EVGA UV Plus+ 12 USB VGA adaptor first hand impressions

PREVIOUSLY: 2/5/09

Recently I had run out desktop real estate for work. I have approximately a dozen applications open at once that a 16x9 22" & a 19" (in an inverted portrait position) just wasn't enough (anymore). After a little research and help from the speedy delivery of Newegg.com and here it is :


After cracking open the plastic sealed packaging, which I hate with a passion, I laid everything out :

Per the instructions, I first installed the latest drivers off the website and not the ones included on the disc. I plugged in the USB cable & then the adapter. I finally attached the monitor and PRESTO:

From left to right: 17" Sony, 19" Samsung (90 degrees to the right) & 22" Samsung (16x9).

So far after a few hours, this is working pretty well. I do notice some slow down when the screen saver kicks in, but then I do have 3 different screen savers running on each monitor via Ultramon. There is also a slowdown between when I lock my screen and when the last monitor goes black. It isn't a long delay, perhaps 2-3 seconds. This is probably due to the USB 2.0 interface which is limited to 480 Mbit/sec. I am unsure yet, but I do believe the actual video processing is being handled by the graphics card currently in the system, nVidia 8600 GT. This might affect gaming or other video outputing, but I noticed no slowdown when I played a DVD with PowerDVD (spanning over the 3 monitors or just playing the video in full screen off the new third). Vista's dwm.exe process, responsible for multi-monitor output, also does not appear to have increased much in memory allocation. I will try gaming later and see how it responds. For now, enjoy the spanning wallpaper (5120x1600), courtesy of Gamewallpapers.com of the upcoming Prototype :


UPDATE : 2/12/2009

After a week with the product, I am quite satisfied. The only drawback is when you have applications open on the screen connected to the unit & are in the window doing something, there is an occasional 1-2 second delay. This I attribute to the bandwidth limitation of USB 2.0 & the large amount of data going over the bus. Here's looking forward to the USB 3.0 version. I did not notice any performance issues when running Counter-Strike 2, Sam & Max Ep. 4 & Crysis:Warhead. In my current setup, only one of the monitors is used for gaming. Better for the bandwidth.