Vega's *Heavyweight* display and computer; edition 2012

Success! Well, at least a majority success. My setup during portrait nVidia Surround testing:


SANY0013-2.jpg




So during testing I kept wondering why it would not go into Surround mode, even when I was getting three green check marks on the Surround config page. I had all the same FW900 .inf's loaded, everything was a go. But when it actually went to put them into Surround it would fail. It would put it back into non-SLI "activate all displays" mode, with it then showing two FW900's and a "generic non-PNP monitor". I tried like eight different drivers, moving the computer around, switching cables and stuff. Was a super frustrating 8 hours.

So I thought OK, maybe nVidia is super anal and wants actual EDID information from every display. So I disconnected all of my BNC5 cables and used regular VGA cables that could pass EDID. Sure enough, that got it working! So nVidia Surround requires EDID information. Surround is working, but I am stuck at the standard resolution and refresh rates that the monitor sends out over EDID like 2304x1440@80Hz, 1920x1200@85Hz. It won't let me adjust those at all. Not a deal breaker but not ideal either. Plus I think BNC cables have a slightly better image, so maybe in the future I will do some crazy cable hack-job monstrosity in which I can use the BNC cables and pull EDID info at the same time. Suggestions welcome here! I don't even know if the FW900 will send out EDID info if the BNC cables are plugged in. Anyone know where I can get super high quality VGA cables in 25 foot lengths? Or a way to breakout the VGA to my BNC cables yet still get the EDID signal to the GPU's?

Even with the huge bezel gaps during my testing, the FW900 portrait Surround setup is EPIC. You get super high resolution, ridiculous buttery smooth CRT motion, zero viewing angle problems, zero ghosting, zero back-light bleed or IPS glow or anti-glare coating problems that you get with LCD's. nVidia Surround/multi-GPU with the CRT's has no stuttering or any problems with any of the games I tested. FW900's work extremely well in portrait as you don't have to worry about pixel orientation, a change in viewing angles or any of that nonsense. Definitely motivated now to work on the bezel-less Fresnel lens portion of the project.
 
That's looking great - subscribed! btw, how did you manage to get 3 FW900s?! I've got the one at the moment and had to scour ebay for ages to find it.

Out of interest, have you ever thought about a multiple projector setup?
 
looking good mate have you got any pictures of the rig up and running ?

And also i've just relised your going to have a 10mp display ..............Epic!
 
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Warbie said:
That's looking great - subscribed! btw, how did you manage to get 3 FW900s?! I've got the one at the moment and had to scour ebay for ages to find it.

Out of interest, have you ever thought about a multiple projector setup?
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I've got four FW900's and a 5th on the way. :D

The three there on the desk are A+ quality and are calibrated and like new. Almost $4000 in FW900's just on my desk.

I am in the US and they are still around but hard to find. Luckily I found a guy who takes the best FW900's left out there and reconditions them. You pay to play though!

Projector setups are cool for movies, but for gaming this setup I am making is far beyond a triple projector setup. Life-like crystal clear motion with no blur, zero input lag, zero ghosting, zero noise, high resolution. Playing at 10 mega-pixel resolution at 80Hz with CRT motion, completely blows anything I've done in the past out of the water. :eek:
 
vega you are one crazy dude fella :)
i thought i was bad at dropping money in to computer projects but you my friend make me look like trailer trash in those stakes.
are you married? what does the wife say because mine moans at me all the time about what i spend.... anyway i for one love what you do, you are an innovator for sure and your projects are always tip top so keep it up but one question? are you selling the parts you replace because the way you spend money it wouldnt surprise me if your giving them away :). buying 4 x 580 classified just till keplar comes out....OMFG you are crazy or seriously loaded
 
cammy5477 said:
vega you are one crazy dude fella :)
i thought i was bad at dropping money in to computer projects but you my friend make me look like trailer trash in those stakes.
are you married? what does the wife say because mine moans at me all the time about what i spend.... anyway i for one love what you do, you are an innovator for sure and your projects are always tip top so keep it up but one question? are you selling the parts you replace because the way you spend money it wouldnt surprise me if your giving them away :). buying 4 x 580 classified just till keplar comes out....OMFG you are crazy or seriously loaded
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Nope, not married! More money for the hobbies. :D

All of my old equipment I keep in perfect shape and re-sell on Ebay. I get back like 60-70% of my original cost so it isn't massively painful.


