NVIDIA 3D VISION SURROUND Experience @ [H]

Do you guys know if I can run 4 monitors with this? 3 for the 3d surround and a 4th for a larger monitor hanging above the 3 3d monitors?
 
About thirty minutes ago, I ordered two more Samsung 2233rz monitors from eBay and another Galaxy GTX 480 and the Kingwin Lazer 1kW PSU from TigerDirect. My 3DVS system is in the mail, WOOHOO! The SilverStone Raven 2 is going to have to wait... it didn't make the cut at this time. My Antec Twelve Hundred is going to have to suffice.

Too bad PayPal messed up and ordered four 2233rz's after a 404 error on their site. I've contacted the merchant and I hope they cancel the order before it ships!

I can finally join the few, the proud, the 3DVS owners. I don't know what I'm going to play first, Batman, Just Cause 2, Bad Company 2, Metro 2033, Dragon Age: Origins, Far Cry 2, Borderlands, APB, BioShock 1/2, Ghostbusters (supported?), WoW, everything Valve, and god knows what else. I've got almost all the games I want... but I don't have any racing games on PC, yet. Would someone like to tell me the two most compatible PC racing games with 3DVS support?
 
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You are da man! I can't want to see what you think about 3DVS as I'm just tired of hearing from the naysayers that either suffer from physical issues (not their fault, they just don't have the eyesight for it) or people who've not tried it and criticize as a fad.

You're list of games is good. Your first for games are fully supported and are all awesome, especially Batman and JC2. I have most of the others but I've not tried any others except Portal which doesn't really work.. In face if its not 3D Vision Ready, you probably going to have an issue here are there though often they can be worked through. Got enough for now but will be looking for and testing more. We should start a thread but I imagine it'll get crapped on.

That Antec 1200 case should be ok. I actually have one and it housed 2 of my 480s in SLI and then I rebuilt the setup and added the 3rd 480. It doesn't have anywhere the room of the 800D and my cards ran a bit hotter in the 1200.

Once again congrats!

PS: Don't know of a racer yet, need to check into that but don't forget Mafia II is 3D Vision Ready. Gonna buy all new 3D VS titles even if I don't play them to support the effort.
 
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heatlesssun said:
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Once again congrats!

PS: Don't know of a racer yet, need to check into that but don't forget Mafia II is 3D Vision Ready. Gonna buy all new 3D VS titles even if I don't play them to support the effort.
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Thank you and I can't wait for Mafia II! That games requirements look like their going to really push my computer. (4.1ghz i7 920 / DDR3 running around 1900mhz / SLI GTX 480 running what I imagine will be very overclocked) I wish I didn't demand a sound card that fills my final pci-e slot, otherwise I'd buy a GTS 250 for dedicated PhysX just for Mafia II, Dark Void, and others!
 
heatlesssun said:
No becaue nVidia's Surround technology is an implementation of SLI, thus the need for at least two cards.
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Odd the article reads that SLI is used because of the extra DVI ports.
FISHY


Ive paid into this pit of crap for years, what a money grabbing bullshit move nVidia.
 
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FingerSlut said:
Odd the article reads that SLI is used because of the extra DVI ports.
FISHY


Ive paid into this pit of crap for years, what a money grabbing bullshit move nVidia.
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I think you're seeing a conspiracy where there isn't one. First of all you have to remember that Surround works on cards from two years ago, over a year before Eyefinity even came out. nVidia cards simply lack the hardware to do Surround on a single card like Eyefinity. And nVidia has done this type of thing for some time on their professional cards.

But look at the results. Surround simply works MUCH better than Eyefinity in multi-GPU configurations and has higher performance. Once again 480 SLI Surround has recieved the HIGHEST industry praise, Kyle gave it a Gold Star where he did not confer such an honor on a single 480.

And again, people with two or more 200 cards for two years ago got this technology for FREE without spending a dime.
 
heatlesssun said:
I think you're seeing a conspiracy where there isn't one. First of all you have to remember that Surround works on cards from two years ago, over a year before Eyefinity even came out. nVidia cards simply lack the hardware to do Surround on a single card like Eyefinity. And nVidia has done this type of thing for some time on their professional cards.

But look at the results. Surround simply works MUCH better than Eyefinity in multi-GPU configurations and has higher performance. Once again 480 SLI Surround has recieved the HIGHEST industry praise, Kyle gave it a Gold Star where he did not confer such an honor on a single 480.

