NVIDIA 3D VISION SURROUND Experience @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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NVIDIA 3D VISION SURROUND Experience - Many have waited for NVIDIA's 3D VISION SURROUND Technology with bated breath. The wait is over and NVIDIA can now give its GPU owners a 3x1 multi-display gaming experience; and in 3D too! Does NVIDIA's implementation live up to the expectations of those that have been using competitive technology for eight months?
 
Nice review. I'm glad my 480 SLI investment is ideal for multi-monitor gaming. Looks like I'll be investing in some monitors now!
 
Finally!!!

Thanks for the writeup guys. Can't wait to get home and try it. I see on your review you used 2x gtx 480s. Any word on if tri is supported in this driver?
 
xp3nd4bl3 said:
Finally!!!

Thanks for the writeup guys. Can't wait to get home and try it. I see on your review you used 2x gtx 480s. Any word on if tri is supported in this driver?
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Nvm found it. 3x sli is supported on gtx 400 cards with support for triple 200 series cards coming later.
 
Thanks for the review.

I have the 295 and I'm just glad that Nvidia didn't left us out in the cold. They could have ported this driver solely in their new Fermi cards but they didn't so I applaud Nvidia for doing so.
 
Kyle -

Do you know if Nvidia is looking to supporting PLP mode surround? I currently have this setup and it'll be awesome to know if this is going to be supported and I'm sure I'm not alone hoping for this to come true.
 
pedsaktix said:
Kyle -

Do you know if Nvidia is looking to supporting PLP mode surround? I currently have this setup and it'll be awesome to know if this is going to be supported and I'm sure I'm not alone hoping for this to come true.
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I don't see that happening any time soon from Red or Green. To do that in Win 7 simply would require a huge amount of engineering resources.
 
This is neat. I wish I knew some one where I could see this in person. I don't have enough money. :( I don't even have a current generation gpu.
 
Nice article.
Hopefully the next final non-beta drivers bring the improvements that are lacking in SLI mode in this one. The HL2/CS framedrops in 3D is unnacceptable.
 
This is expensive technology to put into your home. That may or may not hold value for you, but make no mistake about it...NV Surround gaming with GTX 480 SLI will give you the best gaming experience you have ever had.
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And THIS is why I went with the 480s. Enough said.

I KNEW you had been reviewing these drivers last week and thought that they were awesome! You had been getting "soft" on nVidia last week about the tardiness of these drivers and that was a 180 from a while back, kind of obvious.;)

Thanks again for the review, just ordered three Alienware AW2310s and the 3D glasses yesterday, should be here by Thursday in time for LONG weekend of and I quote "the best gaming experience I have ever had!"

Thanks Kyle!
 
Looks pretty cool.

I have to say though, stop the bitching about Display Port Adapters. Instead you have to buy a $200 pair of glasses ($100 more) and buy more expensive 120hz monitors. Oh and don't forget the dual video card requirement.
 
King Icewind said:
Looks pretty cool.

I have to say though, stop the bitching about Display Port Adapters. Instead you have to buy a $200 pair of glasses ($100 more) and buy more expensive 120hz monitors.
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Huh? AMD doesn't have 3D yet and no you don't need the 120Hhz monitors for just non-3D Surround.
 
One thing that was made clear (or not, more's the point) is whether nVidia's Surround delivers a 3D experience and nothing else. Can it be made to deliver a a multi-monitor 2D gaming experience?

EDIT:

I just read the conclusion: looks like it supports 2D also...I think. :p
 
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Do these drivers work with video signal to each monitor while running SLI on one monitor?
 
Very impressive. This is why we have competition. NV was blindsided by Eyefinity and have taken months to create something that can compete with it. Some good things, some bad from NV in their implementation.

Now it's up to AMD to up the ante and improve on their technology only to have NV improve on theirs. :D
 
Glad to see this is finally out. Hopefully now that both teams have multimonitor gaming support, the developers will implement more flexible HUDs and FOV adjustments.

Thumbs up.
 
King Icewind said:
Yes however you need two cards, and display port adapters are still brought up in the 3d review section.
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Which is actually one of the reasons I got the 480s over the 5000s. I know others have said that they have had no issues with Eyefinity and CF but there seem to be a fair number of complaints about the two working together well. In any case, I never had any intention of running only on card as I wanted better performance than a single card could deliver.
 
heatlesssun said:
And THIS is why I went with the 480s. Enough said.
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Some of us weren't willing to wait these three months. :mad: I've played through Fallout 3 in Eyefinity since I bought my 5970 -- After finding out there would be no 3d surround from NV at launch.

