Choosing Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround

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Eradan

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 7, 2006
Messages
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[H}ello, all.

I was reluctant to post this thread because I don't want this to turn into red versus green skirmish. I personally have owned cards from both teams over the years and they have served me well. That said, here's my current situation and I'm looking for some opinions on how to move forward...

I currently own an EVGA 560 Ti DS. I've been running this in my Q9550 system (in my signature below) since late September 2011. This morning I "completed" my Ivy Bridge build, my first major upgrade since January 2008. I pulled my older Antec Neo HE 550 out of my old build to use in my new system for now but it will be replaced in the next week or two with a new PSU that will be able to provide power to either an SLI or Crossfire setup.

I'm particularly interested in Eyefinity and/or Nvidia surround for gaming. I'm in the process of digging through a bunch of forums, articles, reviews, and YouTube videos trying to determine if one is better than the other or if there are any gotchas I need to be aware of.

I know the basics...anything older than a 600 series Nvidia card requires SLI for Surround. The AMD's can do it single card but may require adapters due to DisplayPort. I know I need three identical displays and I know I need a more substantial power supply.

I guess, specfically, I have to determine if a single 7850/70 or 79xx AMD card will run WoW, Diablo 3, and games like Skyrim adequately at 5760x1080 (or 1200) or will I need two of these cards? If I'm buying two cards anyway, then maybe I can pick up two GTX580s and save a few bucks. Or perhaps I just need to add another 560 Ti to the one I already have.

If AMD and Nvidia's multi-monitor solutions perform similarly, I'm inclined to choose the one that can be had for the lowest cost.

Right now, I have not installed my existing 560 Ti in my new build because if I decide to go AMD, I will want to reload my OS (I always have when switching just to keep it clean). I also have a Radeon 6570 HD 2GB card that I inherited but I know nothing about--it may be worse than the Intel HD4000 video in my 3570. I'll have to sort that out. Depending on which brand I choose for my multi-monitor setup, I could install either card to do me until I purchase everything else.

Thoughts? Comments. Does this make sense at all? :D

Thanks as always.
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Eradan said:
I need three identical displays and I know I need a more substantial power supply.
E
Click to expand...

With the AMD 7000 series you don't need identical displays, and you have the option of going beyond just 3 screens as a future option.
 
As a general rule. If one works with a game, so will the other. There is no functional difference between the two vendors in a single GPU, 3 x identical monitors in landscape situation. AMD currently offers a few more options for it should you wish to use non identical monitor setups, or more than three monitors. I expect Nv will close that gap sooner or later.

That said Eyefinity/Nfinity have their problems. Some games are a pita to get working correctly, and some never really work right. FOV issues, cut scene issues, HUD issues, and menu issues being the most common.
Though, I must say, in certain types of games, like flight, and racing games, I will never be satisfied with 16:9 again.
 
be aware D3 does not work* with eyefinity/nvsurround. skyrim takes a little hack to work. WoW is fine

*may not work, some people have sucess, but not me
 
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Blind Man said:
be aware D3 does not work with eyefinity/nvsurround. skyrim takes a little hack to work. WoW is fine
Click to expand...

I've read that but then I've seen videos on YouTube of people playing D3 across three monitors.
 
So, I've been running 3 monitors off a 6950 for about a year now (@see sig).

The novelty when it comes to games is a whole lot more subtle than I would've thought, and it wore off fairly quickly for me. I now play most of my games (Team Fortress 2, Diablo III, Civilization 5, Roller-Coaster Tycoon 3) in windowed mode on one screen. There are exceptions, playing Deadspace 2, The Witcher 2, and Battlefield (BC2 or 3) in eyefinity adds a good deal to the experiance, but for most of my games it really doesn't add alot.

Speaking to the performance of the card in those games, its been adaquate. I've flashed this card to 6970 specs, and its done almost everything I've asked it too fairly well. Battlefield 3 is the only place where I've really had to turn settings down to make it playable.

