Hardware & Technical Multiple Monitors Question

[Abysinth]

I have begun to look at the hardware I am going to need to buy for Elite. I only have a laptop so will need a desktop and I am beginning to think that the pledge I made will be insignificant compared to the computer.

Anyway, The Question:

I would like to try and have four monitors in an inverted T.

I have looked at Graphics cards and would like your thoughts:

1. One 4-monitor graphics card
2. 2 mid priced dual monitor graphic cards
3. 1 good dual monitor Gfx card and a lessor dual display gfx card
4. something else entirely

previously I have found a motherboard based on Processor Architecture, this time it looks as though I will be choosing the m/bd based on gfx cards.

I'm inclined to go for nVidia cards for no other reason than I like the word nVidia - unless someone has a really good reason not to...

 

[Memnoch]

Nvidia cards are very good. The good thing to know here I guess is that if E: D has good SLI support you won't need to spend a lot of money. By time it is released a high end 500 series card will probably be dirt cheap. The 600 series may have already been superseded at this point too. These would easily drive four monitors.

I've seen many monitor stands capable of supporting four monitors but never in the configuration you mentioned. Typically 2x2 is what you will see.

 

[Cody]

Nvidia cards are very good.

Agree - I have a GTX550Ti, with which I am very happy!

 

[Memnoch]

I have some experience with dual card setups, both ATI and Nvidia. I have long since moved to Nvidia as my card of choice but that aside I have one comment about dual cards. Support from games is really spotty. It's been many a year since I've given up on that platform. My first was a dual 3dfx Voodoo setup giving a monster 1024 x 768 resolution. That just worked.

Then came the ATI and Nvidia implementations. With ATI the game has to be supported by the driver so if it's not you can try renaming the EXE to match one that does.Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's easier with Nvidia in that you can create any old profile you want, even for Notepad if you wanted to, not that it would do you a lot of good! But when it doesn't work well you would get horrible artifacting on screen or next to no speed increase.

I just decided to get the fastest card I could comfortably afford and made do.

 

[Lambada Glen]

I would like to try and have four monitors in an inverted T.

Hey Abysinth,

What are you attempting to achieve with the inverted T?
Are you thinking 3 for extra wide gaming, and the other for browser?
Or all four for gaming?

You may find you are restricted by what the game supports, and how the graphic drivers allow you to define your screen layout.

I have a triple monitor setup (5760x1200 total) , using an AMD/ATI 7970. The AMD eyefinity (multi-monitor) setup only allows you to create monitor groups (a large virtual monitor) in rectangles (e.g 4x1 1x4 2x2 3x1 1x3), so you may struggle to use them all in game. Saying that, it's really up to what the game supports. I think "supreme commander" let you use 2 different monitors. So something similar may allow a 3x1 virtual monitor for 3D, plus a single monitor for maps / stats etc.

BTW, the 7970 will drive a 4 monitor setup, through it depends what 3D magic you ask it to do ;-)

Hope that helps.

 

[SnowGhost]

I'm going to be the voice of insane reason.

Start saving now. Buy when the game is available and see what is best at the time. Personally I have always owned Nvidia cards and expect that to continue, but maybe ATI will do something good.

 

[Bounder]

Yes the T configuration will be fine for games that support what's usually referred to as "multiview" where the game renders outputs to different monitors separately.

Obviously you won't be able to use the fourth unit as part of a single unified display for other games, or videos, however you can still extend your desktop across it.

If you only want a powerful single card then a Matrox splitter works well.

XP and Windows8 allow spanned modes, Windows7 and Vista do not, hence to get spanned modes in W7 you need Eyefinity or Mosaic (two NVidia cards in SLI).

And suitable brackets exist - look for a six-way, and maybe try get a discount for losing two of the outer arms...

Or just go the whole hog and get the extra two monitors...

 

[Abysinth]

What I had in mind was three wide at the bottom for Elite then three wide and one top-centre for work stuff, or perhaps to have Skype open to chat to my fellow Elitists.

Although there is this (from the other multi-screen thread) that shows a game playing on the bottom three with some kind of text display on the top one like . Is the top screen also part of the game?

I also like the idea of being able to throw windows up and to the right or left whilst doing work type stuff.

There's this but it's not clear to me if this card alone will drive four screens.

(happy) sigh - this is almost as much fun as the KS

 

[BattleMetalChris]

One thing I hope ED implements with regard to multi monitor setups is multiple cameras.

Most games, when used with multiple monitors, just stretch the view from a single virtual camera across the whole view. As games use a rectangular projection this means that the edges get very stretched and distorted.

