XP + Horiz-Span + 2 DH2G Digital + 4 24" LCDs?

Post by **BHawthorne** » 06 May 2008, 21:08

In my current system I went big screen over surround screen with initially a 24" Samsung 245BW. I got the itch again for surround screen gaming though, which I recently picked up another 24" Samsung 245BW.

I pondered a bit about upgrading to Vista + SP1, but I won't be able to span the 2 monitors in Vista because horizontal-span mode has been dropped. This caused me to look at the new(ish) DH2G Digital which states it can do 2 x 1920x1200.

Of course, that lit a spark of insanity and a "what if" in my mind...lol. What keeps someone from using 2 DH2G, 4 Samsung 24" 245BWs and horizontal spanning that in XP? I like the "big" monitor concept, but I'm also stuck on the "surround" concept too. This setup would allow for native LCD resolution on all 4 of those panels. Only real hangup I foresee is the video card is gonna have to be pretty beastly to push the pixels.

For now, I'm going to use XP + 2 Samsung 24" 245BW + Horizontal-Span mode. In a few months I'll probably pick up DH2G box #1 and begin getting a few of the other pieces to the puzzle. IMHO, big and surround concepts can be done at the same time. I suppose a few months down the road I'll have a bit more insight.

Anyone out there see anything I'm missing in the equation, or something I should change?

Tyinsar · Post by **Tyinsar** » 07 May 2008, 02:33

The problem I see with the DH2G is that you have a bezel in the center. Even with two of them and 4 monitors you'll still have that issue.

My solution was to go with 2 TH2G units in vertical span mode (3 wide x 2 high). Because of centered pop-up messages I notice the horizontal bezels more than I did with just the one TH2G but the screen ratio solves some of the issues with Vert- games.

The other solution would be to go to SoftTH but, from what I've read, that has other limitations.

Post by **BHawthorne** » 07 May 2008, 02:41

Neither TH2G nor SoftTH are reasonable solutions because of native resolution limitations or because of the software based hack nature of it. IMHO there is no hardware accelerated triple head solution for native 24". Bezel issues only come into play for 3rd person games. I'd prefer hardware acceleration at native resolution over the minor bezel annoyance I guess.

Tyinsar · Post by **Tyinsar** » 07 May 2008, 02:58

You are correct on both counts. I wish the TH2G supported more but...

I guess I should have added that I ended up using 19" (1280x1024) screens.

Other than what I mentioned I can't see another way around the centered bezel issue (other than using expensive high-res projectors). For me that's a show stopper.

Mergatroid · Post by **Mergatroid** » 07 May 2008, 17:16

Actually, I think you can run a TripleHead2Go out of 1 of your card outputs and just plug your 4th monitor into the other one and span across those.

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 07 May 2008, 17:31

You can't :( screens in span mode have to have identical resolution and such.

JKeefe · Post by **JKeefe** » 07 May 2008, 19:19

Correct.

For RTS-type games it might not matter that a 4-screen solution gives you a bezel down the middle. But almost every other type of game (FPS, racing, flying, RPG) sets the focus of the action at the center of the display, and then you are left staring at plastic.

ithrial · Post by **ithrial** » 07 May 2008, 19:36

I know with world of warcraft, you could have the four displays up with six monitors, and use the CT mod to shrink the rendered field down by the width of one of the side monitors

[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Decrease the width of the rendered area of monitor one say by 1680 pixels and it will move the screens and such to the other five screens...

not sure if any other games have the ability or not

Mergatroid · Post by **Mergatroid** » 07 May 2008, 20:19

Just a small warning:

The engine in WoW still 'renders' the entire screen area regardless of what you set your viewport to using ct_viewport. Even running the rendered area at 1280x1024 the game is still processing all 3360x1050 pixels.

Mark B · Post by **Mark B** » 07 May 2008, 21:33

We had 2 Th2Gos running 6 screens with a single nVid card in vertical span mode in the labs a little while ago.

Just for fun we were running Crysis across all 6 monitors seen as one. Frames-per-sec were okay, but indeed the bezels got in the way. :)

Tyinsar · Post by **Tyinsar** » 07 May 2008, 22:47

We had 2 Th2Gos running 6 screens with a single nVid card in vertical span mode in the labs a little while ago.

Just for fun we were running Crysis across all 6 monitors seen as one. Frames-per-sec were okay, but indeed the bezels got in the way. :)

You mean there's a chance I tried it before you guys did? :D I don't play FPS (due to motion sickness issues) but can imagine aiming would be a pain. I mainly play third person (almost completed Guild Wars, finally) and it's not too bad with that.

Would it be possible to create a TH2G that would support three rotated widescreens (preferably 24" but even 22" resolutions would be good)? I'm guessing the rotation could be done in hardware (though maybe not in the current version) but it might be easier (and cheaper) to make the hardware treat the screens as stacked (rather than as side by side) and then use rotation in the graphics card drivers.

Post by **BHawthorne** » 08 May 2008, 07:21

[quote]We had 2 Th2Gos running 6 screens with a single nVid card in vertical span mode in the labs a little while ago.

Just for fun we were running Crysis across all 6 monitors seen as one. Frames-per-sec were okay, but indeed the bezels got in the way. :)

You mean there's a chance I tried it before you guys did? :D I don't play FPS (due to motion sickness issues) but can imagine aiming would be a pain. I mainly play third person (almost completed Guild Wars, finally) and it's not too bad with that.