When it comes to productivity its a completely different story. In my line of work I'm typically working primarily in Visual Studio, reading from MongoVue (SSMS for Mongo), and glancing at a conversation on a messaging client, or a guide on a forum. Being able to do all three things at once without having to alt-tab between screens has done wonders for my productivity.

edit-- the following is from personal experience, this might not be the case for all users, but it is at least the case for me:

A couple of annoyances, and things you probably wouldn't remember to think about unless you have owned such a setup:

Windows default handling of multiple monitors vs Eyefinity's (and presumably Nvidias Surround's) abstraction layer: When I'm working, or just on the desktop, I like to have Windows handle the desktops, namely because of Aero features. The canonical example would probably be snap: if you snap a window to the left side of your screen when windows believes your 3 screens to be a single massive screen, it will leave the window exactly as you'd expect it, spanning across one and a half of your monitors. If you let the windows handle the three monitors as three separate screens, then it does what it should, spanning half of one monitor instead.

With ATI's drivers you can have profiles that flip you from Eyefinity mode (all three screens appear to windows as one massive 5XXX x 1XXX screen) for gaming, back to extended mode (3x 1XXX x 1XXX screens) for desktop use, but it does feel like a hack. I'm reasonably certain that the profile creation method is actually broken, and that to get the this functionality you have to:
  1. create the monitors in extended mode, save that as a profile,
  2. setup the monitors in eyefinity mode, save that as a profile that wont work,
  3. flip back to the extended profile (the first one you created),
  4. setup the monitors again in eyefinity mode, and save that as your final working profile.
As a couple bonuses:
  • you can have the driver trigger a script when you change modes (which means you can do things like have the script change desktop backgrounds or whatever you like, play a sound, etc),
  • and you can bind changing monitor profiles to a hotkey --though I havn't figured out how to bind it to the wierd "My Favorites" keys on my Microsoft keyboard.
but that too is bugged!
  • The script must be reentrant (meaning, if you call it 500 times you'll get the same effect as if you'd just called it once), because the driver will actually call it at least twice when you change profiles.
  • And every time you update drivers, for me at least, its nuked my profiles, so I've had to set them up again.

Dispite the buggyness, ATI's Eyefinity profiles do work quite well for me, they just involved more tweaking than I would say the average user would be willing to do --bearing in mind I'm on first-gen eyefinity hardware. You might want to dig into that stuff for Nvidia Surround if you do go that route.
 
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That's the sort of detailed information that's useful and usually not mentioned in reviews. Real-world stuff that matters and that you can only discover on your own. In this case, it's going to be a significant investment (for me) and I want to try to glean as much info as I can before making it.

Thank you for your help, everyone. I hope to find a similar account from an Nvidia surround user.

E
 
Hello,

I have something to add to MrWizard6600's post.
Being an Eyefinity user myself, i found very annoying the fact that Windows or the Drivers were not able to virtually select one of the screens when it comes to maximizing windows for example.
There is a workaround. It's AMD's Hydravision. You can download it from their website. It's on the same page as the driver download link.

What it does, it allows you to maximize a window on any of the Eyefinity member screens, even though its actually one very wide screen. You can drag it from one screen to the other.
You can also create custom grids, depending on your needs.

As an example, please check this Link.

I hope this info helps.
 
Eyefinity/Surround sounds awesome and I was very excited before I got my Eyefinity setup but I have to say in some games it's very underwhelming. While you can run D3 in windowed mode across 3 screens, it doesn't add anything or give you an advantage due to the camera angle. I don't play WoW but I'd imagine you would be better off with a higher resolution single screen. Skyrim is pretty good though, but you have to ask yourself is it really worth the cost of 2 monitors and a top end GPU setup.

Dirt 3 and F1 2011 are absolutely incredible though, but racing games are the only genre which I can say are worth going 3 screens.
 
After a few hours research last night, I wonder if this whole endeavor is worth the time and effort.

It seems like I'm going to want video cards with at least 2GB of RAM to help with the super-wide resolution I would be playing at. Adding another 560 Ti with 1GB of RAM is probably going to be underwhelming. Even buying a couple used 580s with 1.5GB isn't ideal. If I can sell my 560 Ti I'll pick up a GTX 670 now and maybe another down the road.

E
 
Eradan said:
After a few hours research last night, I wonder if this whole endeavor is worth the time and effort.
Click to expand...

Exactly... I'm not sure Eyefinity/Surround is a great idea considering the games you play.