Still waiting on actual numbers.
 
Ya'll are just trying to get me to go out and build a whole new system from the ground up, aren't you? Well let me tell you something mister, it's working :(
 
I'm about to drop some cash on 3 Dell 2711's - to run a regular Nvidia Surround at 7680 x 1440. I've got the GTX295 with 3 ports out (2 DVI, 1 HDMI) ... could be a big change in my gaming real soon!
 
dook43 said:
Some of us weren't willing to wait these three months. :mad: I've played through Fallout 3 in Eyefinity since I bought my 5970 -- After finding out there would be no 3d surround from NV at launch.

Still waiting on actual numbers.
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Which is fine because until today Eyefinity was the best since it was the ONLY solution. What concerned me about Eyefinity was CF support and that may be something I'm making up but I just figured that since Surround REQUIRES SLI that there would be fewer issues.
 
Just a heads up, there is a user thread with people playing on the betas here:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1529316

I could only tinker for a half-hour before bailing for work so I only had the time to try BC2, World at War, and Serious Sam HD. Everything seemed to work, though Widescreenloader failed to load for me so World at War was stretched out like mad.

I averaged 45-60 FPS (Vsync and triple buffering on) in BC2 single player on the jungle map when it came to the actual shooting and fighting and smoke, but in the part preceding that, where you maneuver a boat through some rapids, the FPS tanked into the teens. Probably something to do with all the effects of water sloshing around. This was using 5760x1200 at 4xMSAA, everything max.

Serious Sam was unplayable at 8xAA, everything max, but I don't know what kind of 8xAA mode it tried to enable since that option doesn't even exist anymore in Nvidia drivers. Going to 4xAA smoothed things out considerably and I got 50 to 60 FPS.

I'm glad Nvidia has finally gotten this thing out the door. I went with Nvidia because there was no way I was going to play on three monitors with only one GPU, so the SLI requirement was a bonus, not a problem, for me, since it meant that Nvidia had to get multi-GPU Surround right, whereas ATI's implementation seems hit or miss. The SLI scaling hopefully proves itself superior to CF even moreso than in regular gaming, especially with the extra video RAM. And finally, yes, no Display Port.

Can't wait to go home and give it a more thorough run. Great to have coincided with the Steam sale!
 
heatlesssun said:
Which is fine because until today Eyefinity was the best since it was the ONLY solution. What concerned me about Eyefinity was CF support and that may be something I'm making up but I just figured that since Surround REQUIRES SLI that there would be fewer issues.
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I've had no issues so far.

There's going to be issues on either end, however Eyefinity has been around longer. So, issues have had the opportunity to be worked on longer.
 
Well it does seem like every other person who has EF+CF does have issues with it, judging by the huge 10-page thread here and scattered reports on Widescreengamingforum, and I definitely didn't want to risk $1500 investment on "well maybe it will work, maybe it won't."

If nothing else, this puts to rest all the baseless speculation about PCI-E bandwidth being the culprit for all the EF+CF hitching, which was never really explained in the first place. However, I would like to see a comparison of FPS between x8 and x16 systems for both Surround and 3DSurround. It must have some impact somewhere, since Nvidia's beta driver page recommends PCI-E 16x "for best performance."
 
Awesome article. I'll definitely be on the lookout for performance reviews for both the 400 and 200 series cards (from either [H] or elsewere). It might be worth trying to pick up another gtx260 at a cheap price for the experience...
 
parityOCP said:
One thing that was made clear (or not, more's the point) is whether nVidia's Surround delivers a 3D experience and nothing else. Can it be made to deliver a a multi-monitor 2D gaming experience?

EDIT:

I just read the conclusion: looks like it supports 2D also...I think. :p
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I thought we were very specific about this and if read the conclusion page we spell it out at least ten times. But to put it a different way...

NV Surround = Multi-Display Gaming

NV 3D Vision = 3D Gaming

NV 3D Vision Surround = 3D Gaming with Multi-Monitor Displays

Yeah, NVIDIA's branding is confusing.
 
King Icewind said:
I've had no issues so far.

