Nvidia 3D Vision Surround: Is This The Future Of Gaming?

Benchmarking 3D Vision Surround

You’re going to see fewer benchmarks here than you otherwise might in a GPU-based review. Much of this is a direct effect of 3D Vision Surround’s compatibility. 3D Mark Vantage, Crysis, Aliens vs. Predator, and DiRT 2 are all titles we’d normally include. But because they don’t render properly, you’re realistically not going to run them in 3D. It’s a small consolation that you’ll at least be able to play in Surround 2D.

To show off what 3D Vision Surround can do (and to demonstrate how quietly a pair of GeForce GTX 480s can really run in SLI—a claim that I corroborated in my GeForce GTX 480 Update), Nvidia brought over a beautiful machine built by Digital Storm. The Core i7-960-based processor was overclocked to 3.8 GHz, opening up plenty of headroom for graphics performance. The Raven RV02-based enclosure (complemented by a few custom touches by Digital Storm) is well-suited to a high-end graphics configuration, since it exhausts hot air out the top.

Bear in mind that the benchmark results with Eyefinity 6 listed don’t refer to a six-display array, but rather a pair of Radeon HD 5870 2GB boards driving the same three displays as Nvidia’s Surround (2D) arrangement, so it is, in fact, an apples-to-apples comparison.