To play Skyrim at max settings and mods you need 670 SLI at least, and some of the mods eat up a lot of VRAM so 2GB may not be enough.
 
I pretty much second everything MrWizard6600 said. I love the productivity aspects of having three full 1080p monitors, and I also love being able to span my games across that if I so desire. I will also go a step further than his suggestion that Catalyst profiles were a bit of a hack and wager that they're outright broken. It usually takes me multiple attempts to save a profile, since it essentially behaves as if it were a screenshot of the settings for whatever page your on. On top of its normal erratic behavior, it tends to destroy your settings if you do anything at all outside of the norm. For instance, anytime I upgrade the drivers or unhook my machine from its cables for cleaning. I love the performance the card offers, and the features, but I hate the niggling issues after a full year of Eyefinity.

Again, I still love my triple monitor setup for both desktop and gaming use, and would recommend it. I would also suggest that two 560 1gb cards could handle it, as I've been gaming on this setup with a single 6870 that hasn't been OC'd. On the vast majority of games I can play at least medium settings or high, and on some I can play high or very high. It's obviously closer to 40fps than 60fps, but it's still fully playable. That said, AA is killer on 1gb of vram at this resolution, so I've found myself using the FXAA Injector hack to get access to FXAA on AMD cards. I've tried MLAA through the driver panel, but it just had far too large of a performance hit. Since your on Nvidia already, you could save yourself the trouble of using the hack and just enable it through the drivers.

Another bonus to the Nvidia side of the equation is that they're recently added Windows 7 like multi-monitor desktop management (maximum, start bar, etc.) to their surround mode, which could potentially bypass the profile issues. If you're interested and have the monitors, or can acquire them for cheap, I would fully suggest picking up another 560 Ti and giving it a shot. Worst case scenario, you can use the second 560 for a third monitor under Windows only, and turn on Sli for boosted single monitor performance.

tl;dr
Eyefinity/Surround is awesome but Catalyst profiles are evil. Productivity = awesome. 560's and 6870's with 1gb vram are fine, as long as you stick to FXAA for your anti-aliasing and stay far, far away from MSAA...
 
Good points. I do intend to try it. I just don't know if I want to invest another $220 for a matching 560ti. I think I'm going to throw it in the For Sale forum tonight and take whatever I get for it and put that towards a 670.

Another goal in doing this is getting a quieter card. The 560ti is so much louder than my old GTX 260 was. I was having major issues with heat and noise on this 560ti (hitting 100C in Diablo 3) until I reloaded my system, installed the latest drivers, and moved to a better case. Under load, my temps have dropped 20-25 degrees C. But it's still a little louder than I like...guess that's what I get for going with the DS model with it's dual fans--I actually thought it would be quieter than reference.

E
 
Martha Stewart said:
D3 works in windowed more or with the Widescreen fixer plug in
Click to expand...

Just to set your mind at ease, I have tried Diablo 3 in eyefinity with a Radeon 7850, and now with an nvidia GTX670, and it worked equally well with both, with the obvious exception that the 7850 pumped out a consistent 60FPS (overclocked to 1150MHz), and my Gigabyte Windforce GTX670 puts out a consistent 100FPS at stock clocks. So both nvidia surround and AMD eyefinity will work with Diablo 3, using as mentioned, widowed mode for both. And contrary to some comments, though it's not 'officially' supported by Blizzard, it's flipping AMAZING on 3 monitors! You could never go back to 1 after you've tried 3. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise!
 
D3 works but the inventory screens will be on the far edges of the Left and Right monitors. It makes it extremely annoying to compare and move equipment back and forth. Eyefinity/NVSurround is sometimes nice, but lacks official support from most games leaving you to have to tweak the UI which can be a pita or sometimes you are stuck with UI on the far side monitors which isn't ideal.

One advantage of AMD is that the drivers support display profiles for quick switching between eyefinity spanning across all monitors or having 3 extended displays for desktop mode or any config you want. It sometimes has its quirks though.

One game that supports NVSurround but nerfs Eyefinity is the Witcher 3. Apparently it worked with eyefinity, but somewhere along the way a patch blocked eyefinity, but not NV Surround.
 
slh28 said:
Exactly... I'm not sure Eyefinity/Surround is a great idea considering the games you play.

