Triple Monitor setup advice

MoRT489

MoRT489

MoRT489

Soldato
Joined
21 Aug 2006
Posts
7,512
Hi guys

I am seriously considering a more immersive gaming experience and so have 2 options:

1. I already have two 20" monitors so could purchase a 3rd for £123 and a Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital for about £250 = total £365

2. Purchase a 24" monitor for about £300.

Question, anyone who has triple monitors think it's worth it over one 24" (as the primary gaming monitor)? Also, Is it easy to set up? I see they have released fixes for 1650x1080 x3 resolution.

I currently have 8800GTS 512MB, is either upgrade option going to require a better gfx card (e.g. COD 4, FEAR2)? Also, will it require Q6600 performance or can i sell that and revert to my E2180?

TIA
 
i use softth across 3 monitors, see if you can borrow a 3rd montor and have a play with softth. before you commit to 3 monitors+matrox

be warned though once you've gone to 3 theres no going back :cool:

as a rough guide to performance multiply the HxV and you'll know how many pixels your card has to push

in my setup 4200x1024= ~4.5MP (1280x1024 + 1600x1024 + 1280x1024) 1600x1024 is actually a dell that can do 1600x1200)

a 30" is 2560x1600= ~4MP

so when viewing benchmarks do the same math to work out roughly the performace you'll get
 
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I moved from a single 24" to 3x 20.1" with TripleHead2Godigital. I cant bear to go back to a single monitor gaming. For the games that dont support TripleHead (mainly RTS like RedAlert3) I use the 24" (though you could use the centre monitor in the triple head setup as well. Unless the games you play make use of quad cores, the dual core should work just as well if they are running at the same speed. Anyway for desktop work triple anything is more productive than a single 24". I just posted some pics of my setup on the "Show us your TFT" thread.
 
Unfortunately i dont have a second PCI-e slot on my mobo so cant try softth :(

I did try out playing across 2x 20"s and loved it but couldnt keep it due to the crosshair being between the two monitors, currently running a 20" and a 17" so could either do 17-20-17 or 20-20-20. Does Matrox work properly with different sized monitors? Also does it work with COD4? Worked perfectly in crysis with very little drop in frames but just seemed to stretch in COD4 as no ingame resolution :(

This is it, currently running the setup in top pic. http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=12394790&postcount=35
 
TripleHead2Go will need 3 monitors displaying the same resolution, the size of the monitors is imaterial, though if your gaming, it will be distracting if your screens are of different sizes. The digital version comes with bezel management which 'hides' the image as if it was behind the monitor bezel, and work very well. Not all games work natively with TH2GO and needs a patch. There is a patch for COD4 which gives the correct field of view and no stretching. Crysis supports TH2Go resolutions natively.
 
have u tried it with anything other than the gtx280? I'm wondering if i could get away with using my 8800gts 512 and dropping some settings or if i would need to go 280 or 4870X2...
 
My triple setup is

Hazro 24" in the middle and dual LG 22"s

Graphics cards are 260gtx and 9400GT

sid
 
creed said:
It says on gtx280 web page that max res is 2048x1536?
Click to expand...

Clearly it isn't, a 30" TFT native res is 2560x1600 afterall. DX10 specs call for a max resolution of 8192x8192, DX9 is 4096x4096. Which is why you need a DX10 compatible card to run 5040x1050.
 
creed said:
Sid does that allow you to run a game across all three monitors? you using softth?
Click to expand...

No because you can't do a horizontal span in Vista

It may be possible in XP but I haven't tried that.

Btw you underestimate how wide my setup is, its over 5 feet wide at normal sitting distance so unless you are using a flight sim, i can't see it working.

sid
 
Yes they probably support 8192x8192 (not that anyone can check as thats too much for a DVI port to handle) and whole bunch of other combinations, but not 5040x1050 and some others which dont interest us. Something in the way driver/hardware is designed means they cant run certain combinations, Nvidia cards have no such limitations. Strange but thats just the way it is at the moment and theres no work around.
 
OK, my dad happened to have a matrox G550 PCI lying around :eek: so i've got 3 monitors running 17-20-17 (17 on matrox effectively as a second card, 20 and other 17 on 8800GTS). Gonna try out softth now :)
 
OMFG OMFG I just tried dead space on triple setup using softTTH its sick to be honest

I can't belive I just discovered this as I've had triple for couple of months now

sid

dead-space-triple-setup-copy.jpg


dead-space-triple-setup-2-copy.jpg
 
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u can just tell nvidia control panel to do horizontal span with 2 monitors but whilst impressive, u end have ur crosshair overlapping the edge where both screens meet, so it's not really playable.

Sid can you tell me what settings u used in the softh file, cos i tried to get COD4 working last night and it wouldnt work on the side monitors (17"). Concerned it could be that the matrox card i have doesnt have full support for direct3d...BTW that setup looks awesome!

Wish i'd spent an extra £15 at the time and gone for a P35 DS4 so i'd have the second PCI-e slot grrrr
 
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Hi, sorry to hi-jack the thread, but if i got 3 19" widescreen monitors, and have an ATI hd4850,and got a pci card like the 6200, i could run 3 monitors? (With all rendering done on the 4850)
 
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