Three Screens for Gaming

zx81 · 14 Jan 2008 at 12:51

Hi, I've been thinking about setting up 3 monitors for gaming. I have an 8800 gts 640 and 2 dell 2007fp's. What I wanted to know is, if I got a 8800 gts 320 and a third screen would I be able to span across the three of them and run games across all three screens?

It was the matrox triple head thing that stared me thinking about this. I would rather have a second graphics card to share some of the load if I can and run the screens at their native res of 1600x1200. I've been playing with nview and have got tf2 and cod4 running across the two screens at 3200x1200 and the performance was a lot better than I expected, cant really play like that but it ran well.

I've no idea how it would work with another card, would nview span across all three or would I only be able to span across the one graphics card?

It would be an expensive mistake if it didn't work so any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Duff-Man · 14 Jan 2008 at 13:07

AFAIK SLI doesn't work with multiple monitors, so you will be looking at single card solutions. I think any single card would struggle with three monitors at native res with recent games - not to mention the fact that a 4800*1200 resolution is highly stretched in the horizontal direction. With a regular 90degree field of view you're lookng at either covering a full 270 degrees of vision (ie monitors in a full arc), or having a very limited vertical perspective.

Whether or not it's possible / simple with current cards I wouldn't know.

Ender · 14 Jan 2008 at 14:36

As far as i know SLI will work with the matrox triple head, as it counts all three monitors as a single large resolution

PinkFloyd · 14 Jan 2008 at 14:52

Ender said:
As far as i know SLI will work with the matrox triple head, as it counts all three monitors as a single large resolution

Think the Matrox Triple head only supports 1280x1024 per monitor though.

Your could maybe get another 8800gts running as a seperate card (not in SLI) in the same way someone people used to use a spare PCI graphics card for another monitor.

No idea whether it would work properly though.

geuben · 14 Jan 2008 at 15:08

Ive had unreal tournament stretched across 4 monitors before now. I had an x1800xt and a x550, so yes I THINK it will work if you get another card. Don't run them in SLI though, just as seperate cards.

zx81 · 14 Jan 2008 at 15:09

Thanks for the replies,

Your could maybe get another 8800gts running as a seperate card (not in SLI) in the same way someone people used to use a spare PCI graphics card for another monitor.

Thats exactly what I was thinking about trying but I can't seem to find out if it will work or not. The card I have works well spanning across two screens so in theory another gts should handle the third screen but I don't want to buy another card and monitor unless I know it will work.

I wont be able to buy anything until the end of next month anyway so I will keep digging and see what I can come up with, I think I might have to just try it and see what happens.

PinkFloyd · 14 Jan 2008 at 15:24

See if you can borrow a cheap PCI card off of someone, (ideally an nvidia one to avoid conflicts)

zx81 · 14 Jan 2008 at 15:30

Thats a good idea, I built a system for a friend with an 8800 gts 320 a few months back, that would be perfect as its the card I was gonna buy for it anyway. Should be able to talk him into lending me it for a night, maybe and I can always dig up my old crt to test it with.

zx81 · 15 Jan 2008 at 15:58

I managed to get hold of a friends 8800 gts320 and have been playing around with three screens. It seems that it's not going to work unfortunately. When I try to spanning my desktop it only lets me span across monitors on the same graphics card. I didn't have that much time to play with it but it didn't look like there was any way to get it to work.

When I ran the counterstrike performance test I was getting around 160 fps at 3200x1200. But if I ran it in a window and moved it between the monitors that were on separate cards the framerate dropped to 19, so playing in window mode across the three wasn't going to happen.

The amount of desktop space from three 1600x1200 screens was pretty impressive but if I cant use it for gaming then I can't justify getting another monitor and card. I don't use the second one I have enough as it is. The maxtor triple head thing is tempting and if the two screens I already have were 1280x1024 I would have probably got one but games at that res on my screens don't look very good. Really glad I was able to try it out without buying anything just a shame it didn't work.

geuben · 15 Jan 2008 at 16:31

That sucks. When I had UT2004 across 4 screens I was running it in a window. I never checked the fps I was getting. Id never tried spanning across multiple cards so didn't know that it wouldn't work. I was thinking of getting a 3rd screen too, but now might not bother.