2560 x 1600 x 3 - SLI ?

[sub0ptimal]

I am building a new computer and want to drive my three 2560 x 1600 monitors.

Current I use two older nVidia cards, with the center monitor on the faster card and the right and left monitors on the older card. When playing games, I disable the left and right monitors and just use the faster card.

What is the easiest way to get three monitors going for gaming? I know what SLI is but have never set it up myself. Is this the best solution?

 

[purple stain]

Are you trying to use 3 monitors separately or for Nvidia surround?

If your trying to do Nvidia Surround your going to need to invest a ton of money to be able to play at that resolution with playable framerates.

Here's what I suggest getting...

Gigabyte GTX580 3GB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125399

Of course your going to need 2 of those.

Tell us your full system specs(CPU,RAM,etc.) and your budget and we can better help you.

 

[CaedenV]

lol, that would be massive amounts of resolution! Only option would be 2 580's with extra vRam like purple said, or wait until the new cards come out in Q1 next year. But even with 2 580's you are still going to have low FPS with 3 high res monitors, but then again you could always just play on the main, and have desktop space on the others with no problem, and that would only require a 570 with extra ram (though SLi would help there too).

 

[gmcizzle]

SLI, or Crossfire under AMD cards, allows two cards to basically share frame rendering. So each card basically alternates turns each frame which gives you much more performance, but not quite double.

If you want to run 3x 2560 x 1600 monitors in surround then you need some serious hardware, assuming you are playing graphically demanding games. For that you would probably want 3x GTX 580 3GB in Tri-SLI, which will cost you a cool $1700-1800.

 

[sub0ptimal]

Thanks for the answers. Sounds like you need multiple beefy cards to make this configuration work. I'm happy with the single 30" monitor on my 560, so I will just stick with that.

 

[mightymaxio]

Other wise if you dont mind lowering the details a little bit you can get by with just one 580 gtx and use one of your older video cards to do surround gaming with.

You have to use a program called softTH which is a free open source program and this works by taking the beefer of the two graphics cards and does all the graphics processing on the card while the slower of the graphics cards displays it to the other two monitors. Ive used this program for about 3 years with great success and the framerates are good too.

Cool thing about this is you can attach as many monitors as you have ports on your computer for surround if you want. It configures each and every monitor and you can adjust the POV and other settings.

 

[sub0ptimal]

That was interesting. I tried softTH just now. Team Fortress 2 played ok at 7680x1600. I don't think I will keep it that way, but it was kind of neat to see the ginormous monitors in action.

 

[beltzy]

2560x1600 is about twice as many pixels as a 1920x1080 monitor, and you are tripling that amount. It's a lot of pixels to be pushed by a GPU. In an older or minimally gpu intensive game, something like a 560 can do this just fine. But if you start playing games like Metro 2033, AVP, or other titles that even the fastest graphics cards struggle with on a single 2560x1600 screen, you will get abysmal performance.

If you don't play gpu intense games like that, continue trying out games w your 3 monitors and your current graphics cards. If you're happy with the performance, there's no need to upgrade. If you find that you need more performance, consider your budget (which is probably large considering you have 3 $1,200+ monitors) and pick up the most horespower you can for the money.

 

[sub0ptimal]

My home office setup evolved over time. I started with multiple monitors around 2003 with 1600 x 1200 x 2. I got the 30" in 2006 and ran 2560 x 1600 with 1200x1600 (rotated) on each side. I added two more 30" this year on my main system, and two more 1600x1200, all bought used on ebay. So my main system is 7680 x 1600 and I have 1600x1200x4 mounted in a 2x2 array, that is shared between two other PCs and two Macs. So my home office has 7 monitors and no computers. (The computers are in another room)

If you think this setup is ridiculous, you and my wife can start a club of 2.

Thanks for the replies. Obviously, I don't have all this hardware just for game playing. I use it for my work. But I do like an occasional game of TF2 or Counterstrike. I will tinker a bit more with my existing hardware. I will probably wait until the next generation comes out next year and try to get two cards of the current generation at a discount.

 

[purple stain]

Well if possible be sure to get a card with more than 2GB of VRAM.Bare minimum is at least 2GB.

 

[ilysaml]

more than 2GB of VRAM.

More than ?

 

[Helltech]

More than ?

Yeah, like GTX 580 3GB.

 

[ilysaml]

Unfortunately, what i found out that even with 2D surround, a GTX 580s 1.5 GB is superb the GTX 580 3 GB maybe adds 1 or 2 frames more.

 

[sub0ptimal]

Best answer selected by sub0ptimal.