Gaming Across Three Screens: GTX 460, GTX 480, And Quad-SLI

[JonnyDough]

The problem is consistency, as it appears that CPU overhead has reduced the configuration’s maximum frame rate under moderate graphics load in a way that really hurts any analysis of average performance.

In other words, todays top processor with an overclock still cannot keep up with where the graphics industry is at. Granted, that is four top graphics processors paired with one CPU. I wonder what it would be like on a two processor system without any proc to proc bus latency issues?

 

[Guest]

How about a triplet of 1920 x 1080 monitors side by side but each rotated to portrait mode giving a 3240 x 1920 virtual display. That's close enough to a 16:10 ratio. There are a number of monitors out there that'll rotate. Is it possible with the software though? Hmm.

 

[williehmmm]

I would like to have seen 3D surround benchmarks. My experience with my single screen 3D vision GTX470 sli setup is that I usually get a 30% drop off in FPS rather than than the expected 50% drop off that i used to get in my 8800GT sli setup. I'd be interested to see this confirmed.

When setting up a 2D surround setup I too encountered issues with non compatible monitors. I did eventually get it going but x3 CRTs and big bezels wasn't very attractive.

With the price of LCD TVs getting ever cheaper, it'd also be interesting to hear of a surround gaming setup based on x3 32"/40" TVs. We're gonna' need a bigger desk! Or even better x3 40" 3D TVs.

C'mon Toms, indulge us.

 

[caeden]

Could someone out there with some money try something? Ive always though the best way to do multi-screen gaming would be to have 4 screens with the ones on the edges on end, and the two in the middle between eachother (like so: |=|). The top one would mostly be a sky view, with the center bottom screen being your normal screen that any single monitor player would see. The idea being that the side screens would better fit the field of vision, and adding the surround field without it being super skinny.

Also, remember back in the day when Matrox tried promoting this with the Parhelia card? It never worked well, but it was still neat for it's day.

 

[Zerk]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]If you read the entire page, it says that.[/citation]


Yea? I'll check, Thank you!

 

[subpk10]

i dotn get y the 4-way sli is getting worse results than he 3-way sli.
wat is going on here???

 

[williehmmm]

[citation][nom]subpk10[/nom]i dotn get y the 4-way sli is getting worse results than he 3-way sli.wat is going on here???[/citation]

I remember back in the early days of multi core CPUs, which were actually multi CPUs. It was estimated that for 2 CPUs the share the workload and communicate with each other, there was a 25% overhead, so where 1 processor could peform 100 tasks per second, 2 would pnly perform 75 tasks each, a total of 150.

With 3 CPUs that became a 33% overhead, so each cpu would perform 66 tasks, a total of 198.

With 4 CPUs that overhead was 50%, so a total of 200.

The returns diminished to the point that it wasn't worth going to 4 CPUs. With multi core CPUs and applications coded properly to use them, that overhead for communication has been largley overcome.

Whilst 4 GPUs still stretch their legs at the highest resolutions and detail settings, clearly the overhead lost for communication between the 4 cards hurts performance a little at lower resolutions and detail settings where the cards are not maxed, yet the 4 way communication must still be maintained. Never to the point where the loss in frame rate make the game unplayable, but it's still not what you would expect.

 

[eagle07]

I have a 5870 and I run 3x samsung 2343's for 6144x1152 I am running Moh 2010 on high at ~6400x1152 (bezel compensation) and getting ~50fps

Its smooth... and if you can find those monitors they are ~$200 a pop... so $600 for monitors and $400 for gfx is a far cry from the setups listed in this review.

 

[geogan]

Can you redo this comparison and add in ATI5970 and Battlefield Bad Company 2. And if you do make sure you use 10.5 driver - later ATI drivers use either 60% or 0% of second GPU - the 10.5 driver uses 99% of both GPUs and I can play BC2 at full Eyefinity 6136 x 1080 resolution (with bezel correction) at very acceptable framerates with only a single card.

6136 x 1080

GPU1 99%
GPU2 99%

1xAA 16xAF

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
3819, 60000, 54, 74, 63.650

2xAA 16xAF

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
3392, 60000, 47, 65, 56.533

4xAA 16xAF

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
3134, 60000, 42, 60, 52.233

 

[geogan]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]That was three, and as with this article two of the cards were borrowed.[/citation]

Where is this article - I'd like to read it....

 

[jjb8675309]

yes I agree with the above, I wish there was more 5870/5850 what about 5770 crossfire or more would be nice to see how it fairs comparatively for a low end setup. 3 gtx 480s seems to be a huge waste of money but id rather go for 3-d than a 3 monitor setup which is essentially what the 3 monitors is doing by immersing your peripheral vision in the game lol. There is no relative value displayed in this article without any competition from other setups, even though its understandable that toms does not have time tp cover every possible angle and aspect of the analysis.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]hipshotau[/nom]could dual 4890 HD's handle 3 1920x1200?[/citation][citation][nom]JonnyDough[/nom]In other words, todays top processor with an overclock still cannot keep up with where the graphics industry is at. Granted, that is four top graphics processors paired with one CPU. I wonder what it would be like on a two processor system without any proc to proc bus latency issues?[/citation]These games don't benefit from a six core, let alone the 8+ cores you'd get from a multi-CPU platform. The CPU scaling issue is purely a clock rate vs IPC issue, where the only way to fix it now is to overclock more and the best way to fix it in the future is to update the game engines for enhanced multicore support.[citation][nom]williehmmm[/nom]I remember back in the early days of multi core CPUs, which were actually multi CPUs. It was estimated that for 2 CPUs the share the workload and communicate with each other, there was a 25% overhead, so where 1 processor could peform 100 tasks per second, 2 would pnly perform 75 tasks each, a total of 150.With 3 CPUs that became a 33% overhead, so each cpu would perform 66 tasks, a total of 198.With 4 CPUs that overhead was 50%, so a total of 200.The returns diminished to the point that it wasn't worth going to 4 CPUs. With multi core CPUs and applications coded properly to use them, that overhead for communication has been largley overcome.Whilst 4 GPUs still stretch their legs at the highest resolutions and detail settings, clearly the overhead lost for communication between the 4 cards hurts performance a little at lower resolutions and detail settings where the cards are not maxed, yet the 4 way communication must still be maintained. Never to the point where the loss in frame rate make the game unplayable, but it's still not what you would expect.[/citation]Not certain on the numbers, but it's otherwise the best explanation I've seen.

