Widescreen Gaming Forum

weird... maybe leave the refresh rates alone? why do you need to create those for each display? are they all different? I know that will cause issues.. or at least I read it can..

I finally got my 2nd 295 today after some hunting around, and I am finding myself wishing I would have sold my first one off and moved to the 400 series. :-(

Setup was very smooth and easy, however I was sad to learn I couldn't dedicate my 4th GPU to my extended desktop/physx, it insists or dedicating the entire card. I had 0 issues getting bezel management or my resolution to work, I ended up grabbing my Matrox box and plugging in just the USB portion of it to get PowerDesk to let me use the desktop management to get my bezel compensated desktop with proper dividers, etc. Upon unplugging the device, the powerdesk clears my divisions though! So it's going to be a paper weight on my desk for now. :roll: I'm planning on picking up one of those EVGA UV Plus+ things to get my extended desktop back - but does anyone know if those will work with surround enabled? If not, there's no point. :-( I don't want to game on it, I just like having that extra screen for monitoring my hardware ingame.

Setup aside, game performance was downright terrible. Crysis was unplayable across 3 screens, unless i turned the settings down to medium/low. Left 4 Dead (the first one) performed very bad as well, cranked up all the settings with 4x AA expecting it to be nice and smooth, but that was not the case, 9-20 FPS all around. I tried dedicating GPU4 to PhysX, and to the CPU, I saw little difference in performance. Currently using the 258.96 drivers, Win7 64bit. Hopefully my performance will increase with newer drivers. I may have to start using the matrox box again in the mean time, though. *shudder*

Thermals were fine, idled in the high 40s and sat in the mid 60s in-game (air cooled), but my GPU usage never broke 40% on any of the GPUs. Didn't seem like a CPU bottleneck as it's usage stayed in the 30 to 50 range as well. :- Hoping to see some better optimization for dual 295s in the future... it's pretty poor now. :(

Well, I had an itchin' to play a racing game today, I tried to play GRID today with NV Surround and found myself having the game crash right after the splash logo, "GRID has stopped working and needs to close" generic windows error.

After 3 hours of trying different fixes on the steam support forums, I disabled NV Surround, and "activating all displays" - the game launched, so I tried hooking up my monitors up to the TH2Go and without even rebooting the game started (I didn't take the time to get 5040x1050 working with the TH2Go, though. Used 1024x768x3.) So I went back to NV surround and edited the config file to just launch at 1680x1050 and it still wouldn't launch. >_<

So, has anyone else played GRID with NV Surround enabled?

GRID has a known issue with bezel correction in Surround in the 258.96 drivers. It's in the release notes.

Disable bezel correction completely and apparently GRID loads fine.

Ah! So it does. Thanks so much. I really do need to start reading them patch notes..

Not sure why you needed to plug in any hardware to use Matrox desktop management. I downloaded and installed the utility and it works perfectly fine with no Matrox hardware attached.

L4D has some known issues, I thought, with latest drivers. Maybe something particular to high textures. And obviously Crysis is not going to run well at high across three screens.

Games I know aren't working for me in Surround at all, freezing up before even loading:

GRID (apparently the bezel correction issue)
FIFA 09
Quake 4

Wings of Prey worked at first, now it just strangles itself and reboots my computer, no idea what happened there.

On another note, NFS: Shift looks really sweet in Surround.

And obviously Crysis is not going to run well at high across three screens.

Crysis runs fine around 40 FPS at 5040x1050 DX10 all maxed + AA4x with tri-sli of GTX 480.

Not sure why you needed to plug in any hardware to use Matrox desktop management. I downloaded and installed the utility and it works perfectly fine with no Matrox hardware attached.

It would say no matrox hardware detected when I clicked on desktop management. Still even did it after I did a clean install of windows 7.

[quote]And obviously Crysis is not going to run well at high across three screens.

Crysis runs fine around 40 FPS at 5040x1050 DX10 all maxed + AA4x with tri-sli of GTX 480.

Back when I used my Matrox box and a single 295 GTX I could run Crysis on high with no AA and pull around 15-40 FPS. Granted, that was DX9, but even if I add the -DX9 tag to a Crysis shortcut and try to do the same thing with two 295 GTX, Crysis is completely unplayable. The framerate is initially very smooth 40+ FPS, but any movement of the camera, firing the gun, right clicking to look down the iron sights, or running around causes 2-5 second hangs, and then when the hang ends the game is very smooth again; however this goes away completely medium on all settings. Shaders seem to be the culprit of the hangs.


