New build - triple monitors!

[Brills]

Hey all! I'm a newbie here, and I have a quick question that I was hoping someone could help me out with.

I'm building a new PC, and I would like to rock triple monitors. I like gaming so I want to get something powerful - I know there is a box (the name escapes me) that allows you to hook up 3 monitors to it and span games across all three - I know I wouldn't do that very often, if at all, but the box might be nice to have for my setup depending on what route I go.

I was looking at these possibilities

A. Get a GTX 285

B. Get 2x GTX 250

C. Get 2x GTX 260

Now, I'm not the type of person that has to have the highest settings cranked in every single game - assuming I go the SLI route, how much of an upgrade is 2x 260's vs. 2x 250s?

Anyone else have experience running 3 monitors?

Thanks in advance!

 

[aka1nas]

The Triple Head 2 Go box isn't necessarily what you want for general triple screen usage as it makes all your displays into a single large virtual monitor. It is also somewhat resolution-limited.

You might want to look at softth first at least to get a feel for triple screen gaming. It's not as fast because it's a software solution, but is free and is more flexible than the TH2GO. Softth is just a hook driver for D3D, so is only active when you play a game that you have set up with it.

You're going to need at least a second card to hook up that third display. You cannot use the display outputs on the secondary card in an SLI setup when SLI is enabled, FYI. I get around that on my setup by running display 3 on a separate 8800GT, which can also be used then as a dedicated PhysX card.

 

[Brills]

Aww, lame - so you are using a cheaper card (you actually have 3 video cards) so that you can maintain tri-monitor support at all times, while keeping SLI enabled for performance?

I'm not finding any 8800gt on NewEgg - do they still make this card, or is there something else I should shoot for?

 

[Brills]

Also, if that's the case, should I maybe consider just getting a GTX 285 and a solo cheaper card and skip SLI all together?

 

[Insomniator]

I think a 285 and a 9600GSO or 9600GT (either should be around 50 bucks, be sure to find the 92 shader version for the 9600GSO) would be good. What size monitors?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

wtf are you using 3 monitors for anyways

 

[Chapbass]

I LOVED my 3 monitor setup. At the time I had an 8800GTS (which im still using) running a dell 24" and a gateway 19. Then i put in a pci 5200 running another gateway 19. It was awesome.


For example: In wow

Center 24" for wow itself, left monitor for vent, AIM, etc. right monitor for firefox for diagrams of fights, videos, etc. i totally loved it.

 

[Brills]

Hmm, I am probably going to roll with the 275 (other components look to cost me more than I expected) and roll with one of those cheap 9600gts for the third monitor - i'm not sure how gaming works with one beast graphics card and one cheaper one - as long as I keep my games displayed on the monitor hooked to my better card, I shouldn't see problems, right? (Sorry, i'm a newbie when it comes to the tri-monitor setup)

I have 1 22" monitor and will likely pick up 2 more 22"

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Games will run on whichever monitor you've told Windows to use as your "primary". Unless you use some virtual desktop stuff or whatever.

 

[Brills]

Ok, awesome - so it won't matter what my other card is then for my third monitor (for the most part)

I am really, really excited to try tri-monitor - once I went dual, I can't go back to single - it bugs me

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Brills
Ok, awesome - so it won't matter what my other card is then for my third monitor (for the most part)

I am really, really excited to try tri-monitor - once I went dual, I can't go back to single - it bugs me

Yeah, it's all rendered by the primary display adapter. Softth basically has the GPU render it at the ultra high resolution, copies each individual frame to system memory from the main card's framebuffer, splits it up into the corresponding 3 pieces based on the sizes of the monitors, and copies them back to the framebuffer(s) so the side screens can display their piece.

IME, performance is usually limited by PCI-E and memory bandwidth and the second card doesn't matter unless it's a complete piece of crap. Having a PCI-E 2.0 board and cards seems to help quite a bit, this is one of the few applications that will actually use all/most of that bandwidth.

Some screenshots:

X3: Terran Conflict @5760x1200

Fallout 3 @ 5760x1200

 

[goldcrow]

Awesome screenshots man. I wish I could get a triple monitor set-up as well but space is very limited. I've been wondering about how to go about it myself for quite some time now, but really I think the tripleheadtogo isn't really the best solution as well.

 

[sheltem]

I have seen video cards with three video ports. This Radeon 4870 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16814125256) has displayport, hdmi and dvi. Does anyone know if you can use all three at the same time?

 

[Modelworks]

Go with windows 7 as the OS , one of its new features, is that you can mix whatever cards you like. It allows you to run multiple cards , even from different companies, like ATI + Nvidia.

 

[sheltem]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Go with windows 7 as the OS , one of its new features, is that you can mix whatever cards you like. It allows you to run multiple cards , even from different companies, like ATI + Nvidia.

Can you cite a source? I ask this because the new video driver model in Windows Vista does not allow for this. Thanks!

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: sheltem

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Go with windows 7 as the OS , one of its new features, is that you can mix whatever cards you like. It allows you to run multiple cards , even from different companies, like ATI + Nvidia.

Can you cite a source? I ask this because the new video driver model in Windows Vista does not allow for this. Thanks!

WDDM 1.1 in Windows 7 allows for heterogeneous display drivers again. WDDM 1.0 in Vista does not.

I'd still stick to using two cards from the same vendor if you can, however. The driver model may allow it again, but that doesn't guarantee that Nvidia and ATI drivers will play nice with each other (especially with multiple screens). It didn't always work that great in XP when you mixed GPU vendors, either.