Nvidia Surround - good or bad move from 3D Vision

[Michaeljcox24]

Not really got into the 3D Vision, so thinking of selling 27" Asus VG278H monitor I bought earlier this year (and another 27" Illyama) and the glasses, and going for Nvidia surround with 3x 24 inchers

Currently running 2x 1.5GB 580's in SLI, would they have enough grunt or am I looking at having to upgrade to the 3GB's?

Also, what complications might I encounter (I read somewhere that in surround, gpu load is permanently 100%). Are all modern games compatible?

Thanks in advance.

 

[KING_OF_SAND]

depends on the game you play. if you plan on getting surround you will need at LEAST 2gb for most games that use it. The more the better.

 

[Diablo]

Not all modern games are compatible, but most are. 2GB is probably the minimum needed, as my 5970s would regularly start to complain with Crysis even with AA off. GPU load will be nearly 100% in any scenario where the game isn't CPU limited so at high resolution you will be at 100% load. On the other hand if you set Vsync on, they won't be.

For something like BF3, very little will have the power, but for Skyrim, a single 680GTX kicks out decent frames even at 8xAA with FXAA as well.

 

[Terodius]

Hey I've bought 3x BenQ XL2420T screens but now I find myself at a crossroads. If I go the nvidia way, I will get nvidia 3D vision surround, but the low memory on the 680 would severely limit me. On the other hand, I could go with a pair of 7970s which would have both the power and memory necessary to driver that many displays, but then I'd lose the 3D. so what to do....

 

[Ya93sin]

Maybe just wait a bit, with the 5xx series they released high vRAM versions, that would sort of kill two birds with one stone, it's just you would have to wait.

 

[Terodius]

Maybe just wait a bit, with the 5xx series they released high vRAM versions, that would sort of kill two birds with one stone, it's just you would have to wait.

yeah guess I'll be using the displays as regular 120Hz and not use 3D for now. The thing is I doubt my 2 6970s will be able to pump out 120FPS on 5760x1080 anyways so I have these screens without really having the hardware to properly drive them.

 

[Vicey]

I've got it and the thing that annoys me most about it is the UI's on games not centering. TF2 is the game I play most and I've gone to great lengths to get it looking like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7299662/ctf_turbine0023.jpg

A lot of config editing. Some games like Battlefield 3 work with it fine. But due to Video RAM limitations I can't play it maxed out. This is similar story with most newer games like Metro 2033. I can't even play BF3 on Medium at 8120x1600 due to the 1.5GB of Video Memory my cards have. I think I'd need more than 2GB even. maybe 2.2-2.4GB.

NVIDIA has supposedly fixed the Windows Task Bar in the new drivers that launched alongside the GTX 680 so that it centres on the middle display while Surround mode is active but I've not tried those drivers yet myself.

In my opinion it's pretty neat to run but the issues with it get at you after a while and in my own setup I've stopped using it and re-purposed one of my monitors for my Laptop. It's a shame but maybe in a few years with more developer support it will be more worth it. Right now feels more of a gimmick at-least to me.

 

[Ya93sin]

A lot of config editing. Some games like Battlefield 3 work with it fine. But due to Video RAM limitations I can't play it maxed out. This is similar story with most newer games like Metro 2033. I can't even play BF3 on Medium at 8120x1600 due to the 1.5GB of Video Memory my cards have. I think I'd need more than 2GB even. maybe 2.2-2.4GB.

Metro 2033 won't play to well on a stock 580 tbh, so many people used to have issues with it. BF3 is a bit of a RAM eater too :/