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Triple Monitor Gaming: Dual GPU GeForce Vs. Radeon
An anonymous reader writes "With the release of the dual-GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990, closely followed by the competing Nvidia GeForce GTX 590, we saw graphics card performance reach new heights. With bandwidth throughput in excess of 300GB/s, these cards can consume more power than entire computer systems. By utilizing three monitors, games can become roughly 3x more demanding, as the graphics card is required to render an overwhelmingly higher number of pixels. Whereas graphics card reviews and benchmarks usually test GPUs at single monitor resolutions, TechSpot has added two more LCD monitors and tested eleven games running at resolutions of 5040x1050, 5760x1200 and 7680x1600."
I'd have got first post, but I lost my browser window on my array of monitors.
For twice the $5000 it'll cost you for one of these cards and 3 x 30" monitors, I know a guy who's father is a consultant urologist and can give you a real manhood extension.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I bet the hoards of people that uses multiple monitors when gaming will be happy that they made this research..
But are more and more monitors the likely path gaming will follow? I just think a decent projector and screen might offer a more emersive experience. Particularly with prices and the size of projectors falling.
> By utilizing three monitors, games can become roughly 3x more demanding,
Hey wait what.
Do I see hyper mega ultra texturing here? (sorry John!) or eye blisteringly grindy 10 hours of game play?
(Didn't say games studio's because as an old semi retired software developer i know crunch mode well)
(and heck, even if you want multi monitor i really don't want a machine that sucks more energy than a big fat SUV to see a big stack o real estate for developing)
(Bring back gaming for the masses, and get serious about developing on low end gfx like Intel GPU - which seriously isn't as bad as people think - misery is VIA/S3 (curses and misery be upon them)
Andy
But are more and more monitors the likely path gaming will follow? I just think a decent projector and screen might offer a more emersive experience. Particularly with prices and the size of projectors falling.
I suspect not. The trend is for consumers to move from desktops to laptops for personal machines. Laptops are already the majority. Even some desktops are actually using laptop components, in particular all-in-ones and extremely small footprint, and budget machines using embedded video originally designed for laptops.
In addition to the obvious lack of expansion and upgrades, laptops are designed for power consumption not performance. Their video chips are generally at the lower end of the performance spectrum.
Apple has an interesting approach that others might also use. Some laptops come with two video chips. One optimized for power consumption intended for "normal" use and a second optimized for performance and intended for 3D gaming. With the thunderbolt port multi-monitor may be plausible. That said I think such machines are going to be exotic, less common.
In general I think game programmers and artists are going to be ever more frustrated as lower end embedded video chips become even more common among the target audience.
With the power of these (and other modern cards) it would be trivial for them to power a hi-def VR headrig. I would imagine latency would be acceptable (at least on the graphics output end, don't know about the head tracker).
So why hasn't anyone put together a truly awesome, truly IMMERSIVE experience? Instead of hitting keys (or moving a mouse or joystick, sorry I don't know, I'm not a gamer) you could JUST TURN YOUR HEAD, like in real-life (tm). Wouldn't this make game play a lit more fun and less wonky? Add a cheap plastic AK-47 a la guitar hero, add a few position sensors and voila! You've got something that's good enough for training!
What's holding it up? It's the lack of hi-def eyepieces isn't it?
Which is basically?
I RTFA and in the last page I found this:
"As is the nature of dual-GPU graphics cards, they sometimes suffer from the lack of multi-GPU support in certain titles. ... On the negative side, most games will have aspect ratio problems with multiple screen configurations and those that don't will likely need you to fine-tune the FOV (Field of View) setting. Another annoying issue which is very difficult to overcome in most games is stretched screens which lead to a fish eyed view of the game from the side screens."
In conclusion, to get good multi-monitor performance you need games that are *designed* for multi-monitors.
I'd love to have a racing simulation where one could put the front view in the central monitor and side-looking views on the other two. That way I could do just like I do in real life driving, turn my head to look through the side window.
I'm not arguing against it being more demanding, but ultimately it's about polygons more than it's about pixels. Something tells me the polygon count increases less than threefold.
While I am not a hardcore gamer, I do have a triple 24" monitor setup, and I have tried several games in 3-monitor mode. I find that it doesn't actually let you be better at a game, i.e. don't expect to gain a tactical advantage and blow your buddies to smithereens because you see more. As it turns out, a single 24" widescreen monitor already more than covers the field of view you can actually focus on. Sure, the total FOV of the human eyeball is a lot larger (>180 degrees horizontally), but the part where you actually see detail to the extent that you can consciously react to what you see is quite small. As an experiment, try to read some text on the bottom of your monitor while looking at a point near the top.