To play Skyrim at max settings and mods you need 670 SLI at least, and some of the mods eat up a lot of VRAM so 2GB may not be enough.
Click to expand...

7970 will do skyrim with mods and Max settings. I've seen 3000 mb of Vram usage in that game on mine.
 
If your running multi-gpu I would recommend Nvidia's solution. AMD's CFX frametime/stutter issues are significantly more apparent when running Eyefinity, I stopped running eyefinity with my 5870 2GB CF configuration for this very reason.
 
Update to Cat 12.3 or later, and delete all profiles and set them up again one by one. Eyefinity presets worked fine for me way back in the day, like at 10.3 or something ancient like that, then got broken sometime around the 6850's release or maybe a bit later. For the longest time I gave up on presets, but then I got a 7970 and installed 12.3 and it's working again 100% perfectly. You just have to know to how CCC operates, and click on the bottom monitors to tell it to Extend or Duplicate or group them all together as an Eyefinity array. It can be done without any weird workarounds (and trust me I know what you guys are talking about re: broken presets... ticked me off so much). NV doesn't even HAVE hotkeyable presets. Both of them allow you to use the center monitor as your taskbar, NV by default, I think AMD too now though even if not, you can select that monitor and make it Primary.

Asacolips said:
I pretty much second everything MrWizard6600 said. I love the productivity aspects of having three full 1080p monitors, and I also love being able to span my games across that if I so desire. I will also go a step further than his suggestion that Catalyst profiles were a bit of a hack and wager that they're outright broken. It usually takes me multiple attempts to save a profile, since it essentially behaves as if it were a screenshot of the settings for whatever page your on. On top of its normal erratic behavior, it tends to destroy your settings if you do anything at all outside of the norm. For instance, anytime I upgrade the drivers or unhook my machine from its cables for cleaning. I love the performance the card offers, and the features, but I hate the niggling issues after a full year of Eyefinity.

Again, I still love my triple monitor setup for both desktop and gaming use, and would recommend it. I would also suggest that two 560 1gb cards could handle it, as I've been gaming on this setup with a single 6870 that hasn't been OC'd. On the vast majority of games I can play at least medium settings or high, and on some I can play high or very high. It's obviously closer to 40fps than 60fps, but it's still fully playable. That said, AA is killer on 1gb of vram at this resolution, so I've found myself using the FXAA Injector hack to get access to FXAA on AMD cards. I've tried MLAA through the driver panel, but it just had far too large of a performance hit. Since your on Nvidia already, you could save yourself the trouble of using the hack and just enable it through the drivers.

Another bonus to the Nvidia side of the equation is that they're recently added Windows 7 like multi-monitor desktop management (maximum, start bar, etc.) to their surround mode, which could potentially bypass the profile issues. If you're interested and have the monitors, or can acquire them for cheap, I would fully suggest picking up another 560 Ti and giving it a shot. Worst case scenario, you can use the second 560 for a third monitor under Windows only, and turn on Sli for boosted single monitor performance.

tl;dr
Eyefinity/Surround is awesome but Catalyst profiles are evil. Productivity = awesome. 560's and 6870's with 1gb vram are fine, as long as you stick to FXAA for your anti-aliasing and stay far, far away from MSAA...
Click to expand...
 
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My take on Eyefinity.

Been using it since 5850 across three different monitors. Not sure where the idea that you need 3 of the same monitors came from since my monitors are even all different sizes...Sure it makes it look nicer, but I've run Eyefinity on 21.5, 24, and 23 inch monitors. I just put a thickish dictionary under the 21.5 and it more or less accommodates for the lack of height.

Currently using Eyefinity on my 6970 and it is powering 4 monitors, 3 in Eyefinity and 1 as an accessory. I've moved my start bar to the top screen so that it isn't in the way when it sometimes becomes necessary to game in fullscreen windowed mode. It runs a little hotter due to the extra monitors, but that isn't really even an issue as I just leave it at default speeds when not gaming.

Installing new drivers is usually ok for me, but the last time I updated (to 12.4 I think) it completely borked everything. Took some fiddling around with to get it back to the way I originally had it, but I love that I can just manually change fan speeds with the click of a macro key.

