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Does Q1900DC-ITX Allow DVI and HDMI Ports to Simultaneously Drive Monitors?

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  • Does Q1900DC-ITX Allow DVI and HDMI Ports to Simultaneously Drive Monitors?

    Can the ASRock Q1900DC-ITX drive two monitors (simultaneously) in a dual-headed configuration from its on-board graphics controller? Thanks for your time.
    Last edited by iansblues; 08-25-2014, 02:03 PM. Reason: better terminology

  • #2
    Re: Does Q1900DC-ITX Allow DVI and HDMI Ports to Simultaneously Drive Monitors?

    They sure don't mention that in the specs or the manual that I can see, usually not a good sign.

    The Intel J1900 processor on this board includes graphics that supports two monitors. Check the specs page here:

    ARK | Intel® Celeron® Processor J1900 (2M Cache, up to 2.42 GHz)

    But, notice the little '' symbol in the "# of Displays Supported ‡" line. That alerts us to the fine print:

    This feature may not be available on all computing systems. Please check with the system vendor to determine if your system delivers this feature, or reference the system specifications (motherboard, processor, chipset, power supply, HDD, graphics controller, memory, BIOS, drivers, virtual machine monitor-VMM, platform software, and/or operating system) for feature compatibility. Functionality, performance, and other benefits of this feature may vary depending on system configuration.

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    • #3
      Re: Does Q1900DC-ITX Allow DVI and HDMI Ports to Simultaneously Drive Monitors?

      Thanks parsec! I will post an outcome on this topic within a few weeks. We will be implementing one of these (Q1900DC-ITX) as a "headless, fanless" compute engine in a decision-support application. I will check on its dual-headed capability at setup time. Our curiosity is about the Q1900DC-ITX's ability to be a low-activity, dual-screen "dashboard / command-center" for the decision-support application.

      Thanks for your thorough post and for your time!

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      • #4
        [solved] Does Q1900DC-ITX Allow DVI and HDMI Ports to Simultaneously Drive Monitors?

        The Q1900DC-ITX motherboard does support a dual-headed HDMI/DVI configuration. Our board has arrived and we have it on the QA bench. Even when booted from a meager USB 2.0 flash stick, utilizing Mint 17, a dual-headed DVI/HDMI config appears to work flawlessly.

        Dragging Firefox windows from one screen to another, while playing YouTube music videos, performs perfectly (even booted to a flash drive)!

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        • #5
          Re: Does Q1900DC-ITX Allow DVI and HDMI Ports to Simultaneously Drive Monitors?

          Great, glad that worked out for you!

          That's the on-CPU Intel graphics. Fortunately digital graphics signals are low power usage for signal transmission. Which is a given with a processor/graphics package with a maximum TDP of 10W!!!

          The graphics on this CPU are in the same family as the best on-CPU graphics cores that Intel makes. That includes the Iris Pro and Iris (5200, 5100, 5000), and the best HD Graphics (4600, 4400, 4200, etc). These graphics cores and yours use the same Intel driver.

          I don't know what your future plans for that PC are, but I did find something that you should know. This is from the Release Notes of the Intel Graphics Driver for your CPU:

          Note: 1. Microsoft Windows 7 operating system is not supported on Celeron® Processors J1750/J1800/J1850/J1900/N2805/N2806/N2807/N2810/N2815/N2820/N2830/N2910/N2920/N2930 with Intel® HD Graphics and Pentium® Processors J2850/J2900/N3510/N3520/N3530 with Intel® HD Graphics

          The document is here: http://downloadmirror.intel.com/2388...tes_GFX_32.pdf

          That seems strange IMO, but is probably related to the DirectX or OpenGL or OpenCL support in Windows 7. The Intel graphics driver I found is a bit newer than the one listed for Windows 7 on your board's download page. I have a feeling that note is just a caveat for users not having the appropriate DirectX and OpenGL software versions, which are listed in the Release Notes.

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          • #6
            Re: Does the Q1900DC-ITX Allow DVI and HDMI Ports to Simultaneously Drive Monitors?

            <style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }</style> parsec, I appreciate your informative and considerate reply. We are very fortunate that linux (Mint 17) is running flawlessly on this little system (I am using the new Q1900DC-ITX, under Mint 17, to reply to you). The graphics performance is great across both monitors (both are Dell 23”). Both monitors are in portrait mode (on their sides) and in “left rotation” (in Mint's display settings jargon). Application windows drag seamlessly across the two monitors, as one 21”-tall x 23.5”-wide, 30”-diagonal desktop. I highly recommend this setup. No graphics card required for an exceptional browser/development workstation.



            We use TurboTax, within an XP virtual machine (VirtualBox), to complete our taxes. TurboTax is currently our only use of Windows. We dodged a bullet, regarding Windows support.



            In the rudimentary benchmarks I have run, so far, the Q1900DC-ITX completes compute-only benchmarks at about 40% the speed of a 2.3 GHz i7 we have. This is a price vs. performance ratio that will work fine for our very specialized application framework that thrives on a theme of lots of small, multi-core systems that communicate their decision-support results to each other through Gigabit network ports. Ironically, most of the decision-support nodes are "headless."



            Thanks for your help. Best wishes to you!

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