Would it be possible to create a TH2G that would support three rotated widescreens (preferably 24" but even 22" resolutions would be good)? I'm guessing the rotation could be done in hardware (though maybe not in the current version) but it might be easier (and cheaper) to make the hardware treat the screens as stacked (rather than as side by side) and then use rotation in the graphics card drivers.

It's cool to see people running 6-screen. For awhile I had a softth+th2g analog 5-screen setup, but it was pretty unwieldy with the 21" CRTs I used. :lol:

I'm one of the original th2g early adopters that bought it on preorder when it initially came out. I'm always a sucker for new technology. Especially doing things over the top for the "just because it can be done" coolness factor. :)

I think the big stumbling block is that the chips used in the DH2G and TH2G cap out before that pixel count. They simply don't have the bandwidth currently rotated or not. I do agree with you though that in an "ideal world" I'd kill to see a new TH2G that caters to the new 1920x1200 gamers. In the next year or 2 I truly believe the 1920x1200 resolution will be the market segment previously targeted by the 1280x1024 display. A TH2G with 3x1920x1200 and 3x1200x1920 would be a must buy for me. Market research would have to be done before anything like this could be humored as plausible though. I do believe HD is ramping up to critical mass for the average gamer now and that 1920x1200 will gain significant market share in the future. It only makes sense to target that new market with products.

On another note, I agree with you on the 1200x1920 rotated screen needing to be a target audience too. Not just the 1920x1200. I often use 2x1200x1920 horizontal-span in XP. IMHO, it's too cool. Going triple-head with that would be icing on the cake for me. It would put to shame any 30" currently on the market with a better pixel count.

While softth in this configuration is currently an option, I'm pretty cynical about softth. It's maintained by a single programmer as a personal project that on a whim he released to the world. He could just as soon on a whim fall off the face of the internet tomorrow and all softth users would have no alternatives. I see too many issues with implementation, limitations and future support to justify using softth as a critical component in such a triple-head setup. Closed source "one-man-band" software solutions are not the answer. There needs to be a hardware solution.

Somian · Post by **Somian** » 08 May 2008, 09:24

If you really want so many screen,s you could use one DualHead2Go and one TripleHead2Go, then set span mode in your (Windows XP?) Video driver. then you have five screens, and free look in the middle. you could also turn the screens 90Â° to incease the height. Works great with the Dell ones

so you*ll have 5x 1200x1920 which is 6000x1920 rez! :D

just keep in mind that you may have some problems in severwal games due to Direct X 9 resolution limitations.

JKeefe · Post by **JKeefe** » 08 May 2008, 15:59

As stated previously in this thread, screens in span mode have to have identical resolutions. Your solution won't work.

JKeefe · Post by **JKeefe** » 08 May 2008, 16:00

We had 2 Th2Gos running 6 screens with a single nVid card in vertical span mode in the labs a little while ago.

Just for fun we were running Crysis across all 6 monitors seen as one. Frames-per-sec were okay, but indeed the bezels got in the way. :)

Cleary the solution is to use a Parhelia to drive three TripleHead2Gos. :shock: :D :wink:

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 08 May 2008, 16:53

Given that one of the Asus 3870X2's has four dual-link DVI ports, and CrossFire, unlike SLI doesn't disable multiple screens, I'd love to see two of them in some eight-screen goodness as well. :D

Post by **BHawthorne** » 08 May 2008, 18:33

Given that one of the Asus 3870X2's has four dual-link DVI ports, and CrossFire, unlike SLI doesn't disable multiple screens, I'd love to see two of them in some eight-screen goodness as well. :D

Any information on how it handles spanning? Can it use those 4 video outs as one 3D area? I'm pretty much clueless on the mechanics of the ATI side of things.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 08 May 2008, 19:40

Yeah, I don't know much on that front myself - I've only ever used two screens at a time maximum. I've just seen some comments about it on forums.

If I could get my hands on that 3870X2, I'd see about scraping up four TFTs to try it out with.

Post by **BHawthorne** » 08 May 2008, 20:37

Cleary the solution is to use a Parhelia to drive three TripleHead2Gos. :shock: :D :wink:

Did I mention I prefer watching video, not slideshows? :twisted:

Yeah, I don't know much on that front myself - I've only ever used two screens at a time maximum. I've just seen some comments about it on forums.

If I could get my hands on that 3870X2, I'd see about scraping up four TFTs to try it out with.

Dispite my sig, I also do own a Phenom 9600BE, ASUS Spider 790FX mobo system. It has 8800GTS in it though. I'm not adverse to using what works. If 3870X2 would work spanning 3 I could move my 8800GTSes over to the Opteron 165, eVGA nForce4 SLI mobo system I have next to it. Problem is I suspect it wouldn't work. Most of us in this type of forum would have heard about it by now if it did.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 08 May 2008, 21:17

Yes, quite. :)

I suspect that it will work for 2D stuff - ie: Windows. But I also suspect that it won't work for fullscreen D3D or OpenGL. If it did, I bet it'd need a wrapper. There might be some luck to be had in SoftTH with it, or running games in 'fullscreen windows', as Hitman 2 and Contracts had to be run for widescreen resolutions.

...

I just ordered an 8800GT, as I was trying to go 'cheap' (it's an eVGA one, as it happens) and a 3870X2 was really pushing the definition of cheap right off the cliff... ;) ...so spending any more right now really isn't an option. :(

Because it's an 'Asus Special' graphics card, none of the stock type cards have the same 'four DVI' thing. It's that one card or none. If I could actually find it from one of the places I tend to order things, I might be tempted to buy it purely for testing purposes.

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