VIDEO: Nvidia's 3D Vision Surround Now Available

By Kevin Parrish
published

Nvidia's 3D Vision Surround has officially arrived.

Tuesday Nvidia's "Ntersect" blog officially announced the availability of 3D Vision Surround via the GeForce Beta v258.69 drivers. The report was also backed by separate announcements that MAINGEAR, CyberPower and iBuyPower have released PC bundles that support the new technology.

"Playing games in 3D Vision Surround is a unique immersive experience, across three screens, combining the best technology NVIDIA has to offer: GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs, 3D Vision, and SLI technology," reads the Nvidia blog. "The reason why I love working at NVIDIA is because we can make products like this which make gaming better. Trust me, you may have experienced 3D, but you have never seen 3D like this."

For those who want to build their own 3D Vision Surround rig, Nvidia points to the drivers which are located here, or the entire 3D Vision CD (v1.31) located here. The blog warns that GeForce GTX 295 users should expect problems with Quad SLI mode in 3D Vision Surround. "We are aware of these issues and we will be providing a future driver update to support this configuration," the blog said. "Of course, we also support 2D game play across three displays, but playing games in 2D is so… yesterday." Read: 2D is so 2000 late.

We also have a report up on Tom's Hardware from Chris Angelini entitled Nvidia 3D Vision Surround: Is This the Future of Gaming? As Chris points out in the article, building a 3D Vision Surround rig can get costly... even before upgrading/building the actual machine. "Three monitors, some number of glasses, a pair of GeForce GTX 480s--if you’re doing this right--and maybe even a stand," he wrote. "That’s $2,500+ before you even start in on the rest of your machine (which had better also be beefy, by the way)."

So are you pumped up and ready for your 3D Vision Surround experience?

Kevin Parrish
16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • hot skippy mo bippy I need more monies:)
    Reply
  • babachoo
    All I see are ugly bezels. There's no way I would EVER do anything, much less game with bezels. And Nvidia sucks compared to ATI. With my 5870 I can run three screens. To do that with Nvidia, you'd have to spend twice as much on graphics cards because their cards can only handle dual monitors.
    Reply
  • bebangs
    quote from Nvidia: "Your minimum GPU you can purchase would be two GeForce GTX 260 GPUs."

    I love you nvidia!
    Reply
  • warmon6
    babachooAll I see are ugly bezels. There's no way I would EVER do anything, much less game with bezels. And Nvidia sucks compared to ATI. With my 5870 I can run three screens. To do that with Nvidia, you'd have to spend twice as much on graphics cards because their cards can only handle dual monitors.
    a few things,

    1. how much do you actually notice the bezels? For me i dont even notice it when i look from screen to screen.

    2. You mentioned that you're 5870 can run 3 screens while nvidia need 2 gpus to run 3 screens. Seams you've forgot to check that statement. Yeah for most of there gpu's you need 2 cards, but not all. If you got a single gtx 295, you're set for surround and if there a GTX 495 in the future, i would guess the same thing.

    3. You also mentioned that you have to spend twice as much on graphic cards. Well there's 2 ways to view it. (1.) the way you viewed it, which is 2 gpus or (2.) you could view it as cost between gpus. If i compared 2 gtx 260 to a single hd5870. They would cost almost the same. Although if were looking at DX10 performance (DX 11 isn't to big yet) the 2 GTX 260 (216 cores) will out perform it. So which will be the better bang for buck? all points of views.

    4. How does nvidia suck? care to elaborate as your not very clear on it. Were you meaning in general or were you meaning on the surround vs eyefinity.

    If you were meaning surround vs eyefinity, Well then i could say ATI sucks due to they didn't support eyefinity on HD 47xx's and 48xx's like nvidia did with there GTX 260's and above or that eyefinity doesn't do any kind of 3d support.


    Next time, get all the facts straight before commenting. It does save people from looking like fools. ;) (one reason why it takes so long for me to respond when commenty to someone. i make sure my facts are straight.)
    Reply
  • dEAne
    wow I like this one, so what happen to my ati card, lol.
    Reply
  • airborne11b
    I agree with Warmon 6. I rushed out and bought 2 5870s to eyefinity setup on max settings. Their driver support was horrible even months after they released the tech to the community (not beta). Just about every "eyefinity certified game" for me, like BFBC2 and AVP, would crash constantly, even after several complete re-installs trying each of their past and present drivers.

