NVIDIA GeForce4 - NV17 and NV25 Come to Life

nView

One of the most useful features of the NV25 core is the inclusion of the nView multiple display core. Originally introduced alongside the GeForce2 MX as TwinView, nView is an extension of TwinView with much greater flexibility from a hardware standpoint. The NV25 core features dual 350MHz integrated RAMDACs thus allowing for dual CRTs without any external circuitry. Although the core itself doesn't feature any TMDS transmitters there is support for up to two external TMDS transmitters on the GeForce4 to drive dual digital flat panel displays.

nView setup is extremely easy to use

The hardware behind nView enables the technology but it is the software that exists that truly makes it a feature. From a software standpoint, NVIDIA managed to hire talent from the same company that ATI gained a lot of its Hydravision technology from - Appian. The end result is that nView is virtually identical to Hydravision in terms of features, but NVIDIA has made it slightly more user friendly by integrating a very simple 11-step setup process that can have any user up and running in as few as 11 clicks. The wizard clearly explains all of the major nView features and offers options to turn on/off features like multiple desktops.

nView allows you to make windows transparent when dragged, unfortunately with larger windows this can be quite slow

Multiple desktops can be navigated easily through Explorer integration of nView

Alongside the easy to use setup there are some other neat features that give nView the slight feature edge over ATI's Hydravision. For example, nView has a feature that allows you to set a double right-click to open a HTML link up in a new IE browser window on the second monitor. This is perfect for surfing websites or discussion forums so you can keep the main page open while opening an article or thread on the second monitor just by doubleclicking.

The nView extensions option appears in almost all right-click menus after installation

There are still features that both nView and Hydravision lack that give Matrox the slight leg up on both technologies but after using nView and Hydravision extensively for the past couple of weeks we can honestly say that NVIDIA has done an excellent job with nView on the GeForce4.