A lot of 'serious' racing games (such as iRacing and Live For Speed) use three separate virtual cameras for each screen, which minimises (although doesn't eliminate, and as it's still three different rectangular projections) the distortion and allows a true wraparound view.

 

[Pyros]

As said, it will depend on game support. So the save and buy when ED is ready is the best advice.

Speculating, multiple cards (SLI or Crossfire) have come a long way but still have their flaws. Ati (AMD) has the upper hand in multimonitor setups (eyefinity) - reverse compared to multiple cards, where SLI is smoother, but slower, than xfire. Either manufacturer is good.

 

[Slopey]

You no longer need SLI (or multiple cards) for Nvidia multimonitor gaming.

ATI was where it was at for tripleheaded until now, and still is if you're on a budget.

The TripleHead2Go Matrox unit is a waste of time, so don't even consider it.

You can now do tripleheaded off a single Nvidia card but you need to go high end to do it.

I've run several ATI cards in triplehead, the 58xx series and higher, and I'm going to go for an Nvidia 680 shortly (largely for MWO which is optimised for Nvidia).

SLI/Crossfire is a red herring for most games - you'll get a 30% bump if that on most games which support it, and usually it's better to buy a single high end card rather than two cards in SLI/xF. If the game doesn't support it, you'll see virtually no increase.

Also note that your frame rates are going to suffer for tripleheaded, but in virtually all cases, the FPS drop is acceptable given the view you now have.

If you're going for 4, in an Eyefinity setup, you'll need two cards to do it properly, one running the Eyefinity group, the other a desktop extension of the "virtual" monitor. Can't say how it would work on Nvidia. If you're mixing Graphics cards, be careful - at the least you'd want the same manufacturer, but you might need to go for the same family or even the same card (but not in SLI/xF) to avoid driver issues.

 

[Bounder]

You no longer need SLI (or multiple cards) for Nvidia multimonitor gaming.

Are you sure? Last i looked their Mosaic feature was only enabled for SLI Quadros. I have a W7 install but never boot into it precisely because i lose my doubletriplehead screenmodes. It's the only reason i'm still using XP. Gonna have to double check this in a minute...

The TripleHead2Go Matrox unit is a waste of time, so don't even consider it.

I'm using two, plugged into a single GTX470. I originally ran them off a 8800GTX. They're absolutely flawless in operation - XP sees two 3840x1024 monitors, and lets me link them horizontally in a continuous 360° all-round dispaly with a 24:3 aspect, or vertically for a 12:6 (ie. 2:1) aspect.

It completely circumvents the issue of connecting many monitors to a single card, which only needs to be capable of supporting two outputs (which most do). For anything more than two monitors, a Matrox unit is worth its weight in gold..

Of course if a card supports 4 or more screens then all the better and cheaper... the range is increasing all the time. I brought an ATi card for a build recently, it supports three screens but has 3 different connectors for them - so for older panels with only VGA & DVI you'd need HDMI-DVI or whatever adapters (which weren't included with the card). Of course some of NVidia's Quadros feature 4 DVI outs, or use custom splitters (which are included)..

 

[Memnoch]

And suitable brackets exist - look for a six-way...

Doh! Yeah that would work!

Are you sure? Last i looked their Mosaic feature was only enabled for SLI Quadros.

I'm pretty sure that is correct. Nvidia allow two monitors to be driven by one card but ATI allow three.

 

[Bounder]

Well i'm here now in Windows 7, and spanned modes are not. I've just updated to Nvidia's 310.90 drivers, and no change.

A quick Google found this most recent snippet:

"The NVIDIA nView Desktop Manager which you are familiar with under Windows XP for Geforce and Quadro graphics cards would not work under Windows Vista (and Windows 7) because of the changes to the display driver model introduced in Windows Vista. It had to be rewritten from the ground up. Only a tiny fraction of Geforce customers used or even knew what nView was so it was decided support would only be provided for Quadro customers since these customers tend to work with applications which can benefit from the features which the nView Desktop Manager provides. Although there are no plans in the near future to add nView Desktop Manager support for consumer graphics cards (Geforce), we do have a lot of new exciting features being worked on now which will be introduced in future display drivers for Geforce customers." - NVidia

So no, it's still Quadros only on the NVidia side, if you're running W7 or Vista. I've heard tell W8 has re-introduced this functionality but haven't got round to testing this yet.

In the meantime, Eyefinity looks like the only multimonitor gaming solution if you're on Windows 7 - which you'll need if you want to take advantage of E: D's DX11 support.. XP only supports up to DX9

Nvidia have totally shot themselves in the foot on this one..

 

[Memnoch]

So no, it's still Quadros only on the NVidia side, if you're running W7 or Vista.