Since the FW900 was designed for normal landscape mode and the heat rising, I've modded a super quiet Noctua fan to help move air while they are in portrait mode.

SANY0014-2.jpg


(And yes for you nit-pickers I meant for it to be slightly askew to align with the grate vent holes for mounting) ;)
 
I have had many problems with EDID info in the past.

The only way I ever got around it was using Powerstrip and forcing custom resolutions with very very detailed tweaks.

I'm not sure if you can force custom timings and get your surround working but it's worth a try?
 
Sin_Chase said:
I have had many problems with EDID info in the past.

The only way I ever got around it was using Powerstrip and forcing custom resolutions with very very detailed tweaks.

I'm not sure if you can force custom timings and get your surround working but it's worth a try?
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For some reason whenever I try to modify or mask the EDID information, when I put the monitors in nVidia Surround it always bypassed those and tries to read the EDID electrically. If it can't it fails.


I think I've found my motherboard for this build:

z77extreme9.jpg


ASRock Z77 Extreme9. I hope they also mean true 4-way SLI (look at printed PCB and not tossed on heat-sink for display) and not just two dual GPU cards like some guys try to advertise as "Quad-SLI" capable. Quad-8x PCI-E 3.0 should be plenty fast for 4x Kepler, the same speed as Quad-16x PCI-E 2.0. This is the only Z77 board I've seen yet with the PLX PCI-E 3.0 lane multiplier chip. Look's like this may be my board for my build as long as ASRock doesn't screw up the BIOS.

Why not just go for X79 you may ask? Generally the 1155 chips like IB will overclock higher, be a lot cheaper, be faster in games clock for clock, run cooler, use less energy, and more than four cores is not used for any game that I know of.
 
Nikumba said:
Vega,

Having a look it seems the BNC connection is a one way connection, whereas VGA is a two-way hence getting the EDID back.

Found this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg487330 deals with overriding the EDID info via an INF file, now I know you said you looked about masking it so not sure if you have tried this yet.

Either way hope it is of some help

Kimbie
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Ya, whenever I try and mask or override the EDID it would not put my 3x FW900 in Surround. Only when I let the cards physically talk to the monitors would it allow Surround. I think nVidia made it this way to be super cautious as to getting Surround to work properly. I play to trick the ******** with EDID emulator hardware though!
 
Looking good :)

Just a point on the Asrock extreme 9. i have a Asrock Z68 Extreme7, what a big PAIN for eyefinity setups and multi gpu's i went to hell and back trying to get the thing running smooth with more than 1 card, 3x 6970's 2x 6990's 2x 7970's nothing would get the thing running with no mouse to screen lag or just poor perfomance, unless i used ether 1 screen or eyefinity with 1 card. The only thing i could put this down to was the NF200 chip, but as this is made by nvidia i think! It probably works with multi nvidia cards and surround.. Just something to keep in mind if you have any problems :)
 
Crezzlin said:
Looking good :)

Just a point on the Asrock extreme 9. i have a Asrock Z68 Extreme7, what a big PAIN for eyefinity setups and multi gpu's i went to hell and back trying to get the thing running smooth with more than 1 card, 3x 6970's 2x 6990's 2x 7970's nothing would get the thing running with no mouse to screen lag or just poor perfomance, unless i used ether 1 screen or eyefinity with 1 card. The only thing i could put this down to was the NF200 chip, but as this is made by nvidia i think! It probably works with multi nvidia cards and surround.. Just something to keep in mind if you have any problems :)
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Hm interesting. Where you the only one with this problem or did you locate others? Did you deal with ASRock support, and if so, how were they to deal with?
 
Hi Vega,

The only response I had from Asrock was to try different drivers etc nothing that I wouldn't do myself.. it was defiantly board related as I was running a Asrock Extreme4 at first but wanted to trifire so got the extreme7 then the problems started, I could even take out the board and put in a MSI GD55 with the same drivers etc and the thing was smooth again, in the end I sold my board to a mate that wanted it for 1 card use.. a couple of weeks later I got a 2nd one as I really wanted the pcie layout of this board and started again trying to find the fault but nothing would resolve it, it’s now in my HTPC overkill or what.. 

Forgot you asked if anyone else had this problem but at the time not many or any that I could find had multi amd cards with eyefinity so no I didn’t find anyone with the same problem, I think I will start again with the board next month and try again with newer driver and bios. :s
 
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