Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey WSGF, I'm new to the forum and the whole surround gaming concept.

I'm actually looking into the surround idea, I have some money saved up and am definitely interested in a surround gaming PC.

Now, I'm trying to decide whether or not to look for a good deal on a (hardly) used / custom built PC - One thing that I have found is running these specs, I'm curious to see how much it's going to cost me to bump it up into a functional 3D Surround setup (running 23'' monitors(?), not sure which resolution that would translate to, on games like Just Cause 2, Black Ops, etc). I also am not going too over-the-top unless I can for the price I'll be paying anyways, no need for 150 FPS here lol . . just stable smooth gameplay.

USED PC Specs - Total Price: $750, pick-up & pay in person, will see / test PCs functionality before paying.

-Quad Core AMD Phenom II AM2+ 940 Black Edition 3.0Ghz CPU
-Zalman 92mm dual bearing CPU cooler
-NZXT Zero Full ATX Tower Case
-ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe Tri-Sli Motherboard (PCI-Express x16 2.0 running at 16x,16x, and 8x on 3 slots in tri-SLI; or 16x on 2 slots in standard SLI)
-2x2GB G.Skill DDR2 800Mhz Ram
-MSI GTS 250 1GB “Twin Frozr” Edition 675Mhz Graphics Card (running @ 775Mhz) SLI-able
-Antec 850 Watt True-power Quattro Power Supply
-Western Digital Caviar Blue 640 GB Hard Drive
-Pre-Installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OS
-Logitech MX-518 Gaming Mouse
-MS Media Center Keyboard
-Sony DVD drive /CD Write & Re-writable Drive

So that's $750, I would save a couple hundred bucks at least from what I can see (based on what newegg has in stock) if everything is like-new and running it might be worth it rather than going through the building process myself.

I've been talking with the owner of the PC and he said it would probably be a good idea to go for 2x GTX 470's or 480s, then using the GTS 250 as a dedicated physx card. (I would most likely just run 2x 470s at most, I've read that will run 3d-surround fairly well in most scenarios, and I have very little intentions of upgrading to dual/tri 480s in the near future.

That would add an additional $600-1100 depending on the cards, totaling up to around $1350-1850.

Now as far as monitors go, I would hopefully be running 3x 3D monitors (unsure on make/model, but I was looking into ASUS VG236HE Black 23" Full HD 3D Widescreen LCD Monitor, priced at about $350/each on Newegg.

Aassuming that setup would run well . . the project would cost me roughly . . $2400-2900.

I'm assuming the RAM should be upped to 6-8gigs. Unsure on whether or not the 850w PSU would be sufficient as well. Not including that I also have no idea whether or not the quad-core 940 3.0ghz BE CPU would handle all of this without putting a hardcore overclock on it . .


So, the overall question, what would I need to replace? Anyone have any similar specs I can compare it to? Depending on whether or not I'm going to replace half the PC it would probably just be better to start from scratch on newegg. However I have very little hands-on knowledge of PC Hardware and it would be a complicated and confusing process as far as compatibility and actually assembling it goes (assembly is the least of my worries, but I'm sure something would go wrong, lol).

Your thoughts? Thanks in advanced, I'm definitely lost on this one and could use some extra non-bias input, since the only person helping me at this point is the one who gets $750 if he can make it sound like a good buy for my situation.

With a 64-bit OS, you don't really need to increase the RAM. Other that that, get a pair of 470s or so, and some 120Hz monitors and 3D Surround should be doable.

However, 3D has a large impact on framerates, as does Surround. Combine the two, and you're probably looking at framerates a fifth or sixth of what they would be on a single '2D' monitor. :(

I suppose the forum didn't register the response I tried to post earlier. Anyways, basically what it was . . .

Any idea what sort of frame rate I could expect on a rig with this setup? 3x23'' 120hz 3D Monitors, 2x470s and switching the 250 to a dedicated physx card. . .

As I said, I'm not looking for an insane frame rate, just a steady 30-40FPS (on the graphic-intense games, black ops, just cause 2, crysis if that's still considered intense for most gpu's) . . have proven to feel like smooth gameplay compared to my mediocre expectations, is there really any reason to aim for higher? Other than . . maybe just getting ahead of the current games and screen recording.

and I'm assuming since nobody laughed at the post in general that it wouldn't be a bad idea to buy the pre-made PC (assuming all is well with it)? Since I will hopefully be using all of it's original parts.

You are looking at 19x10 x 3 screens x 2 hz. I would expect roughly 1/6th the FPS of 470 SLI at that resolution. So you can look at benchmarks and do the math.