Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi all, I'm new to the ultra wide screen gaming community but after a recent Dell monitor special coincided nicely with a tax return, I thought I'd take the plunge.

My current monitor setup is 1 x Dell 2407 24 inch 1920x1200 and 2 x Dell Dell Ultrasharp U2311H 23 inch 1920 x 1080.

I have the 24 inch located centrally, with the 23's flanking them (all in landscape).

I have 1 important question. Will Nvidia 2D Surround support bezel management across monitors of different sizes? As Paradigm Shifter stated below it will work with different monitor types running at the same resolution but my specific concern is running 3 monitors (one being a different size) but still running all monitors on the same 1920x1080 resolution.

Paradigm Shifter wrote:
Only reasons I went nVidia Surround rather than EyeFinity were bezel management across different screens (EF requires all three screens to be the same model for bezel management) and the lack of DisplayPort requirement.

As stated in the Nvidia FAQ section

Question

Do I need to use the exact same monitors to run Surround (2D)?

Answer

No, they can be different brands. However Surround (2D) mode requires that all three monitors are set to a common resolution, refresh rate, and sync polarity.

For example, you can use two 1680x1050 monitors on the sides and a 1920x1080 monitor as your center display, as long as all three monitors are set to the same resolution (likely 1680x1050 in this example).

So I'm fairly certain that gaming will work correctly. But what I really need to know is if bezel management will work correctly as the 'jumping' I experience going across monitors with my current GPU setup (4870x2 and 4850 running separately to drive 3 monitors as an extended dekstop for productivity only) is really annoying, and really noticeable.

Long story short, is there someone out there that uses different size monitors with bezel management enabled in nVidia Surround 2D?

Because if it's not possible it looks like after 5 years of faithful service the 2407 is going the way of the dinosaur. But I'd rather not add another $350 for a third U2311H 23 inch if I don't have to.

I don't have such a monitor setup, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Bezel compensation does not squeeze extra pixels into each panel, so individual panel resolutions remain unchanged. My desktop is set to 5220x1050 (5040 + 2x 90 bezel comp) right now, but each monitor still only displays 1680x1050 pixels. So what you'll get is 3x 1920x1080 pixels with or without bezel compensation, although the buffered "bezel compensated" image will really be wider.

Nv doesnt have stupid EDID problems with BC?

Not that I know of. Overall resolution support on my system is much, much better than with TripleHead2Go - any and all single-screen, multi-mon and bezel compensated res's just work with no strange distortion or letterboxing whatsoever.

nVidia Surround can be very picky about using three different monitors; eZ` had issues with getting Surround working when he originally tried it, but it seems that the sync polarities of the monitors he was using at the time were different.

If the driver lets you enabled Surround, you can have bezel compensation with no worries about EDID, etc.

Yeah originally I tried to use 1x LG 20", 1x Acer 22" and 1x Dell 24" (just to see if it worked, not as a permanent setup!!) and it was having none of it.

The fact all 3 of your monitors are Dell and run at the same resolution, I'd expect the sync polarities to match so I'd be very very surprised if you have a problem!

That sounds really promising guys. Thanks for your feedback and expertise.

Just going to hold off on the dual gtx460 purchase until I see what the new 69XX series cards are like from AMD. I swore to myself after the driver shennanigans I had with my 4870x2 that I would never buy multi-GPU or "Red" again.

Now that I've joined the widescreen gaming world it looks like I'm damned either way lol. The driver support from Nvidia looks superior (no suprise there really), but I've seen some promising rumours circulating about the new 69XX series Eyefinity support being much more flexible.

If nothing else it might put some more price pressure on the big green giant, meaning a better deal for me (maybe even drop a pair of gtx470's into purchase consideration).

When it comes to triple-wide, both sides seem to be lacking equally, but in different areas. ;)

When it comes to triple-wide, both sides seem to be lacking equally, but in different areas. ;)

Seems that way...