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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."
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.
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The problem with intel cards is that the drivers are buggy as hell. Just try and develop for them. You quickly find out that its not DX anything compatible.
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In shooters, you don't look with your head, you look with your mouse. Since the side monitors are just adding the peripheral vision surrounded feeling, they could be run at a lower resolution and you shouldn't loose much of the experience. 1920x1200 for your main monitor and 960x600 on the side monitors means that the two extra monitors only adds 50% more pixels and shouldn't bog your video system. Alternately, this means you could use a lower-powered dual-output video card for the side monitors.
You are missing the point. No, you can't see well reading text on the bottom of the screen while focusing at the top. Neither is your color discrimination going to be as good for that text at the bottom of the screen. That's because the eye doesn't have many cones except in the central area. The periphery is mainly rods. And while rods aren't great for color, etc, they are spectacular at motion detection. So no, you can't read that text way over to the side while focusing your attention on something directly in front of you, but you can see movement over on the side. Which may alert you that someone is moving over there, or there is an incoming missile over there, or any number of things which may be important information to have.
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.