Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi everybody,

I'm from Germany and new to this forum - I really hope that I haven't lost sight of any corresponding thread and also hope, that you can give some answers to my questions.

Here's what I'm thinking about: I plan to change my graphics card (GeForce 260GTX) into an ATI 5870 and set up three screens with the eyefinity feature.
At the moment I own a FullHD screen (28") with 1920x1200 resolution, my hardware specs are: Core2Duo E8400, Mainboard Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3, 8GB RAM, Vista64 / W7 64, 600W beQuiet power supply, Cooler Master Centurion 534 midi tower.

And here are my questions:

[list]
[*]Is there really such a big difference regarding the need for performance between 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 ? Of course, I'd rather stay with my already existent 28" TFT (1920x1200) and buy two further screens than sell the one 28" and buy three new 26-27" screens with 1920x1080 ![/*:m]
[*]Do I need to upgrade my CPU as well ? Maybe it's the bottleneck in my system - I don't know whether it's necessary or not. I could upgrade to a Core2Quad Q8400 oder Q9400 which is supported by my board.[/*:m]
[*]If buying an ATI 5870 - which model/manufacturer should I take ?[/*:m][/list:u]

I mostly play the following games and want to set as most details and effects as possible: Crysis, NfS Shift, Dirt2, CoD MW2.

What do you think about my plan ? Should I give the 3x 1920x1200 resolution a try or should I better go for 1920x1080 screens (which means more bucks....) ?

Now I hope that my English was good enough to explain what I'm planning resp. thinking about :wink: !

Thanks in advance !!!

[list]
[*]Is there really such a big difference regarding the need for performance between 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 ? Of course, I'd rather stay with my already existent 28" TFT (1920x1200) and buy two further screens than sell the one 28" and buy three new 26-27" screens with 1920x1080 ![/*:m]
[*]Do I need to upgrade my CPU as well ? Maybe it's the bottleneck in my system - I don't know whether it's necessary or not. I could upgrade to a Core2Quad Q8400 oder Q9400 which is supported by my board.[/*:m]
[*]If buying an ATI 5870 - which model/manufacturer should I take ?[/*:m][/list:u]

1 - Performance between 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 is almost identical. The 1080 resolution has about 10% less pixels, but it has a slightly larger FOV (thus rendering more objects on the screen). I stopped benchmarking both due to the negligible difference. Here are the last two articles with 1920x1080:

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/Widescreen_and_Surround_Benchmarking_Suite
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/WS_and_WTH_Benchmarking_(Core_i7_920_and_9800_GX2)

2 - Might be a good upgrade. Not totally sure. What's the cost on those CPUs.

3 - Everyone is basically making reference boards for the 5870 at this point. Choose a manufacturer you like, or that people have had good experience with. I can't say as all my boards are reference designs from ATI. The 2GB Eyefinity6 is coming soon. You might wait for that. Also, I think someone else is producing a 2GB 5870 board. If anything, I would try and get a card that has 2GB of VRAM per GPU.

Thanks, Ibrin !

If the difference btw. 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 isn't THAT big as you pointed out, I will of course stay with my 28" (Hanns.G, 1920x1200) and buy another two screens with the same resolution.

What do you think when the new 2GB cards will come up ? I haven't heard about that until now !
I hope they will not be this expensive like the 5970 cards !