Other Surround Gaming possibilities

aryaba · Post by **aryaba** » 09 May 2006, 20:50

This Matrox TripleHead2Go looks great. However, it is not quite the "uber" addition that it could be. With that in mind, is this forum limited to just this device, or any device/combination of devices which could achieve the same result?

If it is for any device; I'd love to see someone set up a Gigabyte GA-8N SLI Quad Royal with three high-end graphic cards and three widescreen monitors. Then run it through its paces in a few games. I would like to see if it even works, or works with some tweaking.

First to do it, gets buckets of drool from everyone here. Wait, that doesn't sound like much of an incentive. Regardless, it would be really cool. Has anyone here done it? or seen it in action?

RichieG · Post by **RichieG** » 09 May 2006, 23:27

Hi aryaba,

The problem with what you want to do may be the multiple frame buffers and the ability to render across all 3 in 1 resolution of 3840x1024. Most games will use the primary graphics adapter and render to it's frame buffer. The good thing about SLI is that while the second card is being used it is not seen by the applications so it's like 1 giant frame buffer :-)

I am also pretty sure that you cannot do SLI with 3 cards ;)

aryaba · Post by **aryaba** » 09 May 2006, 23:31

3840x1024???? I was hoping for 5760x1200 (3x24" monitors). Would it necessarily be SLI?

RichieG · Post by **RichieG** » 10 May 2006, 00:51

Hi aryaba,

With 3 cards in the system Windows will see 3 cards in Display Properties each with it's own set of properties. Unless the Nvidia drivers allowed you to span across all 3 cards I don't see how you could do it. :(

aryaba · Post by **aryaba** » 10 May 2006, 14:33

Well, that truly stinks.

However, what would happen if you were in windowed mode, and just dragged the corners of the window onto the other desktops? How would games react? Would they just not display anything on the other monitors?

Has anyone tried this?

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 10 May 2006, 19:24

No one has tried it to my knowledge... but it's doable with two cards, theoretically - and four monitors...

Without SLI, too...

As long as Windows handles multiple monitors as one 'super res', then it should be possible to span one huge res across all the screens. Games that accept Windows resolutions as viable should support it...

JKeefe · Post by **JKeefe** » 11 May 2006, 18:55

Hmmm, windowed games might work...

The problem with SLI, and the problem that the TripleHead2Go solves, is that you can't use more than one video card to display a 3D application output (I assume this is because of the frame buffers that Richie mentions). I don't have an SLI system, but if I did I'd sure be annoyed that there were 4 video outs sticking out the back of my computer when 2 of them were useless for gaming (and the 3rd too, really, because dualhead gaming is almost always worthless). This is something that I feel should be fixed or added to SLI/Crossfire implementations. Spend $1000 on video cards and you should be able to game with the full capabilities of those cards.

But alas, you can't do that right now. However, Matrox has given us the TripleHead2Go instead, so now you can take the horsepower that SLI gives you and use the TripleHead2Go to pump all of those pixels to a triplehead display. The best of both worlds really, and IMO the TripleHead2Go is a gigantic advertisement for SLI. Of course, then you spend even more money...

Anyway, I'm not in charge here but I assume we would all like to here about any solution that can do what the TripleHead2Go can do. However, I do not believe there is any other solution. And that is precisely why everyone thinks this thing is so cool.

BTW, I think the 3D output from a single card only also applies to Quad-SLI systems. Thus, in that situation you wind up with an even higher "lack-of-capability to money-spent" ratio.

What exactly happens in a windowed game when you drag it across two monitors that are driven by video cards with different capabilities? If I drag a game window so that it spans a display powered by my 6800GT and a display powered by my 6200LE TC, are both cards accelerating the game? Does half of the window get a lower framerate? I doubt it, but I'm clueless here.

aryaba · Post by **aryaba** » 12 May 2006, 05:47

I was thinking about building a system with three 2405fpw monitors, three X1900XT video cards and the quad royal board from gigabyte. Not in SLI or Crossfire mode, but each video card dedicated to its own monitor.

I think this combination of hardware should be perfect. Assuming the game in question has a windowed mode, it should, in theory work. However, I'd rather not spend the money to find out that what I want to do with it is impossible.

RichieG · Post by **RichieG** » 12 May 2006, 14:58

Hi aryaba,

I did a little test for you.

I turned off SLI on my system and enabled the display on the 2nd 7800 I have and the 2nd display on the primary 7800.

So I now have 3 displays at 1280x1024.

When I start a game it automatically goes to the primary screen on the Primary 7800 and the other screens black out. Then I ran the same game (UT2004) in a window and tried to stretch it on the 2 screens connected to my primary 7800. The game ran fine. Soon as I stretched it onto the display attached to the 2nd 7800, the frame rate dropped drasically and the game became hard to play.

I hope this little test helps you in your decision :)

aryaba · Post by **aryaba** » 12 May 2006, 17:01

RichieG, that is interesting. Was the framerate drop seriously drastic? If so, it may have thrown itself into software rendering mode. If this is the case, that would indicate that any low-end graphics card would be about as good as a high-end one as it is now being processed through software (I think the CPU, but I'm not sure).

Thanks. My quest continues.

RichieG · Post by **RichieG** » 12 May 2006, 21:13

Hi aryaba,

I didn't record the numbers but I can do it again on Monday no problem and give you the numbers. I di not think that it went into software mode as all effects and scenes appeared to still be rendered. I think the slowdown came when trying to sync the 2 framebuffers so that part of the image is not ahead or behind it counterpart (not 100% sure about this but I think that is what's happening)

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