Multimon with Windows NT 4

Due to the lack of native multi-monitor support, the burden of providing multimon functionality for NT 4 lies entirely with the video card manufacturer. Multimon solutions for NT 4 are available from

It is not possible to use video cards from different manufacturers as you can with Win98 and 2000.

Test system

I used an AGP Jeronimo 2000 from Appian Graphics. This card supports up to 2 monitors. Included is Appian's HydraVision software, which adds useful multi-monitor functionality. For more on this card, see my review.

As you can see on the image above, NT 4 is totally unaware of the second monitor. The resolution setting is used to set the maximium resolution available for each monitor.

Appian provides its own tab to let you position your monitors, change settings and disable or enable them.

You can set different resolutions and refresh rates for each monitor. Different refresh rates work great, but using different resolutions doesn't work very well, for the following reasons:

the Windows taskbar extends across both monitors. Depending on the position of the monitor with the lower resolution, it will not be visible on that monitor
the screen area used by the monitor is still the one set in NT display settings. If panning is enabled, the screen will scroll vertically and horizontally if you move to the edges of the monitor, if you disable panning, menus may be displayed partly offscreen, thus rendering them inaccessible

Appian's Desktop Manager adds essential multi-monitor functionality, such as enabling windows to be maximized to the monitor they're on instead of the desktop, and positioning dialog boxes on the correct monitor instead of split between monitors. These features are built into Win98/2000, but without the Appian software, NT 4 would be practically unusable with multiple monitors.

Appian also provides some special features, such as seamless DirectX and OpenGL acceleration on both monitors (AppianDX and HydraThread). I tested the OpenGL feature, this worked great with Quake 3 and a windowed OpenGL demo from 3Dlabs, X29. I did have some problems with the OpenGL screen savers, they rendered very slowly, so in that case it would be preferable to disable HydraThread.

If you use a multimon solution from a different manufacturer, you will of course have different multi-monitor software as well. But as far as I know, most manufacturers provide functionality similar to Appian's HydraVision.