And again, people with two or more 200 cards for two years ago got this technology for FREE without spending a dime.
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I understand for 3x 3d view. Thats cool. But rendering a picture at a giant resolution and split across many screens isnt exactly groundbreaking. Plus you have to have the exact same screens. Is the math too complex to compute a varied resolution rig? What, is the power of CUDA supercomputing unable to compute a couple of multiplication, division and addition problems?

Bullshit marketing shenanigans.

I guess i can just run my games windowed and stretched over both for the time being.
 
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FingerSlut said:
I understand for 3x 3d view. Thats cool. But rendering a picture at a giant resolution and split across many screens isnt exactly groundbreaking. Plus you have to have the exact same screens. Is the math too complex to compute a varied resolution rig? What, is the power of CUDA supercomputing unable to compute a couple of multiplication, division and addition problems?

Bullshit marketing shenanigans.

I guess i can just run my games windowed and stretched over both for the time being.
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Huh? Show me a prior solution that can run a game like Batman AA pushing 12 million pixels 60 times a second. For 2D Surrond you don't need the exact same screen just the same resolution. Think about for a second. When was the last time you saw a display technology that wasn't retangular? I've not see a screen that wasn't have you?

Until you see this technology with your own eyes you're just sounding like the fox from the sour grapes fable. I've been gaming on computers for 30 years and buying the best equipment my entire post college adult life and I've NEVER seen anything like 2D and 3D Surround pushing games like a Batman AA at the quality levels my sig rig is delievering.

You can poo poo on it all you want but neither have you.;)
 
heatlesssun said:
Huh? Show me a prior solution that can run a game like Batman AA pushing 12 million pixels 60 times a second. For 2D Surrond you don't need the exact same screen just the same resolution. Think about for a second. When was the last time you saw a display technology that wasn't retangular? I've not see a screen that wasn't have you?

Until you see this technology with your own eyes you're just sounding like the fox from the sour grapes fable. I've been gaming on computers for 30 years and buying the best equipment my entire post college adult life and I've NEVER seen anything like 2D and 3D Surround pushing games like a Batman AA at the quality levels my sig rig is delievering.

You can poo poo on it all you want but neither have you.;)
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I'm not here to have a pissing contest to prove whose perspective is valid.

Nor am I going to spend time invalidating you. I'm merely using this as a means to channel a frustration at a company. I'm no fanboy but I'd love to use the card I have now because if I have to buy in again it wont be with nVidia on the mere principle of this very behavior.
 
FingerSlut said:
I'm not here to have a pissing contest to prove whose perspective is valid.

Nor am I going to spend time invalidating you. I'm merely using this as a means to channel a frustration at a company. I'm no fanboy but I'd love to use the card I have now because if I have to buy in again it wont be with nVidia on the mere principle of this very behavior.
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But how can you have ANY perspective, at least one based on fact, without ANY experience? And I am FAR from the only one with my view of this technology. If it is so horrible and so ho hum then why has just about EVERY professional reviewer that's looked at it awarded 480 SLI Surround their highest award? Where has anything like this available before last year?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but no one is entitled to their own facts. The fact is that everyone that does this for a living is saying this tech is giving them the most stunning gaming experience they have EVER had. That's just the undeniable truth.

Please show me a review of someone, ANYONE that's tried this stuff that says otherwise.
 
heatlesssun said:
But how can you have ANY perspective, at least one based on fact, without ANY experience? And I am FAR from the only one with my view of this technology. If it is so horrible and so ho hum then why has just about EVERY professional reviewer that's looked at it awarded 480 SLI Surround their highest award? Where has anything like this available before last year?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but no one is entitled to their own facts. The fact is that everyone that does this for a living is saying this tech is giving them the most stunning gaming experience they have EVER had. That's just the undeniable truth.

Please show me a review of someone, ANYONE that's tried this stuff that says otherwise.
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Uh dude, get off me. I'm not taking your bait.

Simple fact is this should work on one card with 2 screens.
 
IRSmurf said:
Thank you and I can't wait for Mafia II! That games requirements look like their going to really push my computer. (4.1ghz i7 920 / DDR3 running around 1900mhz / SLI GTX 480 running what I imagine will be very overclocked) I wish I didn't demand a sound card that fills my final pci-e slot, otherwise I'd buy a GTS 250 for dedicated PhysX just for Mafia II, Dark Void, and others!
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Yeah I'm not an audiophile and I've not bought dedicated sound card in about a decade now. I was thinking about getting an Asus Xonar but I want to put a CableCard tuner in my one day, they were supposed to have been out in May and nothing yet.

Where are you seeing the requirements for Mafia II? This is what I saw: http://www.vgrequirements.info/mafia-2-pc/ You and I will be fine. The problem is going to be PhysX and 3D Surround. We shall see!
 
