Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'm currently in the market for a new monitor to add to the current 2 24" Asus monitors I'm using. These monitors are both 60hz, no 3d, and run natively at 1920x1080. I do alot of gaming and so would like to run Nvidia Surround on these. I'm currently going to wait until next-gen Nvidia GPU's so I have alittle bit of time (and GPU/graphic muscle) to shop and get my facts straight before buying a new monitor. For a link with specifications on my current monitors, look here: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VW246H-24-Inch-Integrated-Speakers/dp/B001LYWBOM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356483767&sr=8-1&keywords=vw246h. I have 2 of those monitors.

I have a few questions that I think are pretty important to know before I go ahead and buy a new monitor.

1) I'm thinking about buying a 27" monitor and maybe putting it in the middle, between my two Asus VW246H. The monitor I'm currently looking at is an Asus VG278H found here: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VG278H-27-Inch-Integrated-Speakers/dp/B0063BM5NK/ref=lh_ni_t This monitor runs 3D, and 1920x1080. I understand that if I wanted to do 3D gaming, I'd only be able to do it on the 1 monitor since my current monitors dont do 3D. Not all 3. This would be ok, atleast until I could upgrade all of them. But for the time being, gaming in 3D or watching a 3D movie on the 1 27" isn't a big deal to me.

2) What if I purchased a monitor that was actually 2560x1400. Would I be able to successfully extend my monitors so that all 3 could work properly and look good too? It would be 2 24" monitors @ 24" 1920x1080 and 1 27" 2560x1440 in the center. Would that even look good and work correctly when running surround?

3) And lastly, would a single or dual 680 do the trick for a setup like this? Or am I correct in just waiting at this point for the next-gen GPU's? I can wait, thats not a problem. The 680 has already been out almost a year in March, so I'm a tad bit late to the 680 party. But for now, I can run everything I throw at my 560TI SLI system. Granted I only run games on 1 monitor at the moment while my other has widgets, Chrome and my twitter feed running.

I would really appreciate some help with these questions. From the reading I've been doing 'round these parts, everyone seems like great, knowledgeable folk.

Hey TruSm0ke,

Welcome to the WSGF!



Now, on to your questions:

1 ) If possible, it's best to run three monitors of the same size. You will run in to some issues if you use different sized monitors.

When looking at different sized monitors side by side in triple-wide, the image won't be contiguous. It would be kind of like you took a magnifying glass and placed it in the middle of a panoramic photo.

Bezel compensation will not work as well, either. Bezel compensation is a triple-wide feature that helps mitigate the distraction of monitor bezels by rendering and hiding the "screen space" behind your monitors' bezels. Basically, it makes looking at your monitors more similar to looking out a window, where there is something "behind" the bezels that you can't see just like there's something behind your window frames that you can't see. But, your brain fills in the missing visuals.

With different-sized monitors, bezel compensation is not as effective because it assumes all your monitors are the same size.

That being said, I'm running two 24" monitors on the side with a 23" monitor in the center. The difference is noticeable, especially when using bezel compensation, but it doesn't bother me.

2 ) Running different resolutions on a triple-wide setup is not possible in Eyefinity and NVidia Surround modes but would work fine in Extended mode on your desktop. If you combine monitors with different resolutions in Eyefinity or NVSurround, the monitors will be forced to lower their resolution to the highest resolution that every monitor in the group can support. If you had three 2560x1400 monitors, you'd get a native triple-wide resolution of 7680x1400. But, if you combine two 1920x1080 monitors with one 2560x1400, the higher resolution monitor will be forced down to 1920x1080 and you'll end up with 5760x1080.

I strongly dissuade you from mixing monitor resolutions if you want to keep the highest visual quality - most monitors will be noticeably muddier looking when running below their native resolution. Here's a Wikipedia article describing the phenomena:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_resolution

3 ) You'll definitely need a lot of rendering horsepower to push triple-wide resolutions at a reasonable framerate - even moreso if you want to eventually run triple-wide 3D. If you want to get near the same performance that you see at 1920x1080 at 5760x1080, you would need three cards in SLI or Crossfire since you're rendering three times the resolution. Even then, SLI and Crossfire scaling doesn't exactly double or triple your performance as you add cards. For most games, there are diminishing returns when adding extra cards. If you're eventually looking to move up to three 2560x1400 monitors, you'll need even more horespower.

I've found that I need two cards to push high framerates with high quality and antialiasing. With two Radeon 7950s, most current games are playable at native and bezel-compensated resolutions with high settings and antialising. But, you may be right about holding off for a next generation card. Far Cry 3 and Hitman: Absolution are the first games demanding enough that I've got to drop some settings for good framerates. On the other hand, I can crank everything up to the highest settings and use antialiasing in Battlefield 3 and most other games released in 2012 and prior.

If you don't mind dropping below your native resolution or dropping antialiasing and other video settings, you can certainly get by with a single current generation card.

Finally, triple-wide with Nvidia cards requires that all three monitors have the same sync polarity. You may need to check technical manuals on the monitors to make sure that any new monitor you select matches the sync polarity on your existing monitors. AMD, on the other hand, doesn't require the same sync polarity but does require that at least one of the monitors is connected via displayport instead of DVI or HDMI.

Good luck! Triple-wide is where it's at!

Thank you for the reply, Bifurk8. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to help me.

Everything you've suggested makes perfect sense. Sticking with the same resolution, same size monitors, etc. I might just go ahead and purchase a high quality 24" 1920x1080 monitor... maybe a 3D monitor that I can turn on and use for a game or two (single display).

I've already decided to just hold off on buying a 680 and just waiting until the next-gen processors are released. Like I said, it's already very late into the 600 series generation. I might as well just wait as the newer cards should be released in atleast the next 3-5 months.

Pardon my ignorance but what is sync polarity? Would this have anything to do with conflicting refresh rates?

My current monitors are only capable of 60hz. What if my new monitor has a refresh rate of 120hz... does that cause any issues?

No worries, TruSm0ke. I had certainly never heard of sync polarity until I started shopping around for new cards and looking at Nvidia. There's honestly very little documentation out there about exactly what sync polarity is or why it matters and, as far as I can tell, NV Surround is the only application in which sync polarity matters to anyone but the monitor manufacturer.

Nvidia's support page oh-so-helpfully describes it as "a specification of your monitor. Please check your monitor's technical specification for information on this to ensure you are using products with common sync polarity for Surround use."

My understanding is that you can have either positive or negative sync polarity and that monitors will have two values, one for horizontal sync polarity and one for vertical sync polarity. It will be represented with one of the following notations:

(+,+) , (+,-) , (-,+), or (-,-)

or

(+hsync, +vsync), (+hsync, -vsync), (-hsync, +vsync), or (-hsync, -vsync)

You can either check the monitor's technical manual (if available) or, better yet, run a program like Monitor Asset Manager to check the sync polarity of your current monitors. Monitor Asset Manager is available at http://entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm.

I've heard of folks who have two identical model monitors purchased at different times with different sync polarities. I've also heard of folks rolling their own monitor drivers to force matching sync polarities, but I have no experience doing it myself.