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

Additional Hardware And Benchmark Settings

The filled platform looks ready-to-rumble, even before we added its drives and power supply.

The most controversial component will certainly be OCZ’s Z1000 modular power supply. Independently verified to deliver 1000 W at 89% efficiency, the controversy stems from its inability to support four cards natively, as it’s only wired to support three. It also lacks the 1200 W rating we would normally recommend as a minimum for four of these cards when using a lesser processor.

Originally intended for a three-way article, putting the Z1000 in a four-way configuration could make up for the lost coverage, so long as the unit survives today’s particularly harsh treatment. We got around its shortage of power connectors by adding a 6-pin splitter plus a 4-pin to 6-pin adapter (two things we don’t recommend to our readers). Our feeling is that if this unit can tolerate today’s four-way SLI test, it should at least be recommendable for any three-way SLI, single-CPU configuration.

Nvidia states that every monitor in a surround configuration must be capable of the same resolution and timings, but that's not the whole story. No combination of the four monitors we originally attempted to use would span successfully, in spite of that fact that each was capable of displaying 1080p at 60Hz. In the end, we had to track down three completely identical monitors for today's test. Many readers facing a similar situation will thus be forced to buy a complete set of three new monitors to replace their non-matching, outdated models.

We searched the Web for the best price-per-inch and found that a new crop of 1600x900 displays is displacing 1280x1024 in value, with prices starting at around $100 per panel. The 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 resolutions have both been displaced by 1920x1080 (1080p), starting at around $160 per panel. Since our 1600x900 and 1920x1080 resolutions were both designed for 16:9 displays, we added 1280x720 (720p) as an FPS-boosting alternative setting.