FingerSlut said:
Uh dude, get off me. I'm not taking your bait.

Simple fact is this should work on one card with 2 screens.
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You're saying stuff without experience or anything to back it up. Sorry, around here that draws a bit of fire, nothing personal.:)
 
FingerSlut said:
Simple fact is this should work on one card with 2 screens.
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No, it shouldn't, and it's a hardware limitation.

On Windows Vista and Windows 7, the WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) does not allow spanned resolutions. Each monitor connected to a video card gets its own resolution and refresh rate settings no matter what.

ATi gets around this limitation with dedicated hardware on the graphics card to spoof a single monitor on the hardware level. Nvidia doesn't have that luxury, and so, their cards are unable to perform this trickery.

Enter the magic of SLI Mosaic Mode. Nvidia has effectively hijacked the SLI hardware on these cards to act as a middle-man between the display driver model and the monitors. That's the only thing that's allowing them to squeeze in and create a spanned resolution that can be presented to the display drivers.

That's why you can't span two screens unless you have SLI. It's vital to the way Nvidia's surround solution works. No SLI = no middle man = no spanning.
 
Unknown-One said:
No, it shouldn't, and it's a hardware limitation.
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Yeah, tried to tell him that but he's not buying the truth. You did a better job than I. One correction, Surround only works in 7 according to nVidia's system requirements, the mosic composition is only in WDDM 1.1 I believe and that's not supported in Vista. It was funny how some people thought that software only SLI would be inferior to the hardware solution by AMD. Clearly that was completly wrong. Software may have salvaged the GF100. nVidia can write some damned impressive drivers. I hope the driver team gets a bonus for this because this driver overnight transformed the 480/470 from a lemon into delcious lemon cake.

And I'm not trying to gang up on you but to come into a thread that's about this tech and calling it crap and having nothing to back it up just isn't going to go unchallenged. People who have invested in this stuff and are loving it are obviously going to say you're toally wrong especially when you've not even seen it. Go to the Apple forum call the Mac crap and think you know you'll get the same kinds of responses. Again, nothing personal.
 
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Can anyone get Quake 4 running?

I had enough trouble just getting the game started in Windows 7. Installed the last patch and then it started up, but it won't start back up again after I changed the resolution to 1920x1200. It definitely doesn't recognize Surround resolutions in-game, and changing resolutions in the .cfg does nothing.
 
Has anybody got NV Surround to work off a single GTX 295? I would think that it doesn't have enough output ports to pull it off, right?
 
vjcsmoke said:
Has anybody got NV Surround to work off a single GTX 295? I would think that it doesn't have enough output ports to pull it off, right?
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The original dual-PCB version of the GTX295 will work; It has two DVI ports on one PCB and one HDMI port on the other.

The newer single-PCB version of the GTX295 will not work. It only has two DVI ports.
 
Unknown-One said:
Quake 4 requires a mod to work properly in surround. The resolution will work if set in the config file, but the game will stretch instead of setting the correct aspect ratio.

Head on over to Widescreen Gaming Forum for full details. Here's their Detailed Report, and the thread with the patches.
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But I am having a more fundamental problem of getting the game to start up even on one monitor; after I installed the latest official patch, it got to the menu screen, but when I changed the resolution there to 19x12, it wouldn't start up properly again, and when I looked at the cfg file, it decided on a weird tiny resolution. I'll have to take a look at it again but I know it has major issues just trying to grab focus of the window when booting up (not fixed by clicking on it in the taskbar).

e: Also it was reported by a couple people earlier in the thread that on Nvidia's drivers, id's OpenGL implementation was simply not working above a certain resolution. An Nvidia rep posted to say he couldn't duplicate the issue on his end, though.
 
Unknown-One said:
No, it shouldn't, and it's a hardware limitation.

On Windows Vista and Windows 7, the WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) does not allow spanned resolutions. Each monitor connected to a video card gets its own resolution and refresh rate settings no matter what.

ATi gets around this limitation with dedicated hardware on the graphics card to spoof a single monitor on the hardware level. Nvidia doesn't have that luxury, and so, their cards are unable to perform this trickery.

Enter the magic of SLI Mosaic Mode. Nvidia has effectively hijacked the SLI hardware on these cards to act as a middle-man between the display driver model and the monitors. That's the only thing that's allowing them to squeeze in and create a spanned resolution that can be presented to the display drivers.