After some further testing of other games, it seems I get terrible stuttering in ALL DX10 games. Just Cause 2 sees stuttering even at the main menu because of the 3D elements, and it's constant and very annoying. DX10 Crysis and DX10 Metro 2033 both see the exact same kind of stuttering. I also see it in Anno 1404. The stuttering happens at pretty much all video settings if the framerate dips below the 40-50s with DX10 enabled (which it frequently does as all 4 GPUs are almost always slackin' off at around 15-30% usage.) Again, stuttering is completely eliminated at all framerates in DX9, cept for JC2, since you can't run it in DX9.

After some further testing of other games, it seems I get terrible stuttering in ALL DX10 games.

Thats pretty weird, are you running 2 x GTX 295 ? Maybe you should consider upgrading to SLI or 3-way SLI of GTX 470/480.

[quote] After some further testing of other games, it seems I get terrible stuttering in ALL DX10 games.

Thats pretty weird, are you running 2 x GTX 295 ? Maybe you should consider upgrading to SLI or 3-way SLI of GTX 470/480.


I am running 2x 295. I have indeed considered upgrading to 470s or 480s, I was hoping to see some good performance with 2x 295s, but it has been quite the opposite. I will probably hold out a little longer before making a switch, maybe future drivers will present better performance with the dual 295s. I'd like hear from anyone else trying dual 295s, see if I am the only one experiencing these issues..

Yes, but the 896mb VRAM doesnt help at all.

Yes, but the 896mb VRAM doesnt help at all.

896? The GTX 295 has 1792mb VRAM. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130510&cm_re=295_gtx-_-14-130-510-_-Product

896? The GTX 295 has 1792mb VRAM. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130510&cm_re=295_gtx-_-14-130-510-_-Product

Hehe thats a common mistake m8, it has only 896mb of effective VRAM (that you can really use), the "other" 896mb can be only used as a mirror by the second GPU, the same happens in all SLI and Crossfire setups. :wink:

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=153&p_created=1101314489&p_sid=e8mBPa9i&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTI3JnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX2ZubCZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWRvdWJsZSBtZW1vcnkgc2xp&p_li=&p_topview=1

yep.. it really is two cards on one pcb with no vmem sharing..

Hmm.. didn't know that. So that means with even two 295's I'm only getting 896 VRAM? This also applies to 480s so they only have 1.5GB with 2 of them instead of 3GB?

Very interesting. Never heard of that before. I feel jipped! :P

Hmm.. didn't know that. So that means with even two 295's I'm only getting 896 VRAM? This also applies to 480s so they only have 1.5GB with 2 of them instead of 3GB?

Yes, thats it, with 2 x GTX 295 you have 896mb of VRAM, thats 600mb less than a SLI configuration of GTX 480. :wink:

[quote]Hmm.. didn't know that. So that means with even two 295's I'm only getting 896 VRAM? This also applies to 480s so they only have 1.5GB with 2 of them instead of 3GB?

Yes, thats it, with 2 x GTX 295 you have 896mb of VRAM, thats 600mb less than a SLI configuration of GTX 480. :wink:

Indeed, I'm sure the 480s are also faster than the 295s for other various reasons too and I'd love to get my hands on a pair, but truth be told, the 2nd 295 was also my most economical option to gain access to NV Surround (I picked up my 2nd 295 from a good friend for only 200 dollars, as he moved onto a 480 himself). It would have cost me at least twice that to move onto the 400 series for a pair of 460s, or three times that for some 470s, or 5 times that for two 480s.. In time, I suppose. But I'm probably stuck with these 295s for awhile. Going to go make a post on the NVidia forums to see if I can find anyone else experiencing these issues..

Edit:

Hmph. A poster over at the Nvidia forums pointed out that Quad SLI with the 295s isn't even supported currently, and according to the system requirements page I suppose he's right. Sort of reassuring, and not reassuring at the same time. Hopefully drivers will see some improvements for my setup in the future, once they are officially supported.

Crysis runs fine around 40 FPS at 5040x1050 DX10 all maxed + AA4x with tri-sli of GTX 480.

It doesn't on GTX460s. I dunno what the problem is, as everything else runs fine, but for some reason if I turn 1920x1200, 4xAA, 16xAF, Very High on... it loads, runs for a bit then crashes. Without 4xAA it's fine. 6064x1200, 0xAA, 16xAF, Medium runs great, though. Haven't tried it higher yet. I think with AA on it's running out of VRAM and dying as it reports in the developer debug display 1700MB VRAM usage? It breaks 1200MB at 1920x1200...

It doesn't on GTX460s. I dunno what the problem is

I think two GTX 460 dont have enought "cojones" for a game like Crysis on DX10 all maxed at ultra wide resolutions.

Not enough VRAM was the issue. More soon.