Performance wise I have nothing to complain about. Some games will be better than others, but it's a trade off that I can live with, and really it isn't even by that much. After having this screen much real-estate, I don't think I can really ever go back to just having one monitor. My friend feels the same way and he is running off of a 5850 2GB version.

That being said, now that nVidia has released their solution that only requires one card, I am almost tempted to jump ship after so many years with AMD due to the performance increase. However, my 6970 is more than capable so I will hold off and wait, probably until the next iteration of cards.

That being said, there are some cons.

When it comes to some games, it causes stretching for games that don't support it. Menus, FMVs and even gameplay (see League of Legends, D3) can bleed or even look skewered due to the fact that it's being treated as 1 giant desktop. In this case, I just usually play it in windowed mode, which I have grown accustomed to.

Also while gaming, (WoW, SWTOR) your peripheral view from the two monitors will be skewed until you actually rotate your character to turn and look. Things appear closer than they actually are, but it is still very useful for seeing mining/quest nodes or incoming enemy players so you don't get blindsided. Not sure I could play MMOs without it. Plus it adds to the immersive factor. I can't remember what GW2 looked like in Eyefinity (whether it was skewed or not), but I remember being pretty impressed.

When watching movies, I noticed that no matter what player I use, subtitles often spill over onto adjacent screens, which is a major headache.

As mentioned above, I wish window snapping was more intelligent, but I've learned to live with it. I have also used my card to power the monitors as individual displays. Handy for work, but not good for gaming as it is quite easy to mouse out of the game and accidentally switch to desktop.

I would say the benefits outweigh the cons, it is still an imperfect technology but it works pretty well.
 
When watching movies, I just watch/use those programs on one monitor. Can switch from one (centered) monitor to triple-wide Extended to triple-wide Eyefinity in just seconds with presets. No need to fuss around with stretched movies and subtitles or whatever you're dealing with. Saves wattage, too.
 
blastingcap said:
When watching movies, I just watch/use those programs on one monitor. Can switch from one (centered) monitor to triple-wide Extended to triple-wide Eyefinity in just seconds with presets. No need to fuss around with stretched movies and subtitles or whatever you're dealing with. Saves wattage, too.
Click to expand...

What program do you use?

I can get around it by watching on my 4th monitor, but it hurts my neck if I have to look up for that long.
 
anubis44 said:
Just to set your mind at ease, I have tried Diablo 3 in eyefinity with a Radeon 7850, and now with an nvidia GTX670, and it worked equally well with both, with the obvious exception that the 7850 pumped out a consistent 60FPS (overclocked to 1150MHz), and my Gigabyte Windforce GTX670 puts out a consistent 100FPS at stock clocks. So both nvidia surround and AMD eyefinity will work with Diablo 3, using as mentioned, widowed mode for both. And contrary to some comments, though it's not 'officially' supported by Blizzard, it's flipping AMAZING on 3 monitors! You could never go back to 1 after you've tried 3. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise!
Click to expand...

Yeah it's just for me with SLI gtx 470 that windowed mode gives terrible FPS, compared to fullscreen at non-bezel corrected res which i would use if it didn't crash all the time
 
Wait, what? D3 does too work with Eyefinity. I've played over 20+ other and it's just simply mind blowing, especially on my Asus 27" LED's with 10,000,000 to 1 contrast.

It also works perfectly with Xfire on.
 
ultraman7k said:
What program do you use?

I can get around it by watching on my 4th monitor, but it hurts my neck if I have to look up for that long.
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter what program you use. VLC, Media Player Classic, WMP, etc. Just make a preset that disables all but one monitor. Or drag the player to one of your screens in Extended Desktop mode (not Eyefinity) and maximize it. Surely you have presets for something other than Eyefinity?

SixFootDuo said:
Wait, what? D3 does too work with Eyefinity. I've played over 20+ other and it's just simply mind blowing, especially on my Asus 27" LED's with 10,000,000 to 1 contrast.

It also works perfectly with Xfire on.
Click to expand...