That's why you can't span two screens unless you have SLI. It's vital to the way Nvidia's surround solution works. No SLI = no middle man = no spanning.
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Uh that can be virtualized, you guys have no imaginations.
And you can set each monitor to match resolutions and refresh rate in windows 7.
 
heatlesssun said:
Yeah, tried to tell him that but he's not buying the truth. You did a better job than I. One correction, Surround only works in 7 according to nVidia's system requirements, the mosic composition is only in WDDM 1.1 I believe and that's not supported in Vista. It was funny how some people thought that software only SLI would be inferior to the hardware solution by AMD. Clearly that was completly wrong. Software may have salvaged the GF100. nVidia can write some damned impressive drivers. I hope the driver team gets a bonus for this because this driver overnight transformed the 480/470 from a lemon into delcious lemon cake.

And I'm not trying to gang up on you but to come into a thread that's about this tech and calling it crap and having nothing to back it up just isn't going to go unchallenged. People who have invested in this stuff and are loving it are obviously going to say you're toally wrong especially when you've not even seen it. Go to the Apple forum call the Mac crap and think you know you'll get the same kinds of responses. Again, nothing personal.
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I've seen it years ago, actually, before either of these products were out. You're like one of those leg humping dogs dude. You need to chill for being an old guy.
 
FingerSlut said:
You're a troll dude, you're not backing up your invalidations to me.

Or an nVidiot shill.
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I have this technology and use it daily now and am simply telling you what my EXPERIENCE is with it. You're just spouting off random stuff with no proof.:)

Honestly wouldn't it be silly for me to tell you about a product you have right in front of you when I had never even SEEN it with my own eyes? Come on now, that's just common sense.
 
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FingerSlut said:
I've seen it years ago, actually, before either of these products were out. You're like one of those leg humping dogs dude. You need to chill for being an old guy.
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Yes but that technology could in no way shape or perform at this level.
 
Better start acting like adults. This is your one warning.
 
While I would love to continue this debate it's not going anywhere. You have your opinions, others there's and I have mine. Let's just leave it at that for now.
 
Since my reply to a valid question about the GTX 295 was indiscriminately deleted in The Great Massacre of Page 17, I'll reiterate:

Surround will work with one type of the card, but not the other (something about dual PCBs). Hit up the official Nvidia site and check out the table that's there somewhere; it shows which cards will and will not be supported.
 
Matrices said:
Since my reply to a valid question about the GTX 295 was indiscriminately deleted in The Great Massacre of Page 17, I'll reiterate:

Surround will work with one type of the card, but not the other (something about dual PCBs). Hit up the official Nvidia site and check out the table that's there somewhere; it shows which cards will and will not be supported.
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LOL! "The Great Massacre of Page 17". Sounds like an indie file title!:D

At any rate I think you read it wrong but it is a bit confusing. With 295 cards with an HDMI port, you can run Surround on a single 295 but only with projectors in 3D and with two 295s of this type in quad you can have both cards run Surround with some of the ports outside of the quad array and they can drive additional monitors, but as I said, not part of the surrond mosaic. So its kind of like have TWO displays with one being the virtual Surround display.

With the other 295 style of card, you actually need a pair of 295 to drive Surround, no different that with a single GPU card.

But Surround DOES work at some level with BOTH types of cards.

Actually glad you bought your point up. I finally realized something. I had made a post about driving more then 3 displays with a Surround setup, In my case I have 3 other ports to drive monitors. I found out that I could indeed drive two monitors from one of the cards but not while in surrond. There needs to be sticky are something about this because the configurations with this are actually complicated.
 
Unknown-One said:
Quake 4 requires a mod to work properly in surround. The resolution will work if set in the config file, but the game will stretch instead of setting the correct aspect ratio.

Head on over to Widescreen Gaming Forum for full details. Here's their Detailed Report, and the thread with the patches.
Click to expand...

To update my experience with Q4: I may be running into the same Nvidia bug other people mentioned before. The game boots at 1680x1050 and 1600x1200, but not 1900x1200. At 19x12, it appears in my taskbar and I can hover over it to see the first intro vid, but then it crashes to desktop. That indicates this is the Nvidia pixel limitation bug with id's Open GL implementation. Nothing else would explain why the lower resolutions work fine but the higher one won't.
 
heatlesssun said:
Yeah I'm not an audiophile and I've not bought dedicated sound card in about a decade now. I was thinking about getting an Asus Xonar but I want to put a CableCard tuner in my one day, they were supposed to have been out in May and nothing yet.

Where are you seeing the requirements for Mafia II? This is what I saw: http://www.vgrequirements.info/mafia-2-pc/ You and I will be fine. The problem is going to be PhysX and 3D Surround. We shall see!
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I use my Asus Xonar DX with Razer Mako speakers... unfortunately the integrated audio on my E758 doesn't cut it. Too much buzz and occasional pops.

