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Budget Triple-Screen Gaming
An anonymous reader writes "A system-builder, Dario D., built a triple screen gaming PC in early 2010 that can still run all of the top games. For under $1,000. See link, and he points out you can do even better with a 2011 build."
I am a Fish!
check out the comments in the thread
20" monitors? I'd rather get two 24" monitors at $150 each, which is pretty easy to find. Also, that hardware is garbage and will probably last two years at the most. Basically what I'm trying to say is that anyone who can google for five minutes can find a better deal than this.
...but i couldn't stop reading it
news at 11 right here.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Anyone can connect three monitors to a PC. I was expecting three projectors or something else like that. I remember that even with Windows 98 i could run game on second display and still have my Windows desktop running on the other.
that can still run all of the top games
with Crysis a little slower, around 30fps at medium settings
Crysis is over 3 years old; seems like his definition of top game differs wildly from mine. And 30fps is rather bad.
This makes the following also suspect.
(most other games run at an average of 60-90fps at max settings/resolution (one screen tested only, no AA)
Most other also-not-top games? Besides, playing without any AA at all is horrific, and imo a useless measure.
Seriously, I'd pay twice that just to get rid of the fingerprint magnets.
The responses in his thread pretty much hit my point of view: If I had $1000 to blow on a gaming setup in 2010, I sure as hell wouldn't have brought 3 cheap-ass POS monitors, an off-the-rack Compaq and what look like the crappiest speakers money can buy...
If I was planning on spending just a grand on a gaming PC, it'd be a single $200 monitor setup with a $300 video card, $200 processor and $300 for the rest (Mobo, RAM, maybe a system drive if I'm not allowed to use one of the many drives I have lying around here)... seems I'd get much better performance.
Multi-monitor gaming is pointless, and will remain pointless, until video cards can render separate views, or a single view with cylindrical or spherical projection. When people use three monitors, they arc them, in the hopes of increasing immersion. The actual, correct positioning with current technology is a straight line... and it still looks like garbage. Each additional monitor yields diminishing returns of increaswd viewing angle, when people naturally expect a linear increase in viewing angle.
Peop,e really need to stop pushong multi-monitor gaming until it stops being complete crap.
and apparently he enjoys trolling us.
Compaq? Really? It'd be cheaper to just get a simple case, a half-decent MB with OC abilities, etc. and build it yourself. Seriously, add a front case fan to a microtower and the 240 will pull 3.5 GHz (tested with mprime for 48h) without problems.
Of course, I scale the OC back to 3.35 when it's in server mode.
Also, gaming and cheap are contradictory. Unless your definition of gaming involves modded controllers and flashed Xbox 360s.
Guess which one has more FPS/$ ?
proud caffeine whore
well i'm off to fry's to build a "gaming beast" from a clearance compaq and some debadged hp refurb monitors
hey though don't doubt my building skillz i'll need to break the "warranty void if removed" sticker from my compaq to pop that bad boy open to install my mid range graphics card ...
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
The post states that it runs the newest games at the highest settings. I find that seriously hard to believe. Fire up, say, RIFT. Throw a quad core i7 at it with 12gb ram and a $600 ATI and on a 30" screen in native resolution (2560x1600) you will get 20-40fps. And that's not even at max settings. That's at very high, but not "max" settings.
So I find it hard to believe that this system which came in at less than double the price of a current card but includes an entire system and three monitors could possibly come anywhere close to running both current games and at max settings. Unreal Tournament 3, as mentioned in the post? Quite possibly. But that's not so much "current" as it is, four years old.
The important thing is whether it satisfies the owner and gamer in question. If it does, then that's all that matters. But let's be rational about what we claim it can handle.
But it turns out triple monitor gaming hits the video card pretty damn hard. All those extra pixels and polygons seriously strain the GPU. So whatever a given GPU can do on a single monitor of a size, it is doing a good bit less on 3 monitors. What that means is you are going to lower your visual quality settings or lower your FPS.
A 5670? No thanks, that is not at all what you want for 3 monitors. You discover a fairly heavy hitting card is called for, maybe more than one card. A 6970 isn't too much for that kind of setup.
A mid-range card works pretty nice for a single, not-too-high rez monitor. It does not work nearly so well for 3 of them. Consider that a 1600x900 display is 1.44million pixels. That means 3 of them is 4.32million pixels. That is more than a 2560x1600 screen (4.1million). You really think a low-mid range card is good for gaming on a 2560x1600 screen? No? Then why would it be good for something even larger?
