SLI Mulit-monitor support coming to NVidia...

Post by **wazoo** » 16 Sep 2008, 00:08

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38649/135/

Of course... no idea whether this means that you can utilize SLI on one monitor while your other monitor(s) stay active.... or whether it will do what the TH2Go does.... but in drivers.

Here's hoping it is the latter..... :D

tama · Post by **tama** » 16 Sep 2008, 09:19

So the TH2Go may become obsolete?

Post by **scavvenjahh** » 16 Sep 2008, 11:11

Hold on. You'll finally be able to use all (?) video outputs of an SLI setup, like you can use both outputs of a single card. So you'll be able to run a 3D game on a screen, and not have other monitors go blank while you play. Other than that, no evidence of "TripleHead capabilities" for SLI setups...

Post by **BHawthorne** » 16 Sep 2008, 15:09

Actually, I'd state that there is no evidence at all in any direction what they mean by this until it's out. It's not good to make assumtions in any direction.

Post by **Downtown1** » 16 Sep 2008, 16:41

Didn't we have this exact same thread a few weeks ago? It just means you'll finally be able to have SLI on and not have to turn off output to your other monitors.

Post by **wazoo** » 16 Sep 2008, 18:07

Didn't we have this exact same thread a few weeks ago? It just means you'll finally be able to have SLI on and not have to turn off output to your other monitors.

I didn't see another thread on this....

As an aside... I wonder how this all might effect SoftTH. Currently you cannot use SLI with that product... wonder if this might change that....

Post by **scavvenjahh** » 16 Sep 2008, 19:03

I don't think so. SLI is like using several cards to make a more powerful one. SoftTH still needs two separate cards, used for different tasks afaik. This Big Bang 2 thing won't change nothing to that.

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 16 Sep 2008, 19:15

I think it was an ATI thread, I know we have had this discussion at least once possibly more. Nothing new... yet. I aint hoping high.

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 16 Sep 2008, 23:02

I think right now it's mostly speculation.

For all we know it could just mean that the multiple outputs work in desktop till you start a 3d game, so you don't have to lose real-estate while not gaming.

When's that v180 supposed to be released anyways?

Vroshnak · Post by **Vroshnak** » 17 Sep 2008, 20:22

As an aside... I wonder how this all might effect SoftTH. Currently you cannot use SLI with that product... wonder if this might change that....

As an aside, that is not true.

SoftTH works with SLI.

I currently run SoftTH using two 8800GTX cards in SLI, and my side monitors connected to a 8400GS.

It involves a trick... you turn off the hardware profile of the 8400GS, then set the 8800GTX cards in SLI, then reenable the 8400GS, and voila. There's a guide at nvidia zone here: http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?showtopic=14989

NOTE: You must create an account there to read the guide.

Mergatroid · Post by **Mergatroid** » 18 Sep 2008, 16:43

I think it's safe to assume that this will not replace the TH2GO simply because, in Vista at least, monitor spanning (where windows only sees 1 monitor, instead of dual view where windows still sees 2 monitors) is not now and never will be possible, according to nVidia. I think they are talking about quad-view, not spanning.

MatroxRulez · Post by **MatroxRulez** » 18 Sep 2008, 20:02

I think it's safe to assume that this will not replace the TH2GO simply because, in Vista at least, monitor spanning (where windows only sees 1 monitor, instead of dual view where windows still sees 2 monitors) is not now and never will be possible, according to nVidia. I think they are talking about quad-view, not spanning.

Maybe it's impossible to span across multiple GPUs, but I don't see any reason why they couldn't do it on a single card system. However, for triplehead gaming it would probably require triplehead or quadhead GPU (or GPUs in SLI-mode).

According to Matrox, their new M-Series graphics cards will support stretched and independent desktop modes, in both Windows Vista Aero and Window XP.
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/media/pdf/products/graphics_cards/m_series/en_mseries_datasheet.pdf

Yui · Post by **Yui** » 18 Sep 2008, 22:03

I am using the triplehead2go with CrossfireX with no problems. When I run a 3d game, my 4th monitor(connected to the 2nd dvi) does not go black and still works.

Post by **BHawthorne** » 20 Sep 2008, 04:40

I think it's safe to assume that this will not replace the TH2GO simply because, in Vista at least, monitor spanning (where windows only sees 1 monitor, instead of dual view where windows still sees 2 monitors) is not now and never will be possible, according to nVidia. I think they are talking about quad-view, not spanning.

Personally, I think neither nVidia nor Microsoft wanted to implement it. Ofcourse Vista can span through drivers. SoftTH does it. I'm sure it could be done a lot better though CUDA optimized implementation though. It's just an issue of both nVidia and Microsoft passing the buck to eachother because they won't justify the trouble to do it. Microsoft changed a few things in DX10 and then nVidia didn't want to follow up with a new implementation of spanning. If nVidia really wanted to, they could implement spanning through any port. The limitation would be pretty much the same bandwidth limitations SoftTH has card-to-card though.

funk192 · Post by **funk192** » 09 Oct 2008, 19:57

If nVidia really wanted to, they could implement spanning through any port. The limitation would be pretty much the same bandwidth limitations SoftTH has card-to-card though.

I don't see any reason why they couldn't use the SLI Connector instead of the PCIE Bus. I mean when running in SLI, both retain the same data in memory anyway & wouldn't be adding much more data transfer between them through the SLI Connector, so I can't see why they couldn't do it that way.

MrCrowley · Post by **MrCrowley** » 10 Oct 2008, 11:30

I don't see any reason why they couldn't use the SLI Connector instead of the PCIE Bus. I mean when running in SLI, both retain the same data in memory anyway & wouldn't be adding much more data transfer between them through the SLI Connector, so I can't see why they couldn't do it that way.

The SLI connector is there for a reason. When running in SLI, both retain mostly the same data, but not exactly the same. ThatÂ´s because both gpus are rendering differente frames, with -many times- some different textures (obviously not all) and polys.
If one of both gpus need a texture (for ex) wich is in the other gpuÂ´s memory, that can be transferred by SLI connector instead PCIE.

Anyway, with a good implementation at a graphic drivers level, it could be much more efficient and compatible than SoftTh.

Post by **Mach1.9pants** » 16 Oct 2008, 22:15

Here is a preview...
http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/Nvidia_Forceware_180_Series_Preview/6110.html

tricky · Post by **tricky** » 19 Oct 2008, 19:28

So far my new pc (built in Jan) has been able to run everything triplewide in SoftTH without SLI enabled (no benefit to SLI+SoftTH, have to go TH2GO to see benefit of SLI).

However, high detail + 1680x1050 in Brothers in Arms Hells Highway is beginning to push my pc limits (on the cutscenes a little choppy, gameplay is smooth), so I would really benefit from SLI + multimonitor support as I am WAAAAY too lazy to reboot in between enabling SLI (no multimonitor) and disabling SLI (yes multimonitor).

Will try it out as soon as I can.

Vroshnak · Post by **Vroshnak** » 21 Oct 2008, 18:48

Official support would be nice, maybe I'd see a performance increase.

But I have multimonitor and SLI anyways (using a third video card).

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 22 Oct 2008, 06:26

We'll see how the official support goes once the 180 are fully released. Unfortunately so far it seems to be a case of 'only the big name games that payed us for it will be multi-screen sli enabled'

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