display and extends my desktop, Yay!

There must be a bug somewhere(displaylink/microsoft) that doesnt allow the adapter and monitor to be recognized at the same time when you first attach the device. Stay tuned to see if I need to redo this dance upon reboot.

It may be named "DisplayLink Display Adapter " but windows sees it under USB devices.

Dual 4870's with CrossFire ENABLED + Displaylink = WORKS Perfectly!
 

A little late but just wanted to leave this info in case someone stumbles on this thread using Google.

I can confirm that on the following setup multi-monitors using DisplayLink WORKS perfectly!

Laptop:
Dual ATI 4870's with CrossFire ENABLED
GPU Drivers: ATI's 10.5 beta
Intel Core i7 Quad processor
4GB Ram
DisplayLink Drivers: 5.3

The usb monitors work flawlessly. Video playback is perfect. No slowdown. All bells and whistles from Operating System available. ATI Catalyst Control Center also works perfectly. No issues in gaming on main monitor, or any deterioration of performance detected. Ran 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark06. Scores are similar with and without USB monitor enabled.

All works great.