D3 beta allowed it, and supposedly there are workarounds for the published game, but Blizzard in its asshattery--I mean, paternalism--no, asshattery; I was right the first time--has decided that LLL Eyefinity gives an unfair advantage and thus disables it for anything remotely competitive, such as Starcraft 2 and now D3. PPP Eyefinity still works as that doesn't change the aspect ratio enough to give what Blizzard deems an unfair advantage.
 
blastingcap said:
It doesn't matter what program you use. VLC, Media Player Classic, WMP, etc. Just make a preset that disables all but one monitor. Or drag the player to one of your screens in Extended Desktop mode (not Eyefinity) and maximize it. Surely you have presets for something other than Eyefinity?
Click to expand...

You would be surprised how many don't use the profiles, or just don't know how to use them.
I could not imagine using eyefinity without my three presets.

CTRL ALT 1 = Standard extended left monitor is primary. (The preset I use for all things non gaming)
CTRL ALT 2 = Standard extended center monitor is primary (The preset I use for single monitor gaming)
CTRL ALT 3= Eyefinity. (The preset I use for most gaming)

D3 beta allowed it, and supposedly there are workarounds for the published game, but Blizzard in its asshattery--I mean, paternalism--no, asshattery; I was right the first time--has decided that LLL Eyefinity gives an unfair advantage and thus disables it for anything remotely competitive, such as Starcraft 2 and now D3. PPP Eyefinity still works as that doesn't change the aspect ratio enough to give what Blizzard deems an unfair advantage.
Click to expand...

Never understood this argument from devs or even the community. I heard the same BS argument when fully configurable joysticks became common, again over the use of macros and scripts, again over using racing wheels, and yet again when 16:9/16:10 monitors were just starting to supplant the 5:4/4:3 monitors. It was BS then, and is BS now. A FOV slider could be used at any resolution, on any number of screens from one on up. It might squish what you see on the screen in single monitor, but you would retain the same advantages a triple monitor user would supposedly have, and it is not like D3 is some graphical masterpiece here.

I have heard this b4, and I will hear it again, I am sure.
 
GORANKAR said:
You would be surprised how many don't use the profiles, or just don't know how to use them.
I could not imagine using eyefinity without my three presets.

CTRL ALT 1 = Standard extended left monitor is primary. (The preset I use for all things non gaming)
CTRL ALT 2 = Standard extended center monitor is primary (The preset I use for single monitor gaming)
CTRL ALT 3= Eyefinity. (The preset I use for most gaming)

Never understood this argument from devs or even the community. I heard the same BS argument when fully configurable joysticks became common, again over the use of macros and scripts, again over using racing wheels, and yet again when 16:9/16:10 monitors were just starting to supplant the 5:4/4:3 monitors. It was BS then, and is BS now. A FOV slider could be used at any resolution, on any number of screens from one on up. It might squish what you see on the screen in single monitor, but you would retain the same advantages a triple monitor user would supposedly have, and it is not like D3 is some graphical masterpiece here.

I have heard this b4, and I will hear it again, I am sure.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have similar presets, though I selected my center monitor to be primary in Extended mode, regardless of gaming or not. But now that I think about, it could be helpful to have the taskbar unobstructed in some circumstances where I'm busy on the center screen. I also have a second Eyefinity preset, so one preset is for bezel-corrected and the other is for non-bezel corrected.

Blizz is obnoxiously paternalistic. People denied it for years but D3's always-online thing could change a few minds over time. I'll leave it at that.
 
Blind Man said:
be aware D3 does not work with eyefinity/nvsurround.
Click to expand...

And this is what happens with misleading [H] news posts... I've been playing D3 at 5760x1080 since the beta.



I personally vote for a single 7970 or a GTX 670. They will run your games flawlessly (my 7970 works well). I've had crossfire in the past and my ex roommate has a SLI NV Surround setup. Dealing with triple monitor compatibility AND multiple card issues is a little much sometimes.

The profiles for switching between extended desktop and eyefinity is pretty damn good from AMD. My NV Surround roommate claims NV does NOT have the same feature, but I suspect he just didn't dig hard enough. I'm not sure if another NV user has been able to confirm. AMD also has hydragrid which is another way to get windows to snap to 1 monitor even in eyefinity mode.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
And this is what happens with misleading [H] news posts... I've been playing D3 at 5760x1080 since the beta.
Click to expand...