    If you ask me, ATI might have came out with the tech first (Sort of, sense triplehead2go kinda did it first), but Nvidia has the chance here to do it right. I for one will never be burned by buying products from ATI again. Poor driver support for their flagship GPUs and horrible problems with their coveted eyefinity technology leads me to believe ATI doesn't care 1 bit about quality or their customers.
    Reply
  • airborne11b
    And as for the bezels, you don't notice them when you game (At least not on 3x 24" monitors. Your focus is almost always on the main screen, and you just get a sort of peripheral vision from the 2 side monitors. Extra vision you can't get with just 1 big monitor. Bezels are a non-issues imo, and now that I'm used to playing on 3x monitors, after I ditched the ATI cards I've been back to 1 monitor gaming and it feels like a handicap! lol Can't wait to test out Nvidia's Vision Surround.
    Reply
  • poorya_user
    warmon6a few things,1. how much do you actually notice the bezels? For me i dont even notice it when i look from screen to screen.2. You mentioned that you're 5870 can run 3 screens while nvidia need 2 gpus to run 3 screens. Seams you've forgot to check that statement. Yeah for most of there gpu's you need 2 cards, but not all. If you got a single gtx 295, you're set for surround and if there a GTX 495 in the future, i would guess the same thing.3. You also mentioned that you have to spend twice as much on graphic cards. Well there's 2 ways to view it. (1.) the way you viewed it, which is 2 gpus or (2.) you could view it as cost between gpus. If i compared 2 gtx 260 to a single hd5870. They would cost almost the same. Although if were looking at DX10 performance (DX 11 isn't to big yet) the 2 GTX 260 (216 cores) will out perform it. So which will be the better bang for buck? all points of views.4. How does nvidia suck? care to elaborate as your not very clear on it. Were you meaning in general or were you meaning on the surround vs eyefinity. If you were meaning surround vs eyefinity, Well then i could say ATI sucks due to they didn't support eyefinity on HD 47xx's and 48xx's like nvidia did with there GTX 260's and above or that eyefinity doesn't do any kind of 3d support.Next time, get all the facts straight before commenting. It does save people from looking like fools. (one reason why it takes so long for me to respond when commenty to someone. i make sure my facts are straight.)I am 100% agree with you , but do not attack people opinion .First of all I dont think that Nvidia looks AMD/ATI as any adversary or something.their first competitor is Intel (Please dont make me start on that).
    Second , I dont get it !!! this news means that you dont need any TH2Go for diffusing and sharing the screen?
    Reply
  • airborne11b
    poorya_userI am 100% agree with you , but do not attack people opinion .First of all I dont think that Nvidia looks AMD/ATI as any adversary or something.their first competitor is Intel (Please dont make me start on that).Second , I dont get it !!! this news means that you dont need any TH2Go for diffusing and sharing the screen?
    1. Warmon6 didn't "attack an opinion". The guy he was replying to didn't state any real "opinion", just random biased fanboi trash without stating any ryme or reason to his comments.

    Not referring to your post, but on the same subject, most people I see posting on these threads bash the triple monitor set ups before actually sitting down and gaming on them. With pictures and videos panned out, to show the set up, it really makes the bezels look like a lot more of a problem then they really are. When you actually sit down in from of a 5870 x 1080 set up, you can bearly notice (If you notice at all) the bezels while gaming with the monitors at normal distance you sit when actually at a desk gaming. I had a few friends say the exact same dribble of "I'd rather have a 40-50" screen instead of 3x 22"s or 24"s. Then they come over to my place and 15-20 minutes of running a game on 3x monitors they went home and ordered the parts to do it themselves. To any nay sayers, I'd suggest sitting down and actually running a good test a 3x monitor gaming system before making any comments on how bezel effects the quality. Just my opinion.

    2. Ya, Nvidia Surround = 3x monitors = 1 game view in ultra wide screen without Th2Go. Nvidia 3D Vision = 3D stereoscopic gaming. 3D Vision Surround is 3x monitors = 1 game in 3D across 3 monitors in ultra widescreen resolution.

    3.
    Reply
  • Chris_TC
    I must say I fail to see the greatness of three 24 inch screens. I would much rather have a 30 inch (2560x1600) in the center and two 1600x1200 screens in portrait on either side.

    Still waiting for a 120 Hz 1600p panel...
    Reply