Gaming with Alienware 17 R2 with 2 additonal Screens

vnx

Estimable
Apr 6, 2015
9
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4,510
Hello,

I have managed to hook up 2 monitors to my Alienware 17 R2 laptop. One is connecting through HDMI to DVI and the other is connected through Mini DP to DVI.

With this in place I have my laptop in the middle and to Acer K22HQL 21 inch monitors either side. All three monitors work together and I can extend the laptop desktop display on either side so I can have multiple windows open.

However, when it comes to gaming on the likes of ESO, SWTOR and GTA 5 they only show up on the middle display (my laptop) unless I move it onto one of the others. Is there a way I can extend the game onto all 3 displays? I seem to have tried everything and the only way I have found to do it (which looks awful!) is to window the game and stretch it across each monitor. I don't think I have NVidia surround so here are my specs.

Intel i7
8GB Ram
64bit windows 8
GTX 970M GeForce

Kind regards

Vnx

 

Kraszmyl

Distinguished
Apr 7, 2011
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18,590
It should be in;

3D Settings -> Configure SLI, Surround, PhysX

This issue might be Optimus and the fact your displays are hooked up to the igp technically and the 970 passes through it. Normally I would say go disable it but unfortunately there is not a setting for that in the new Alienwares. That being said I see people posting about unofficial bios's that enable raid and disable optimus. The guy who made them was attempting to get dell to do it officially supposedly before he released them.
 

vnx

Estimable
Apr 6, 2015
9
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4,510
When I open NVIDIA Control Panel a window opens

on the left hand side I have:

3D Settings and then 3 catergories = "Adjust image settings with preview" / "Manage 3D settings" / "Set PhsyX Config"

I cant see anywhere about surround.
 

Kraszmyl

Distinguished
Apr 7, 2011
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18,590
Its the same tab as the set PhysX config. So ya it's disabled and likely due to optimus. I guess if you haven't you could also try downloading the drivers directly from NVidia and not Dell and see if that makes a difference.

Otherwise I think you should be on the search for that custom bios and see if it ever got released. If you google aw17 raid you should pull up the relevant threads for it.