Also notice all his quoted frame rates are "one monitor only." What that says to me is "This thing blows when all three are used for gaming." So it really isn't a triple monitor gaming setup, it is "A computer that has three monitors that can play games on one."
You can get a good computer for $1000. Lenovo just spec'd us a lab full of Core i5 3.2GHz systems with vPro 500GB drives and 22" monitors for about $900 a shot. However you are not getting a good system for driving 3 monitors in 3D games for that price.
As for the speakers, don't even get me started. I cannot believe the junk most people use. They'll spend $1500 on monitors (3 Dell U2410s are popular for triple gaming setups) and another $600 on video cards all in the name of a "more immersive" gaming experience and then buy $30 crap speakers to play on. I don't know what it is. Same thing as people who drop $3000 on a premium high end bigscreen LED/LCD-TV, $400 on a high class Blu-ray player, $100 on useless Monster HDMI cables, then listen on the cheap included speakers.
What a waste of good internet space. Is this the awesome new low /. has to stoop to in order to find new material to publish?
>A system-builder, Dario D., built a triple screen gaming PC
"A man went into a shop and spent £1000 on a computer"
I'm glad I don't pay a subscription to slashdot.
I could not stop reading it in hopes that someone would post useful info like benchmarks and frame rates for some good gear. And, I am glad to see that this has happened. The bait post worked!
I'm really surprised that in a discussion about triple-screen budget PC gaming no one mentions AMD Crossfire (multiple graphics card support) or AMD Eyefinity (the feature that treats three separate displays as one combined display and which allows games that support it to properly run on all three screens).
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Did Taco even look at the article...one glance, one instance of the word Compaq should have sent this straight to the chopping block.
Already tried this in 1994 or 1995.
As 486's would suffice, I guess cone could do this at the cost of 2nd hand displays.
those fucking hyundais have a reputation for refusing to break down, requiring minimum maintenance, sniffing out gas, and going on and on for decades.
where i live, even a decade old models of those hyundais still go for prices close to first hand prices in the market. despite we practically have all the car brands that are produced in europe, and some of the ones from usa. (actually some of the european/japanese/korean brands are produced here and exported).
dont look down a hyundai. people here selling a hyundai, only to buy another.
Read radical news here
The guy bought a COMPAQ! How can you call someone a system builder for upgrading a graphics card and adding 2 monitors to a pre-built low-end Compaq?
Also, how can you post on Slashdot as "news" a forum post that gets so much bashing on that same forum thread? Oh, right, sorry CmdrTaco, didn't notice you there...
Since I had read about it when HardOCP had the also unfortunate idea to post it on their front page, I will give a quick overview of the things that were seriously wrong:
-The title was something about a "gaming beast", when it is a VERY low end PC with a low end graphics card.
-People noted that even when the system was bought, you could do much better than the Compaq machine if you selected the components yourself and should definitely do a little better in the spec department.
-People cited threads from 2007 where people where building triple screen machines for less than $1000.
-The author DOESN'T GAME ON 3 monitors, and hasn't even enabled eyefinity. There goes the "triple screen gaming beast".
-The author makes absurd claims about the fps he gets from games given his setup (even considering the fact he runs them on only 1 monitor).
And there was an amazing comment somewhere in there from the Author, who says something like his machine is a Lamborghini, just not the latest model, but even yesterday's Lamborghini is a force to be reckoned with!!!
Just some random guy, spending $1000, not making great buying choices, ending up with a "3ple screen gaming beast", that is not set up to play games on 3 screens and plays them with mediocre results on 1 screen. Then for some reason brags about it, getting bashed by most people but is appreciated by bored editors of geek/tech sites...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
a more powerful resounding tone than all of the propagandistic 'we're probably gonna die soon anyway' media drum beating & murderous rocket launching combined. the babys know what they want.
This is a system I put together less than a year ago. Yup, its a generation or two behind, but does very well with recent games and will handle any game from a year or two ago on very high settings, with high framerates.
M/B: Asus P5N-D (SLI Board)
CPU: E8500 clocked to 3.752MHz
GPU: Galaxy GTS250 (x2 SLI)
8GB RAM (667)
HD: 2x 500GB Raid 0
BLU-RAY Optical Drive
850watt Ultra (Tiger Direct in house brand) PS
24" Samsung
CoolerMaster HAF922 case
Now this sytem could handle a second 24" monitor with no issues if I had the desk space, but I dont. Sure, its older tech, but the machine really is quite fast for the money spent.
There is not much of an upgrade path of course (socket 775), but you could put in a quad and bump up the GPU's.