I probably shouldnt have spoke for eyefinity. But for me right now, although it worked in beta, I cannot really do nvsurround in D3 since release.

1) bezel corrected resolution in portrait mode in fullscreen simply does not exist. if you try and force it through the prefs.ini it will just reset to default res. no way to get around it
2) using 3240x1920 in fullscreen tends to crash very often for me when entering a new zone. regardless, D3 is really bad without bezel correction, monsters jumping between monitors etc..
3) borderless windowed mode "works" but the FPS is very bad - people with more powerful setups probably don't notice this, but with 470sli my fps is 35-40 with 100% gpu usage vs. a solid 60+ fps and ~75% gpu usage if I am using fullscreen (until it crashes)

so right now, I just play on 1 monitor
 
Blind Man said:
I probably shouldnt have spoke for eyefinity. But for me right now, although it worked in beta, I cannot really do nvsurround in D3 since release.

1) bezel corrected resolution in portrait mode in fullscreen simply does not exist. if you try and force it through the prefs.ini it will just reset to default res. no way to get around it
2) using 3240x1920 in fullscreen tends to crash very often for me when entering a new zone. regardless, D3 is really bad without bezel correction, monsters jumping between monitors etc..
3) borderless windowed mode "works" but the FPS is very bad - people with more powerful setups probably don't notice this, but with 470sli my fps is 35-40 with 100% gpu usage vs. a solid 60+ fps and ~75% gpu usage if I am using fullscreen (until it crashes)

so right now, I just play on 1 monitor
Click to expand...

The performance issue is likely due to SLI not functioning in windowed mode. This goes back to why I've swapped to a single card set up. I play a lot of games in borderless windowed mode anyway.
 
Sold my 560ti on Craigslist and now have a Gigabyte GTX 670 that I picked up at Micro Center. Haven't opened it yet. Doing some more homework before I commit. I saw the 7950 has 3GB of RAM versus 2GB on the 670. Since I'm going multi-monitor, want to make sure that won't make big difference.
 
I got a GTX 680 today and I have to say I already miss the AMD Eyefinity Profile feature to switch between span and extended monitors. The NVidia control panel is also a pita when you turn off surround as it disables all, but your main monitor and then you have reenable your monitors and arrange them again. Total PITA.

If you are serious about multi-monitor gaming then sadly I'd say go with AMD for now until NVidia or a 3rd party makes it more convenient to use.
 
I've managed to complete the switch over to Nvidia Surround since my earlier post, and I definitely enjoy the interface more for the most part. The only major issue I have with it (and it's a relatively big one) is that Nvidia requires the monitors to have the same sync polarity. I've discovered that most manufacturers don't list that spec, and my nearly identical Acer monitors apparently have different polarities.

It took me about 10 hours to finally get a workaround for that working correctly, but I finally did. I made a short how to for that in the Nvidia forum here. Now that it's actually working, I must say that I do like surround better. The 301.42 drivers have 'good enough' window management, so that I don't need to switch between profiles. The ability to use lower resolutions with the same aspect ratio is also a big plus. I could never get that to work on my Eyefinity setup. I just wish the damn sync polarity wasn't a requirement, since it's a crapshoot as to whether your monitors will have it.
 
anubis44 said:
Just to set your mind at ease, I have tried Diablo 3 in eyefinity with a Radeon 7850, and now with an nvidia GTX670, and it worked equally well with both, with the obvious exception that the 7850 pumped out a consistent 60FPS (overclocked to 1150MHz), and my Gigabyte Windforce GTX670 puts out a consistent 100FPS at stock clocks. So both nvidia surround and AMD eyefinity will work with Diablo 3, using as mentioned, widowed mode for both. And contrary to some comments, though it's not 'officially' supported by Blizzard, it's flipping AMAZING on 3 monitors! You could never go back to 1 after you've tried 3. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise!
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Except 100fps does you no good since anything past the refresh rate of your monitor is useless. Pretty much the highest you can get is a 75Hz, unless you get a 3D Gaming monitor, which is 120Hz. At that point you may as well get the best card on the market because we like to call that "bottleneck" if you don't.
 
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