Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi all. Im planning to build a 3d surround system with projectors.
I will be using the acer x1130p projectors which have a resolution of 800x600 natively.

The question is as above really..

Ive seen reviews where people test at 3x 1920x1200 etc and dont feel it can quite hold up if you have some post processing but will gtx 460 sli be able to provide sufficient horsepower 3d surround at 3x 800x600.

cpu is i7 930 with 6gb ram

My feeling is that it should comfortably manage this but i have no data to back this up.

does anyone have any opinion / facts regarding this?

In my opinion, yes, it will be plenty of gpu power for that resolution

In my opinion, yes, it will be plenty of gpu power for that resolution

This + 1

Strange question, 2400x600 is a low resolution by todays standards (1.44mp), of course its fine. For context even 1680x1050 is 1.7mp. Look up any review and you will see even single GTX460s with no problem upto 1920x1200 (2.3mp) in most games (obviously not Crysis etc).

You are only pushing slightly more pixels than 1280x1024, look at that area in Reviews to get a feeling of performance.

PS: You are comparing 1920x1200*3 to 2400*600*3, you do realise thats a difference of approx 5.5mp (nearly 400% more)!
5760x1200 = 6.9mp
2400x600 = 1.44mp

I get the feeling you assumed it was half the pixels or something a lot closer.

As he's using projectors, that's why the res is so low. :)

As he's using projectors, that's why the res is so low. :)

Yeah I know, but still means he will get away with lower power GPUs than he thought!

Thanks for all the responses!

I had previously done a quick calculation and noted that pixel wise, the count is a lot less so assumed that 460 sli will cover it. Reading reviews, it sounds like due to the lower resolution, I shouldnt have to worry about the vram side of things either.

I figured it would be helpful to get some people with experience of surround gaming to shed some light on this.

I've been wanting to do surround stereo gaming ever since i first tried stereo gaming way back with my old edimensional glasses!
Finally the tech seems to be allowing this with some level of maturity.

I decided I should build a new pc before my mortgage starts!

The full-fat 3d surround set up with the HD screens and the 480 sli looked very cool but also incredibly expensive and I really couldnt justify the outlay.

After doing some research, it seemed like quite a good idea to go down the route of surround 3d projectors

The ones I've bought, acer 1130p, seemed to be at a good price (similar or less than lcd screens) and allow the 3d surround to operate at lower resolutions which could mean spending less on hardware too.

Also not a fan of bezels so i thought this could be the way to go.

Im not actually planning on having huge wall sized displays, probably just 23ish inch projection screen sizes. But that i can experiment with to decide how big I want the display to be.

If the system does handle 3x 800x600 with ease, I will probably set the resolution to 3x 1024x768 or 3x 1280x1024 and see how that goes.

All the parts arrive this saturday so I'm very excited!

Does the rationale for my set up sound reasonable to those of you with a lot more experience with all this?

Are there any snags or pitfalls I'm missing?

Sounds good. You might want to PM BHawthorne to ask about triplewide projector setups - he's got bucketloads of experience on that front. Not sure what 3D Surround is like, to be honest... I hope that 460SLI will be fast enough for the 3D part... :)

If the system does handle 3x 800x600 with ease, I will probably set the resolution to 3x 1024x768 or 3x 1280x1024 and see how that goes.

I actually really like your plan I have to say!
One thing to note is that if the projectors are native 800x600, then you effectively cannot run at higher resolutions as it will interpolate the higher res as it cannot physically render more pixels. This will give you a mushy image. As an alternative, you can put on AA (is above 2x AA fixed on 3D Vision now?).

Years ago I too had the Edimmensional glasses and later the Zalman 3D Monitor (like an alpha version of nVidia 3D Surround), would love to get back it.

Lol, I was hoping that setting the non-naive resolution would mean that I have the projectors doing the work of AA rather than the GPU. Again my cheapo way of trying to set this up!

is there a significant risk that 2400x600 in 3d (ie maintaining at least 60fps) will be too much for a 460 sli set up?

That's my main worry. If the odds are that it can't manage that then I may have to get 480 sli although I really don't want to as that will significantly increase the cost. Double the amount spent on graphics and I will have to get a new PSU! :(
What d'you guys think?

3x 1280x1024 would be much better and you will still be able to push that resolution with ease

Lol, I was hoping that setting the non-naive resolution would mean that I have the projectors doing the work of AA rather than the GPU. Again my cheapo way of trying to set this up!

is there a significant risk that 2400x600 in 3d (ie maintaining at least 60fps) will be too much for a 460 sli set up?

That's my main worry. If the odds are that it can't manage that then I may have to get 480 sli although I really don't want to as that will significantly increase the cost. Double the amount spent on graphics and I will have to get a new PSU! :(
What d'you guys think?

With 3D, you'd need it ideally keeping at least 80fps, as that's 40fps per eye, sort of thing. In effect. Kinda. I don't see why it shouldn't, to be honest. I've got GTX460s driving a res five times higher (in pixel count terms - 6064x1200) than that and they do OK. In some games they're a little close to my 'minimum', but for most of the games I've tested so far, they do great. I cannot see GTX460s for a minute doing badly at 2400x600. In fact, I'd say at that res, the CPU and PCI-E bus become bottlenecks rather than the GPUs... at least in 2D. It'd probably even out in 3D.

That's a relief to know.

I don't think I am going to sleep tonight waiting for these bits to arrive!

In the past, I have done both widescreen gaming and stereo3d gaming but its always been the dream to combine the two.

Lol, I'm looking forward to the sheer deluge of config files and tweaks combining the two should bring!

And bug hunting too, I don't doubt. :(

Best of luck with it... and get some sleep! You don't want to be so tired you make a mistake putting it all together! :shock: