Hardware & Technical Multiple Monitors Question

[Knarlfin]

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.

No it's not necessary with the later AMD or NVidia cards as Slopey and myself have said already. A single high end card can drive a good gaming experience.

By the time E: D is released I'm sure both companies will have even better cards offering this feature.

 

[Slopey]

Originally Posted by 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.

But you need a 6 series card for that - you can't do it on the lower cards - it's not a driver thing, it's a hardware thing.

It's only supported on 660/670/680/690 cards. Anything lower than that, you need to run 2 cards in SLI to get surround monitors.

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.

Unless you have an ATI 58xx/59xx/6xxx series card, or a Nvidia 6XX (60+) as per the above.

Then you can do it from one card.

If FD do it like Flight Sim whereby you can float off views as other external windows, that'll work for the radar etc, but I doubt you'd actually need that. All you need is adjustable FOV, and support of widescreen resolutions, and preferrably an option to set the coords of the central monitor or a resizeable/user positionable UI/Hud elements, and you'll be good to go.

 

[Knarlfin]

If FD do it like Flight Sim whereby you can float off views as other external windows, that'll work for the radar etc, but I doubt you'd actually need that. All you need is adjustable FOV, and support of widescreen resolutions, and preferrably an option to set the coords of the central monitor or a resizeable/user positionable UI/Hud elements, and you'll be good to go.

Exactly.

 

[Bounder]

Cheers Knarlfin & Slopey, i was slightly outa touch there. I'd seen NV and MS blaming eachother on the issue and figured i was just stuck in the impasse.. Only bought my 470 six months back and for now i mostly still play DX9 games, so i'll probably wait until closer to D-day before grabbing a 670 (i won't be beta testing).

Power-wise this config mostly handles full detail, max res at decent rates, chokes a bit on rFactor2 but that's still in beta.. still, the 670's about 2x the power so should be sweet.

 

[Knarlfin]

Hi Bounder, well the 6xx series only came out during 2012, and it's not applicable to everyone, so it's understandable it wasn't common knowledge

I've just checked as well for you, Windows 8 doesn't reintroduce the option to span independent displays as it did in XP.

 

[Bounder]

Hi Bounder, well the 6xx series only came out during 2012, and it's not applicable to everyone, so it's understandable it wasn't common knowledge

I've just checked as well for you, Windows 8 doesn't reintroduce the option to span independent displays as it did in XP.

Thanks, all i could find was pages of M$ blurb extolling the virtues of their comprehensive all-singing all-dancing brand-spanking-new, dedicated, specialised Windows 8 multi-monitor support... but nothing on the central overriding question of output spanning..

And what a surprise.

Apparently on planet Redmond 'enhanced multimonitor support' means 'extra taskbar and wallpaper options' for their poncy new GUI.

 

[Knarlfin]

Apparently on planet Redmond 'enhanced multimonitor support' means 'extra taskbar and wallpaper options' for their poncy new GUI.

Absolutely, it's underwhelming eye candy and totally ignores what is really needed in Windows 8. To be able to accurately hit the pixel perfect locations for the charms/starts etc on a display that has other displays either side of it.

It's so bad I can get the charm on monitor 1 and the start thumbnail on monitor 2 at the same time, as soon as you try to select the one you want - they both disappear - so best using the keyboard. Or the top monitor where the edges can easily be found (as per a single monitor) in an inverted T configuration.

And for anyone thinking of going NVidia surround with Windows 8. Wait for the drivers to mature - as it's very unreliable swapping between Surround and Extended displays - often needing a hard reset. It's handled much better under Windows 7.

And by the way this isn't a Windows 8 rant, as I do use it daily, it's just there's certain limitations/annoyances for anyone going this route.