There's going to be issues on either end, however Eyefinity has been around longer. So, issues have had the opportunity to be worked on longer.
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Sure Eyefinity is more mature for now but that gap will quickly narrow. But as of today nVidia has a pretty big lead in gaming tech. 3D, Surround, 3D Surround, CUDA and PhysX, it's the complete package.
 
Hey Kyle,
I didn't see any of your thoughts on which you liked better, Eyefinity or NV Surround, have you come to a conclusion as to which you like better? I know you have a lot of experience with Eyefinity and I am wondering what your thoughts were? Do you think it's worth the investment over ATI's Eyefinity or do you feel they are essentially the same?
Thanks.
 
Kyle- do you know if it has the same problem with different brand monitors that ATI has? IE no bezel management if you have different model monitors?
 
JacobC1983 said:
Do these drivers work with video signal to each monitor while running SLI on one monitor?
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I did not test this, but yes, it is specifically mentioned in the NV documentation. And I have seen it work before.

vengence said:
Ya'll are just trying to get me to go out and build a whole new system from the ground up, aren't you? Well let me tell you something mister, it's working :(
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Yes. Please click through a link here so we get commission! :)

torimish said:
I'm about to drop some cash on 3 Dell 2711's - to run a regular Nvidia Surround at 7680 x 1440. I've got the GTX295 with 3 ports out (2 DVI, 1 HDMI) ... could be a big change in my gaming real soon!
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Wow, that is a WHOLE LOT OF PIXELS for a GTX 295 to be pushing. Might rethink that unless you want to upgrade video cards soon.
 
heatlesssun said:
Sure Eyefinity is more mature for now but that gap will quickly narrow. But as of today nVidia has a pretty big lead in gaming tech. 3D, Surround, 3D Surround, CUDA and PhysX, it's the complete package.
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I would argue "big lead in gaming tech." 3D, PhysX, and CUDA has done nothing for gaming overall.

I am going to suggest that moves toward more proprietary gaming will be going away! I think the PC gaming ecosystem is going to become a lot more open this year.
 
Nice review! I especially liked the part where [H] was correct about the SLI scaling in surround. :)

Will we see some benchmarks soon between Eyefinity and Nvidia surround? :D
 
utnorris said:
Hey Kyle,
I didn't see any of your thoughts on which you liked better, Eyefinity or NV Surround, have you come to a conclusion as to which you like better? I know you have a lot of experience with Eyefinity and I am wondering what your thoughts were? Do you think it's worth the investment over ATI's Eyefinity or do you feel they are essentially the same?
Thanks.
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Top of page 4.

We have been covering AMD's Eyefinity for over half a year. NVIDIA's Surround in terms of the end gaming experience is the same. I hate to sound trite about it, but there are only two things that are really new here. NVIDIA now has multi-display gaming too. And as we suspected back at the GTX 480 launch, GTX 480 SLI scaling is the freakin' bomb!
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You know, im VERY happy that they released this beta today with the official due out within the next 2 weeks. My 2 EVGA GTX 480 SC + cards arrive today, right in time.


BUT, I feel like this technology requires graphics power not avaliable on the market today to make the latest games playable at the highest settings. Sure, the additonal monitors and field of view is awesome but it bugs me that I can spend $1200 on videocards and another $700 on monitors and struggle @ high settings with new games. We all know everyones perception of playable is different but for me , dipping into the 60's under high stress is what makes me happy. Dipping in the 20-30-40ish drives me mad because it slows the game down.


I dont know how long it'll be until there are cards on the market that could totally demolish brand new games like Metro 2033 and etc etc etc @ 5760x1080 the way sli gtx 480's destroys games at 1920x1080. That will be the day that ill be like , god damn, now this is some insane shit.


Not that this isnt amazing right now but still lol. I may not sound excited but im like a little school girl right now waiting on UPS for my videocards today.
 
bizzmeister said:
BUT, I feel like this technology requires graphics power not avaliable on the market today to make the latest games playable at the highest settings. Sure, the additonal monitors and field of view is awesome but it bugs me that I can spend $1200 on videocards and another $700 on monitors and struggle @ high settings with new games. We all know everyones perception of playable is different but for me , dipping into the 60's under high stress is what makes me happy. Dipping in the 20-30-40ish drives me mad because it slows the game down.
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I feel the same way.. But maybe this is the time NV will come out and put a smack down to ATI.
 
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