What the extra 2 monitors give you though, is a much more immersive experience. NVidia isn't far off when they call this "Vision Surround". The fact that the action now also fills a large part of your peripheral vision means you get a much more intense feeling of being "inside" the game. It's actually pretty cool.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
For that kind of money, I'd rather buy a bunch of hookers
Assuming that by buy you mean rent, as robfoo pointed out, how are you going to tell a hooker from an undercover cop looking to fill her quota for "patronizing a prostitute" tickets?
your reference docs rarely need to run at 60fps.
They do if you want scrolling through them to be pleasant and not laggy. See a recent Slashdot article about latency hell.
The original doom used to have a mode where you could run separate computers (connected to yours via serial or lan) with a command line option (might have been -left and -right), set up the monitors to the left and right of your main monitor, and have a 3 monitor setup. Real clustered gaming.
get serious about developing on low end gfx like Intel GPU - which seriously isn't as bad as people think
Tom's did a comparison, and even the higher-end Intel GMAs are roughly comparable to the GeForce 3 in the original Xbox or the Radeon 9000-class Hollywood GPU in the Wii.
I think the solution to multimonitor gaming (at least for FPS games) is to have reduced levels of detail in the side monitors. Since they're really only there to provide immersion and the player shouldn't be focussing on them anyway, it should be possible to show a lot less detail and still give the same "feel" to the player.
Why the 'need' for 3 monitors?
On the home front I have 2 28 inch monitors. I though about going with a 3rd along with an additional graphics card. (Currently running an OC' GTX280 that is still performing well)
Then I went off and picked up an new LCD tv. The old really didnt have a home. So.....
I hooked up 'ol 52 inch Sharp Aquos to the computer.
WOW!!!
Talk about 'immersive' and 'in your face.
99% of my gaming is driving/racing sims. And a 52 inch 'in your face' was so much better than my previous testing with two 28's (center bezel notwithstanding of course)
So I've concluded that I enjoy a single 52 inch rather than multiple smaller monitors and all the headaches that go along with such a setup.
The biggest advantage of a single 52 inch? HEIGHT! You simply dont get that perspective with multiple, smaller horizontally set up monitors.
In many games today there is little to no advantage to running games in huge resolutions compared to smaller resolutions. These games scale everything up so that you have a near identical experience as lower resolutions (save for the extra crisp renderings). Many games force you to change your field of depth in order to take advantage of super wide screen, and end up causing massive distortions that actually inhibit your gaming ability. The only games that I have found to be more enjoyable on multiple monitors are flight simulators.
Having a triple monitor 30" set up and having played games at 7680x1600, I've come to the conclusion for me personally that it's not worth the hassle. I have since gone back to single monitor game play for a number of reasons... some mentioned in the article, some not.
1. The fisheye on the side monitors if very pronounced. It's tolerable, but looks goofy.
2. There's a lot of screen restate, for FPSs, this is actually a hindrance. Having to move your eyes too much causes response lag and you become less competitive. For non-FPS games, things become a bit more useful, though... however, most non-FPS games don't support resolutions that high, so it becomes moot.
3. Those that do (Civ 5, sorta), things look odd. Since I only have a pair of 480GTXs driving the setup, things are also pretty laggy in the few non-FPS games that support that high of a resolution.
4. Power consumption... Even my system, as opposed to a single or dual 6990 system, draws more than 1400 watts from the wall with the graphics cards at max and all three monitors running. Throwing a 6990 or two onto that would approach 2kw power consumption; there is home wiring that won't support that, as the amp limit on a circuit is typically 15 amps. You are, seriously, risking setting your house on fire if you have anything other than your computer plugged into that circuit.
For me personally, I'd need a pair of 6990's to drive all three monitors at an acceptable frame rate and that's not something I'm willing to shell out for given my disappointment with the current state of games and their support of extreme resolutions. Until game designers decide (if they ever do) to support crazy resolutions and aspect ratios, it's really a pointless exercise, at least for me. I'll probably be sticking to 1 monitor gaming for the foreseeable future and save my other two monitors for actual work.
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In Nevada, it's legal, so you could just spend some of that $5k on a trip there.
I RTFA, it was a very nice soft sell of how one could still use windows. Having three monitors hanging off my Ubuntu 11.04 laptop causes the girls to stop and ask easy to answer questions about usage.