Code: 
2K Czech has revealed requirements and recommendations for Mafia 2 PC version:

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP (SP2 or later) / Windows Vista / Windows 7
Processor: Pentium D 3Ghz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ (Dual core) or higher
RAM: 1.5 GB
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 8600 / ATI HD2600 Pro or better
Hard Disc Space: 8 GB
Sound Card: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
Peripherals: Keyboard and mouse or Windows compatible gamepad

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP (SP2 or later) / Windows Vista / Windows 7
Processor: 2.4 GHz Quad Core processor
RAM: 2 GB
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX / ATI Radeon HD 3870 or better
Hard Disc: 10 GB
Sound Card: 100% DirectX 9.0c compliant card
Peripherals: Keyboard and mouse or Windows compatible gamepad

PHYSX/APEX ENHANCEMENTS SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP (SP2 or later) / Windows Vista / Windows 7
Minimum Processor: 2.4 GHz Quad Core processor
Recommended Processor: 2.66 GHz Core i7-920
RAM: 2 GB

Video Cards and resolution: APEX medium settings
Minimum: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (or better) for Graphics and a dedicated NVIDIA 9800GTX (or better) for PhysX
Recommended: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 (or better)

Video Cards and resolution: APEX High settings
Minimum: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 (or better) and a dedicated NVIDIA 9800GTX (or better) for PhysX
Recommended: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 for Graphics and a dedicated NVIDIA GTX 285 (or better) for PhysX

NVIDIA GPU driver: 197.13 or later.
NVIDIA PhysX driver: 10.04.02_9.10.0522. Included and automatically installed with the game.
http://www.mafia2game.com/community/us/features_pc_specs.php

A little Mafia II preview.
http://www.destructoid.com/mafia-ii-makes-use-of-physx-and-3d-on-the-pc-173178.phtml

Can you believe that!?! A dedicated GTX 285 for PhysX. Mind = blown. There's no way I'm going to be able to run that. I just bought a 1kW PSU and there's no way it has the juice to power OC'd i7 on x58 with OC'd SLI GTX 480's on top of adding anything more powerful than a GTS 250. :-< Anyway, I'm going to give integrated audio another go. I want to add a GTS 250 (== 9800GTX) to my rig for dedicated PhysX.
 
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Wow, lot of horse power. Even with my setup its either going to PhysX OR 3D in Surround I think, simply not enough horsepower to do both even in Batman AA. But it should look great I hope.
 
Matrices said:
To update my experience with Q4: I may be running into the same Nvidia bug other people mentioned before. The game boots at 1680x1050 and 1600x1200, but not 1900x1200. At 19x12, it appears in my taskbar and I can hover over it to see the first intro vid, but then it crashes to desktop. That indicates this is the Nvidia pixel limitation bug with id's Open GL implementation. Nothing else would explain why the lower resolutions work fine but the higher one won't.
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I have no issues running doom3 at 5760x1080 with my surround setup.. so I am guessing it's something else..
 
IRSmurf said:
I want to add a GTS 250 (== 9800GTX) to my rig for dedicated PhysX.
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After a little more research, a dedicated PhsyX card is a no go. I only care about these games that support it:
Batman: AA
Dark Void
Mafia 2
Metro 2033
Mirror's Edge (which is super, super light weight PhysX)

While that IS worth $100 to me, that is NOT worth losing my sound card over. :/

If NV does add a few more games to the catalog, I can also take comfort in knowing a 1kW PSU can power SLI GTX 480's and a GTS 250... so long as I tone down the OC.
 
Physx is a sick joke. I imagine only the most crazy people are going to run off and buy separate cards to experience the thing for one new game. I don't know if Nvidia has deliberately crippled Physx to squeeze more money out of buyers or what, but it's an insult to its high-end customers. The inability for a card to render and do Physx at once is utterly retarded except from a "screw the customer" perspective. It means that if you're running Surround with "only" two cards, you can't do Physx. You need three cards so that the third can be dedicated.

I was not at all happy to learn that I can either run Arkham in Surround or do Physx, but not both at once, unless I wanted to play at 2 FPS.
 
vjcsmoke said:
Has anybody got NV Surround to work off a single GTX 295? I would think that it doesn't have enough output ports to pull it off, right?
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Like others already mention about the 2 version of 295. Dual-PCB GTX295 works but without bezel management. It might have something to do with HDMI to DVI cable. I just hope NV fix this bug when WQHL driver comes out.

These are 3 Dell 2007FP in portrait. 3600x1600
CIMG5629.jpg
 
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