Appian Jeronimo 2000 Review

I've been using two monitors for over a year now, first with Win98 and now with Win2000. A month ago I added a third monitor. So what interested me most was: what does the Jeronimo 2000 offer that my current setup doesn't? And what are the differences? But first things first:

Hardware

The Jeronimo 2000 uses two 3Dlabs Permedia 3 chipsets to drive up to two monitors. The following configurations are available:

AGP, 32 MB RAM (2x16) (this is the configuration I tested)
AGP, 64 MB RAM (2x32)
PCI, 32 MB RAM (2x16)

Video-in is available optionally, using an onboard Conexant Bt878 decoder chip (my card had no video-in). Note that this is a full-size card, I initially had doubts if it would fit in. Retail drivers are available for Win98 and NT 4, a beta driver for Win2000. Win95 is not supported, and you can't use the 3Dlabs reference drivers (I tried, it doesn't work). All tests were done on my Dell Precision 210, dual PII 400 with 128 MB RAM.

Note that the card extends from the back of the case (top) to the front (bottom)

Jeronimo 2000 AGP, 32 MB RAM, no video-in

Win98/2000

Installation was painless, just plug the card in and reboot. I installed the w98v100p3 retail driver on Win98, no problems. On Win2000, I used the latest beta driver, nt5v101b5p3. This driver does have some problems: playing a video with the Windows Media Player causes a kernel error (BSOD). And the OpenGL demos from 3Dlabs fail to run, the OpenGL screen savers work though. Update: the Windows 2000 release drivers (w2kv102p3) have fixed those problems, but still no hardware-accelerated OpenGL, not even on the primary monitor.

Displays 1 and 2 are the Jeronimo 2000, display 3 is a Diamond Viper 550

The Jeronimo 2000 integrates perfectly with the multi-monitor support offered by the system, it's like having two different cards installed. On the downside, this also means that the limitations in hardware acceleration of DirectX and OpenGL also apply, but Appian has told me that they are working hard on bringing the excellent DirectX/OpenGL support of their NT 4 driver to the Win2000 driver as well (Win98 is out of luck though). If you want to add an additional monitor, just plug in any other card (such as my Diamond Viper 550), works flawlessly.

NT 4

Installation on NT 4 is a bit more involved, due to the lack of plug-and-play: plug in the card, reboot into VGA mode and install the drivers (the latest beta drivers in my case, nt4v103b3p3i, very stable). If you had installed a card with the 3Dlabs Permedia 2 chipset previously, you will need to disable the glint device before installing the Appian drivers, otherwise you won't be able to boot NT anymore.

Appian multimon properties on NT 4

The main difference between the NT 4 and Win98/2000 desktops is the taskbar. On NT 4, it extends across all monitors, so in order to see it, you'll have to set all monitors to the same resolution. A bit annoying.

By far the best feature on NT 4 is the support for fully accelerated DirectX and OpenGL on multiple monitors, it doesn't matter if the application runs in a window or fullscreen. Quake3 looks great, and you don't have to disable the second monitor. The 3Dlabs demos (which run in a window), are hardware-accelerated on each monitor, the only problem I noticed were some display problems when stretching a window across monitors. I couldn't test windowed DirectX due to lack of a windowed DirectX 3 application.

Software

Bundled with the card comes Appian's HydraVision software, which adds support for multiple desktops and a host of multimon utilities. Installation is optional on Win98/2000. A short overview of some of the utilities:

SnapApp: moves the active window to a specific monitor. Useful utility.
Zoom: zooms the display by changing the resolution. I expected a zoom function which would let you view an area on display 1 magnified on display 2. So I was a bit disappointed by the implementation.

You can also control what happens if you maximize a window. Default is to maximize to the monitor, but you can also maximize to the desktop. If you don't like windows split across monitors, enable 'Single monitor windows': a window moved halfway between two monitors will automatically snap to the monitor where most of its area resides. This is neat, but I also found it a bit irritating. A nice feature for those applications who don't save their desktop position: HydraVision can remember an application's position and move it there the next time you start it. I tested this with Notepad, works great.
All of these settings can also be configured individually for each application.

HydraVision desktop management

Summary

The Jeronimo 2000 uses the excellent 3Dlabs Permedia 3 chipset and has good and stable drivers. The only disadvantage is the high price (starts at 749 US$).
If you are tight on free slots, need lots of monitors or are using NT 4, this is the card to get. You also won't have any compatibility problems.
Otherwise, a less expensive multi-card solution will probably work just as well (at least until the Win2000 driver has full DirectX/OpenGL acceleration!).

I would like to thank Appian for providing me with a board for this review. Special thanks to Lisa for the excellent support.

More information

Appian:

3Dlabs Permedia 3 chipset:

Conexant Bt878 video decoder chip:

Conexant