Thanks for the additional input Rick!
So yeah, both my monitors are being driven by the nVidia GeForce 8700M GT residing in my laptop. I have the driver configured to use DualView, i.e. treating each monitor separately. Running MA3 in it's default multi-monitor configuration, which is full screen spanned across both monitors, appears to work fine. Frame rate is around 125 frames per second, and I can't tell what the CPU usage is since it's running dedicated on both monitors, but nothing looks slowed down in the animations at all as evidenced by the high frame rates on both displays.
But I've only met with failure in any attempts to run MA3 on my secondary monitor while continuing to use my primary monitor to work on. This is the environment I'd like to work in but I can't get it working with any kind of reliability.
I'd like to try to contribute and find out what the devs might want from me so they can track down the problem, or if it's specific to my system, what I could change to get it working. Because it
should be possible for me to continue to work in my primary monitor, while running MA only on my secondary, right? Or is MA designed to only be used when you're not using any of the systems it's connected to at all?