3 monitor setups - do games support the extra resolution required?

[DarkSideA8]

I've not ventured into the multiple monitor gaming arena - but I remember from when I looked into it several years ago, that many games did not support the wider resolution.

Does this still happen?

Is UI scaling an issue?

Bonus question - can you do a 3 monitor (24 inch 1200p where each monitor is 16:10) in any games without the black bars?

 

[cybereality]

I used to run triple screen. There were some issues from time to time, depending on the title, but many games worked.

Usually the issues were with 2D elements like health bars or ammo, etc., that would be the wrong size or far off to the side.

But overall it did work decently.

 

[zandor]

I ran triple screen sometimes for a while twice. The first time involved a Matrox Parhelia. It took some config file hacking most of the time but most games would work. The messy bit was anything written for DirectX 7, which was already old when the Parhelia came out. DirectX 7 wouldn't support anything more than 2048 pixels across, so you were stuck in 3x640x480 for anything using DirectX 7. The original Unreal Tournament was my personal biggest annoyance. The Parhelia also just didn't have enough performance for a lot of games running on 3 screens.

My next go at triple screen was in 2013 with 3x2560x1440. I set it up in early 2013 with a GTX 680, had to go SLI. If SLI didn't work, no triple screens unless it was an older title that one card could handle. Skyrim at 7680x1440 was fantastic. These days one high end card should be fine if you're running something like 3x1920x1080 or 3x1920x1200. 3x2560x1440 is a bit more pixels than 4k but would probably be ok with a high end card. If you wanted to do 3x4k you'd be pretty much screwed in new AAA titles since SLI & Xfire are basically dead.

I haven't gamed on a 1920x1200 screen since early 2013, but before that I never had a problem with black bars. I got my first screen that would run 1920x1200 used in 2005 or so. Sony GDM-FW900 CRT. It could do 2304x1440, but only at 75HZ so I usually ran it in 1920x1200. Next screen at that res was an LCD in 2007. Aside from ancient games (ancient in 2005) I only ever had black bars playing a video or movie, and some of those will give you black bars on a 1080p screen. 1920x1200 is actually an older res than 1080p. That was the "big money" res before 1080p was relevant. Modern games are much less picky about screen res that they were 15 or 20 years ago.

For the most part things worked ok. Sometimes it took a little game config file hacking but mostly I just used a program called "Flawless Widescreen". The "flawless" part is an exaggeration but it helped a lot. I didn't have much trouble with UI scaling, but a lot of times my health and ammo ended up on the outside corners of one of my side screens and way out of my primary field of vision.

All that said I switched to a big 4k screen with a side screen in portrait mode. I'd have two side screens but the pandemic work from home thing has my work laptop taking up the space where one of them would fit.

 

[cybereality]

Yeah, that was my experience as well with Surround 7680x1440. Played Bioshock Infinite like that and games like DIRT, wow, what an experience.

These days I feel like ultrawide is a better compromise, but if you want a triple screen rig it definitely is pretty amazing.

 

[DoubleTap]

I ran nv surround for about 9 years. It was almost all great but until the 3090, we were always wanting for more gpu, especially at 1440p

Id run mmos and driving games on 3 screens, newer fps games on the center. (Older fps games would run on all 3)

Honestly, the new UW monitors are a better experience and much easier to live with on every front.

A 3840x1600 monitor has about the same pixels as 3x 1080p monitors but they are put to better use.

The time for triple monitors has passed imo.