Widescreen Gaming Forum

I have three Dell 2001FP’s on an Ergotron arm.
Used to push them with a Parhelia(AGP), then a Parhelia Apve(PCI-Express) with the hope that Matrox would continue developing SGU for the Parhelia. Unfortunately, the Par is just too hardware and DirectX limited. It did give me enough of a taste to know that I want to game in surround though! Now have an SLI board and a single 8800GT which brings me to the following crossroads:

1) Add a TH2G and get gaming on triple LCD’s. This was my original intent and I game at 1280x1024 so the resolution cap shouldn’t be an issue. ($320)

2) Add a TH2G and second 8800GT for SLI. That much of a performance increase over a single 8800GT when used with a TH2G? ($520)

3) Skip the TH2G for now and upgrade my center 20â€

I would try the SoftTH approach (assuming that its not a banning hack) with the 3 20" monitors. Pickup a lower end 8000 Series Card from Tiger direct or somewhere...Something like the 8600GTS. you'll be able to get 4800x1600 resolution for $50. your 8800GTS should be more than powerful enough to push that resolution without having to sacrifice too much quality in the in the screen...if you really wanted high resolution with surround gaming, you could get a new Mobo with three x16 slots, get the 8600GTS and another 8800GTS and run them in SLI (I think you can push two monitors in SLI, just not more than two...one on each card...not 100% sure) Also, you can get 22" monitors from ecost.com for around $200...I picked up a Samsung Syncmaster 22" for $208 out the door...TFT Screen with DVI...cant beat it with a stick

Laters

I just may give the softTH a try since it won't cost me anything but time and tweaking.

I am ordering the second 8800GT to do SLI; just can't pass that up. I'll try it in non-SLI and see how it drives the SoftTH. I googled some video on a couple posts showing softTH and I didn't like the lag the two side-screens displayed but that may be due to a less power card driving the surrounds.

I may build a another rig this fall based on the 790i chipset, triple graphics slots, .45nm Quad and DDR3 and whatever flavor of card is on top at the time. Just can't cost justify jumping into that arena with the early adopter pricing on one or two much less all four components right now!

Built this rig(in sig) because the Q6600, 680i, DDR2 and 8800GT was just too good to pass up.

Thanks for the response ithrial. I'll take a look at the Syncmaster if I go that route.

Cheers!
-Sketcher

Sli disables all but one monitor of the 4 outputs, not 1 on each card.

Sli disables all but one monitor of the 4 outputs, not 1 on each card.

Yes, that is what I understand.

ithrial wasn't sure so I posted it anyways :)

Personally, I'd get the DTH2Go with your 8800. My 7950 pushes what I play just fine. I'd imagine the 8800 would do even better. It won't push Crysis at max DTH2Go, but not much will. Depends on what you like to play.

See I wasnt sure how it would work...you would think though that since they work as one, they would have the same amount of outputs as one card...Has it ever been confirmed if you can use a Dual Head 2 Go, push two monitors at 1680x1050 and attach the third monitor to the second port and run spanned...I thought it wasnt possible since span forces the two displays to have the same resolution...

Sli disables all but one monitor of the 4 outputs, not 1 on each card.

So I can't use two 8800 GTX (for example) to plug4 screens to my PC, and ill have even less DVI ports than before (2), because it's only one if using SLI? why don't they just disable all of them? At least the benchmarks would run grat on it :roll:

I should have pulled the trigger on the 2nd BFG 8800 GT.
Was $179 after MIR last night and is $199 after MIR today :(

You can use 2 gtx's to have 4 screens, but not with SLI.

I'm doing that at the moment to experiment with softth and oblivion.

Anyone know how to get back the custom resolutions part of the nvidia drivers under vista? rivatuner's been no help at all.

Either that or a way to remove any use of the monitor/plug and play ID detections, so it doesn't prevent using a res. the monitor can display but doesn't report as such.

Borrowed an 8800GT from a friend; running in SLI.
Sweet juniper berries in July this is nice.
haven't run any benches but completely smooth play w/all settings high and 1600x1200 in COD4 (i know, COD doesn't push the engine). But it's all i'm playing at the moment.

Personally, I'd get the DTH2Go with your 8800. My 7950 pushes what I play just fine. I'd imagine the 8800 would do even better. It won't push Crysis at max DTH2Go, but not much will. Depends on what you like to play.

Thanks for the feedback Ibrin. I'm mostly into FPS and I haven't tried Crysis yet. I've downloaded the demo now that I have hardware worth trying. I think I'm going to buy the 2nd 8800 GT and then go for the DTH2Go in a few weeks. Now that I'm running SLI I just don't want to do without the 2nd card :cry: .

I think I'm going to hold off running the cards separately and trying SoftTH too(at least for now). Decided I'm not interested in constantly tweaking configs and messing with enabling switches in-game.