Sure, SLI generates some excess heat and whatnot, but the case has enough fan locations that you can make it sound like a hair dyer if you wish.
& MOST of the massacre/carnage coverage is being blacked out by numerous .UgovS? it's difficult to get a grasp of the reason we keep weaponizing EVERYBODY. if it was just money (obviously not) we could stop doing it? isn't there a ?profit (scary word?)? in effective child care facilitation, even besides the rewards of doing the 'right thing', even if it's only once, by mistake/under duress? forget about that population control/eugenics fantasy/aberration. you're already way out #ed (on more levels than can be counted), & your math... looks bogus.
Most people who are commenting negatively here and on the HardOCP forum are completely missing the point. This is a BUDGET gaming rig, built for running the latest games. Yes, he was a bit "overzealous" in his descriptions, I'll give you that, but considering some of the true "hardcore" gaming geeks would spend that much on the damn graphics cards alone, I think there is some value here. Not everyone can afford the "top, top, top of the line" $3,000 gaming rig, nor do many see the point in such an "investment" only to become "obsolete" in 2 years.
This overall pretentious attitude between hardcore gamers, calling each others hardware "crap" when it's more than 6 months or two models old really gets old sometimes...it really does. No wonder so many people gave up and went to console gaming.
"On it, I can run all at the same time: Unreal Tournament 3 (60-90fps at max settings, measured on one screen only), 3d Studio Max, Photoshop, and Firefox with 4 windows and 30 tabs open, without any slowdown"
But can it play a flash video on Linux without stuttering.
a gamer saying someone else shouldn't "play make believe"
Holy crap those responses in his thread are cuntish. The guy comes along, builds a reasonable rig for under a grand that looks nice and has 3 screens and they shit all over him with retarded comments like "nnnthis won't runn Rage onn super max duper settinnngs-hai". Half of the responses even openly admit to not reading his entire post. Never mind that most new games don't even take full advantage of new PC hardware anyway, being as they are built for the console lowest common denominator. As someone who recently (about 8 months ago) built his own 'gaming' rig for under a grand I certainly sympathise with his efforts.
Looking at the spec, I'm sure this PC isn't able to run all the current top games (unless you run at minimum resolution/settings at which point most games will look better on a 300$ PS3). The PC uses an ATI 5670 which was never, even at release date, considered a gaming card; even in XFire this thing would probably not deliver. Had the build included a 5770 and then added a 2nd one later on, the claim could hold some ground, but not this one.
Still it's a nice triple display setup.
How is multi-monitor gaming "complete crap" if it prints money?
With the PC, you can buy a game and people will still play it, sometimes even years later. Forget even that, with PC, you can at least buy a game and play it online *at all*.
With the consoles, you can buy a game and people will still play it, sometimes even years later. Case in point: People still hold tournaments for the 1999 and 2001 editions of Super Smash Bros. Forget even that, with a console, you can at least buy a game and play it shared-screen *at all*, as opposed to the PC market where game modes designed for home theater PCs, allowing two to four gamepads on an HDTV monitor, are an afterthought if even that.
I'm a logistics Manager for a trucking company with about 50 trucks. I built myself this setup to keep up with my multitasking. It's no special gaming rig but 3X 23.6" ASUS LED 1080p monitors makes for 70.8" of diagonal viewing space and with each monitor at 1920*1080 running UltraMon, I can multitask and run sentences together with unnecessary amounts of commas all day, long.
http://s1081.photobucket.com/albums/j353/rpretzel87/
http://i1081.photobucket.com/albums/j353/rpretzel87/2010-10-07_09-10-58_10.jpg
this particular photo is before I built my hutch to hold these fancy monitors in a cool configuration, but it exemplifies how my monitors are utilized. Gaming is pointless on 3 monitors I agree, in fact nothing I do makes much sense to span multiple monitors. Except maybe to stretch a loading bar 70.8" to make it look like it's loading faster.
I've upgraded to an SIIG black aluminum keyboard (very sleek and minimal) its like a black non mac version of the mac aluminum keyboard. Oh and a razor Mamba now takes over that green mouse you see with a blue wireless version.
So everything thats being ported to PC is now six year old graphics tech. It is no wonder that a modern PC that most of the budget is monitors can run all the 'top' games today, because the 'top' games today are no more graphically intensive then they were six years ago. I am a PC gamer only, and I haven't had trouble running a game in a long time.