I need to do some more reading then as that's not what I have read. BBS

Ah, I think it might have been confusting multi-desktop and multi-monitor full screen gaming. You can have your desktop on two monitors from once card, a primary and seconday screen but as soon as you go full screen gaming it only displays on the primary card.

 

[SuperG]

nVidia is just a name of a brand that isn't better then the others. They have there flaws to.
I have used all mark even iNtel i740,the savage2000,banschee 3DFX,SGSThomson, nvidia, ATI now AMD.

Matrox was uniek with there multyhead but lack of 3D power stick with professional market. But are now bypassed by AMD first an nVidia to.
AMD Eyefinity started with a 6 head card enabling easy driving 6 moniters. But there a catch you might need specifc connector and the monitors also need to have them.
The limit of nVidia is you need SLI to do more.

I would advice you to do decent back gound lookup how the stance is with current multyhead solution because it might often use specific new typ monitor cable wich not al monitors have.
Also years ago there is also a new technology connection where monitors are chained connected. Don't know how the stance about that is now.
So doing some research what is possible and don't forget AMD was or still is the most flexible for multihead PC use.

because for me more then 2 heads is enough so I don't dig into this because for me its not relevant.

But nVidia is just a company with just like apple there hardcore fans and just like justin bieber there are many more people in this world that can sing.
And from nVidia I don't expect something ground breaking beyound ATI AMD can do but iNtel apearently already did but much to early with larabee they have huge R&D capacity to stand out. But often go very far into it like itanium IA64.

 

[Knarlfin]

A single NVidia GTX 6x0 will drive 3 monitors in a spanned (nVSurround) mode + 1 accessory monitor (not used for the game display, but other activities such as browsing, chat clients etc) - before the GTX680 was launched you would have needed SLI to run this configuration on NVidia cards.

This will give you the inverted T. Bespoke stands for this config are hard to find in the UK, and expensive.

In my setup, I've kept the 3 x 27" monitors on their original stands and then have 3 monitors above but mounted to the wall which, whilst not as tidy is positioned exactly how I need them. 4 of the monitors (the inverted T are driven by one machine, the other 2 (top left and top right) are used by other machines, Pi, HTPCs, consoles etc.

The main issue you will find is the performance of a single card running what's likely to be a 5760x1080 resolution or higher (this resolution assumes 3x 1920x1080p monitors), and you'll probably find that on some of the more demanding games you won't be able to run at full settings, unless you then start looking at running SLI.

I'd think from the comments on scaleability for a wide range of systems, and perhaps even a Pi in the future, that a single GTX670/680 would be sufficient to run E: D in surround, but not necessarily with all the bells and whistles.

 

[Slopey]

Are you sure? Last i looked their Mosaic feature was only enabled for SLI Quadros. I have a W7 install but never boot into it precisely because i lose my doubletriplehead screenmodes. It's the only reason i'm still using XP. Gonna have to double check this in a minute...

Yes - that's why Nvidia are suddently feasible for tripleheaded. Any of the new top end 6XX cards will do it now.

They had to make it viable, as ATI was the clear leader for triplehead and was stealing all their market in that area.

You don't need Active DP converters by the way - I run mine with 2x DVI, 1x DP -> VGA which works perfectly. You only need an Active DP adapter if you're going to DVI rather than VGA.

I'm currently running with this sort of set up:

 

[Knarlfin]

Well i'm here now in Windows 7, and spanned modes are not. I've just updated to Nvidia's 310.90 drivers, and no change.

A quick Google found this most recent snippet:



So no, it's still Quadros only on the NVidia side, if you're running W7 or Vista. I've heard tell W8 has re-introduced this functionality but haven't got round to testing this yet.

In the meantime, Eyefinity looks like the only multimonitor gaming solution if you're on Windows 7 - which you'll need if you want to take advantage of E: D's DX11 support.. XP only supports up to DX10.1

Nvidia have totally shot themselves in the foot on this one..

What NVidia cards are you running though? And are they in SLI (assuming they're not the latest 6x0 cards)? Otherwise you won't see the option in the NVidia Control Panel applet to configure the spanned displays.

 

[SuperG]

SLI is not needed if you can game on a single monitor with midrange card like average game do. But if you want to game in high fidelity on multi mon then SLI or crosfire is needed.
But one crusial thing does E: D support flexible use of multimon.

I am thinking what could be done of course the main game view. Radar and target and weapon cams. On smaller ones. Utility screen. With windows 8 a touchscreen for interface menu.
Also even not only one machine but trought net work as a multi PC monitor setup.
Like multi mon on PS3 where you link 3 PS3.
But most game are limited to a view fustrum adjustment for multimon ultra wide view.