PC upgrade for 3D gaming

Trist_58

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Hey everyone,

I am in preparation for upgrading my PC for 3D (stereoscopic) gaming.

My concern is if my current workstation (used mainly for 3D animation) will be up to scratch for this sort of thing.

As many of you will know, 3D gaming effectively halves your frame rate, especially in modern high end games.

I have found this to be true experimenting with the anaglyph method (using both TriDef and NVidia 3D) playing The Witcher 2 - I reverted back to 2D because the refresh rate was just too laggy.

My attitude is if I can't get a perfectly smooth 3D effect then it's not worth doing it at all.

The display I am planning to get is a 1080p LED 3D TV, probably an LG of around 50" in size (I need a good display anyway for my stereoscopic animation projects)

I was wondering what part of my current setup is holding back the performance of my 3D gaming - I'm assuming it's either the CPU or Graphics card.

Here are my current components which I believe to be most relevant to this issue:

Intel Core i7 860
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB
16 GB Princeton DDR3 RAM
Crucial M4 256GB SSD (dedicated to software/games)

If anyone has an idea of what parts need upgrading for this to work out well please let me know.

Thanks in advance.


 
Solution
"TruMotion 200Hz/240Hz" is nothing more than a HDTV that accepts either 50Hz input (Europe) or 60Hz input (North America). The output is still 100Hz or 120Hz. The extra 100Hz or 120Hz comes from the backlight flashing on and off like a strobe light in a nightclub.The strobing effect is supposed to make images sharper.

Your i7 could be overclocked and be very effective. You have plenty of ram, and the SSD is nice for fast load times. However, that 285 is 2 generations old and your weak link.

You need to make sure that TV will give you a 120hz input. I have seen tons of posts of people asking about one TV or another, and none of them ever offer 120hz at 1080p. That means it has to support dual link DVI or displayport. If it does not, it will not work at 1080p at 120hz (or 60hz per eye).
 

Trist_58

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I don't know much about overclocking, but there's probably some info on Tom's on the subject so Ill look it up.

I will now look into a new graphics card, I just need to be sure that it can also function as a 3D animation card but I think most NVIDIA cards are suitable for this (PhsX and CUDA are both utilized by 3ds max).

Any ideas regarding the sort of video card I would need for my games machine?

I hadn't actually considered the refresh rate of the TV but I spose that's pretty important too.

Anyway thanks heaps bystander for the informed response!
 
I personally do 3D vision with Nvidia cards on an i7 920 overclocked to 3.8Ghz atm. I find with two 470's in SLI at factory clocks, most games are quite good on 3D vision, but games like the Witcher 2 and Crysis 2, and Metro 2033 require me to use lower settings than I'd like. However, 3D vision at lowered settings looks better than max settings without.

Basically what I'm saying is about the minimum power you'd want to run 3D vision is a single 580 and it won't get you max settings in a lot of games.
 
There are no HDTVs that accepts more than 60Hz input. A 120Hz HDTV simply takes the 60Hz input, then does video interpolation so that the frames are doubled from 60 to 120, then the result is output to the 120Hz screen.

This makes movies/video look smooth. But the video interpolation will cause input lag because it takes time to process interpolated frames. This is why you should switch your HDTV to Game Mode or 60Hz.

Effectively speaking, a 3D HTDV used for games will result in at most 30 frames per eye. This is primarily due to the video input being limited to only 60Hz (60 frames).

 
There are a few 27" 3D monitors. I have one by Acer and I've seen them with Samsung too. I'd advise looking at those instead.

TruMotion 200hz is not going to allow for 200hz in 3D vision. It's a movie/TV thing that generates extra frames with it's software, but does not except 200hz worth of FPS from a computer.
 
"TruMotion 200Hz/240Hz" is nothing more than a HDTV that accepts either 50Hz input (Europe) or 60Hz input (North America). The output is still 100Hz or 120Hz. The extra 100Hz or 120Hz comes from the backlight flashing on and off like a strobe light in a nightclub.The strobing effect is supposed to make images sharper.

 
Solution

Trist_58

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The LG's I'm looking at don't say anything about DVI or Displayport input in the specs. It is a shame if I can't get the setup I have in mind to work out. I wanted a really big display that I could use for my work, play 3D blurays and 3D games aswell. A 27" 3D monitor is an option, but I like the look of the LG's passive LED TV's.

@jaguarskx I BELIEVE YOU!

I think Ill wait till next year and see if the technology has improved, 30hz isn't enough for smooth gaming.

Anyway, thanks guys for all your help.
 

Trist_58

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...Im back.

I have decided to probably just go with a 3D monitor instead of the TV, this seems like the best solution for my needs. I think the best one available where I am (Australia) is the "Acer HN274H 27in LED 120Hz Monitor", unless I will see passive systems arrive on the market soon.

It's obvious to me now that I will need a more powerful graphics card to get decent performance with 3D games. I am just wondering if anyone could give me a good idea of the best sort of GPU setup I will need for this.

The new NVIDIA 590's look good if a little pricey, or would it be better to combine two lesser cards such as the 570 (for around the same price)?

Also note that my mboard is a bit dated, I have the asus p7p55d le which supports crossfire but im not sure if this is the same as SLI and if the newer NVIDIA cards will even be compatible.

Thanks to all for your help so far.