 

[dEAne]

wow if I have builds just like these I don't know what happen to me.

 

[iamtheking123]

"Our biggest disappointment came from the monitors themselves. Playing at 1080p across three monitors is akin to sighting your enemy through a gun slit."

Bingo. For gaming, I think it's far more practical to go with a single large monitor that you can actually focus on without moving your head or using peripheral vision. Sure the "immersed gaming experience" feeling is fun for a little while, but I'd rather play to win than play to be impressed.

PS - And I'm also getting sick of this "my ---- is bigger than yours because I have 3x24" monitors! 2 monitors? What are you a 5 year old?".

 

[rubberjohnson]

[citation][nom]adonn78[/nom]My Monitor is 16:10 and does 1920x1200 like most monitors. What we need is monitors with larger aspect ratios such as super wide large monitors.[/citation]
Like this but smaller http://www.hughsnews.ca/philips-unveils-219-cinema-proportion-3d-hdtv-009672#more-9672

 

[Guest]

Great article.

I definitely appreciate exploring these alternative gaming/display system setups. Though I haven't had the opportunity to game on any surround systems yet, I would certainly welcome the opporunity.

I do feel I might agree with the viewing "through a gun slit" comment though, and would really lean more towards turning the 3 monitors for 3-P surround, as discussed on .

However, I am at least as interested in Nvidia 3D Vision for which portraite mode will not work.

I would really like to see a Tom's HW article which explored the hardware required (SLI and CPU) to optimize support for gaming (with mainstream games like BFBC2) on a Nvidia 3D Vision/projector based system. It wouldn't offer the same surround/degrees of vision (unless you used 2 or more projectors), but playing games on a 3D screen (or wall) at 60" or 100" across I feel would have it's own immersive benefits.

 

[youssef 2010]

I don't understand what Nvidia is doing.First, they enable surround exclusively for SLI setups and Now, they force you to buy three identical monitors in order for surround to work correctly.Are they giving us reasons to stay away from their GPUs or what??????

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]wasabiman123[/nom]What's wrong with gaming on one bigger screen instead, more than one screen for gaming is overrated IMO, I do think however that Nvidia's 3D vision is a really cool idea and has great potential in the future.[/citation]

so did the guy who said that the telephone is a stupid invention & the guy who said that no one would need more than 6xx KB of memory

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]youssef 2010[/nom]I don't understand what Nvidia is doing.First, they enable surround exclusively for SLI setups and Now, they force you to buy three identical monitors in order for surround to work correctly.Are they giving us reasons to stay away from their GPUs or what??????[/citation]I hear that "nearly identical" monitors from different brands also work...

 

[Guest]

Why didn't they show Eyefinity compared to NVIDIA's solution? To be honest, eyefinity is a much better cost-efficient and energy-efficient solution. I mean, we've all seen the benchmarks that showed only marginal differences between the 5870 and GTX 480, and a $100 difference in cost . So I think they're worth comparing for multi-monitor functionality due to ATi's relatively low-cost, high-performance solution.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]IOA94[/nom]Why didn't they show Eyefinity compared to NVIDIA's solution? To be honest, eyefinity is a much better cost-efficient and energy-efficient solution. I mean, we've all seen the benchmarks that showed only marginal differences between the 5870 and GTX 480, and a $100 difference in cost . So I think they're worth comparing for multi-monitor functionality due to ATi's relatively low-cost, high-performance solution.[/citation]This was an SLI scaling article that used three screens, coinciding with the fact that TH staff happened to have four cards in one place. Look for future articles on ATI after its new products launch.

 

[taso11]

This was an SLI scaling article that used three screens, coinciding with the fact that TH staff happened to have four cards in one place. Look for future articles on ATI after its new products launch.

I think the article you wrote was well done and it provided a lot of information. The people that complain that you didn't do this or that are being unreasonable. It wasn't the end all mother of all surround display articles. It is what it is and it showed me what would happen instead of buying 4 GTX 480's and finding out myself. Thank you.

 

[pibm]

Why aren't they using good monitors ? I've been running 7680 x 1600 for WoW almost 3 years ago, and since NVidia support native surround, I've been using 7980x1600, as it's rendering the 'bezel width' natively, thus everything looks perfect.

Anyway, 3 * Dell 3007WFP is the way to go

 

[Guest]

Guys...this is all great...but the human eye is incapable of seeing details finer than 720p resolution. The only thing a higher resolution offers is larger screen sizes. This will only have an impact if you are using 50 inch displays or larger. Thus, you really only need the 720p resolution settings.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]EpicHeadShots[/nom]Guys...this is all great...but the human eye is incapable of seeing details finer than 720p resolution.[/citation]You mean all at once? I never thought about that, I only think about the SPOT that I'm focusing on that looks blocky.