I built a custom hutch for my 3 23.6" ASUS 1080p LED Monitors (10,000,000:1 contrast) that's 70.8" diagonal screen real estate. 5760x1080 resolution. as you can see it's not a gaming rig, gaming is not very practical for multiple monitors. Multitasking is the real venture here and it's a great help with that. http://i1081.photobucket.com/albums/j353/rpretzel87/2010-10-18_16-22-56_579.jpg http://i1081.photobucket.com/albums/j353/rpretzel87/2010-10-07_09-10-58_10.jpg hard to see how thin they are but it looks like cardboard from the back because they're all http://i1081.photobucket.com/albums/j353/rpretzel87/2010-10-18_12-03-39_953.jpg
http://s1081.photobucket.com/albums/j353/rpretzel87/
So here's the major problem with multi-screen gaming. Well, a couple problems actually. Prior to my build of a 3x 30" 2560x1600 gaming rig, I knew going in that one of the problems would be the same problem top gamers have had since the days of Robotron - too much screen real estate. Playing fast paced games, such as FPSs, multi-monitor set ups are actually a hindrance. I first experienced this with Robotron, in so far as the fact that the larger the screen, the more your eyes have to move. The more you eyes have to move, the longer it takes to react to a situation. The same goes for the fast paced games, but let me tell you on 7680 pixels of of view, something happening on the left that requires a response on the right becomes a huge problem. You just can't be competitive in things like FPS games on multiple monitors. I know some of you that think you're good at FPS will disagree with this statement, but the fact is you aren't as good as you think you are. The simple fact that you have wrecked your reaction time by having to traverse your screens from left to right is going to make you that much slower to react, or you may miss something all together.
The next problem with with FOV. Most games don't handle FOV properly across more than one monitor. Those that do usually handle it poorly. There are a few that handle it well. That's just in the FPS arena. If you go to RTS or other games where FOV doesn't matter as much, you still get the distortion but it doesn't affect game play nearly as much. However, again you have few games that support multi-monitor setups, and those that do usually handle it poorly.
In both cases, if you get around this by using an Eyefinity or NVidia's multi-monitor setup and present the game with one large monitor, game play just becomes wonky and a bit too big to move around efficiently. I haven't found a game that I like playing better on 3 monitors than just one monitor. I have since gone back to playing on a single monitor at 2560x1600 and find that game play is just as enjoyable and more efficient than the 3 monitor setup. I will probably try each new game I get in the 3 monitor setup, but I can't imagine what games coming out will be built well for that configuration. Until games start supporting multi monitors directly, there's really not any point in it, except perhaps driving or maybe flying games, which I don't really play.
To make multi-monitor gaming truly useful, I think what needs to happen is games A) need to support it natively and B) Allow elements of the screen to be moved where you want them. Right now, putting a HUD across all 3 monitors just makes the HUD information difficult to integrate, or in some games you can concentrate it all on the center screen, but then why have 3 monitors, since everything is happening on the middle screen anyway. Being able to move elements of things to the places you want them would boost the utility of a multi-monitor gaming setup dramatically.
Anyway, that's just my experience.
I've never met or heard of anyone who could hear with a hearing condition such that they can't hear the difference between cheap, extremely frequency limited speakers and better ones, or who can't localize audio behind them and so on.. They can hear the difference, they just get caught up in the screen for some reason.
I'm not saying everyone needs high end audio gear, or that everyone can hear subtle differences. However there are dramatic changes from really cheap speakers to normal consumer speakers.
Plus I've seen it myself many times. Someone will come over and hear games on my setup and say "Wow that sounds awesome," because they've been playing on tiny lil' cheap speakers.
I have a 5-monitor setup at home, mostly for the e-penis. The only games I know which can support multiple displays is Burnout Paradise and MS Flight Sim. Burnout can use three monitors, but it doesn't do it very well. It places the HUD on the sidescreens with no option to move it. Actually Doom1 also support three monitors, but you have to use VMWare and connect three computers in a virtual network. Does anyone know of any relatively new game that has real support for multiple screens? It would be nice to for example have the map show up on one screen in FPS.
11. Thou shall obey Da mighty Swing
He buys sub par parts and then spends 300 on a case .... 50-75 any more is a wast if you looking to do a budget build.
Q9550 and a 5870 is what I've got and I've turned up the graphics detail (HBAO is on though FSAA is not) and it runs real well in all situations. I'm not supre FPS sensitive, but for FPSes it has to be pretty good and it keeps me happy.
1) Buy motherboard with onboard video 2) Add dual port AGP video card 3) Have Windows/Linux use all 3x.
....
Christ, I expect to read this in People magazine, not on Slashdot
It's amazing all that relates to tools such as software or can tell the robot makes perfect and satisfying than pleasure. Sotware