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NVIDIA GTX 280 SLI 3D Surround Experience @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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NVIDIA GTX 280 SLI 3D Surround Experience - Take your 2 year old GTX 280 video card and pair it up with another 2 year old GTX 280 and what do you get? You get an NVIDIA SLI system capable of delivering huge multi-display NV Surround gaming resolutions with the latest games.
 
I have been using this same type set up with my 2 gtx260s for a few weeks now, I love it.
 
You gave another answer to all the people who wanted to know if their "old" Nvidia card is capable enough to this "new" technology.
 
NVIDIA deserves a pat on the back and a cold beer for doing the right thing for the gaming and hardware communities and allowing those groups to experience this technology without having to purchase a shiny new $500 video card.
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Huh, my 5870 only cost me $400. Maybe if you throw in the cost of the single active DP adapter you might need for this setup, you'd get the cost up around $500, but it would be pushing it.
 
Nice review Kyle, as always. A gold star rating too :).

I've been really thinking of trying this out again. I tried it out before with SoftTh and wasn't impressed with it, prolly cause it was kind of buggy having to use extra files to do it.

But now with already packaged with my drivers, I definitely gotta get some new monitors and try it again. Damn the G/F is gonna kill me for having to get some new monitors again, lol.
 
ObyTwo said:
Huh, my 5870 only cost me $400. Maybe if you throw in the cost of the single active DP adapter you might need for this setup, you'd get the cost up around $500, but it would be pushing it.
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You can easily spend $500 on either Red or Green when it comes to new video cards and that is my point. Sorry to have confused you on my example.
 
Would you recommend the P2210 panels? Any problems with picture quality?
 
great review! nice to see how nvidias surround is with the 2xx series. only if this driver came out when eyefinity was released....... i wouldve gone SLI with my 275s instead of my eye6 and save some $$$$ ><
 
I love the backwards compatibility but I would want Direct 11. Can we do Eye-finity N-surround with 2 monitors? What resolution would we have? :confused:
 
Blazemore said:
Would you recommend the P2210 panels? Any problems with picture quality?
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No not really any problems, but not overly impressed either. I am spoiled with these U2410 displays though I am sure. Hit the displays forum here, it is friggin huge.
 
adonn78 said:
I love the backwards compatibility but I would want Direct 11. Can we do Eye-finity N-surround with 2 monitors? What resolution would we have? :confused:
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Oh sure, you can do it with 2 displays.....you will be looking directly at a bezel the entire time you are gaming, but you can do it. You just need two displays that match in resolution. I in no way suggest 2 display Eyefinity or NV Surround gaming.
 
adonn78 said:
I love the backwards compatibility but I would want Direct 11. Can we do Eye-finity N-surround with 2 monitors? What resolution would we have? :confused:
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Two panel surround or eyefinity would suck.
Your major bezels would be smack-dab in the middle of the action.

When I got my first 5870, I "only" had two monitors, I tried two monitor gaming for about 5 minutes and it sucked so bad I had to quit and wait until I could get another monitor.:)

This was a great article.
I am resurrecting an older 680i MB and two GTX 260s to try this out.
I have read other people's good experiences and this sounds like fun.
I have always leaned towards nvidia and if this works as well as it seems, I may go with nvidia on the next release.
 
great article guys this is awesome!! the fact that you can get two cards and 3 monitors for less than$700 is awesome considering two 480's is going to cost you a G.
 
Wow, nice to see a review for some older hardware. Good to know that I could do NV Surround if I wanted to. :cool:
 
Something I'd definitely like to experience one of these days, I just don't have the desk space and/or (more importantly) the funds. ;) Well, actually, I could use the CC, but then again I'm sure I'd be couch-bound for quite awhile. I suppose if I could convince my wife that it would be useful in The Sims 3 or any of the games on Facebook, I may actually get somewhere. :D
 
I finally bought my 30" Dell 3007 model, and this comes out. :( I certainly can't afford two more, but at the same time would love to get a 2nd GTX280 and set this up with smaller monitors. Sigh...decisions decisions.
 
nice article.. I feel the same about multi screen gaming.. it's brought the wow factor back to gaming for me.. like I used to feel back when I first started getting into PC gaming playing the doom beta on my 486.. great to see there's a lot of mileage left in some of these older cards also... I guess I thought they wouldn't perform as good as they do.. all good stuff!
 
TwistedAegis said:
I finally bought my 30" Dell 3007 model, and this comes out. :( I certainly can't afford two more, but at the same time would love to get a 2nd GTX280 and set this up with smaller monitors. Sigh...decisions decisions.
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I did it and dont regret it, went to 3-21.5" 1080p Panels
 
Well it looks like the final chapter of Fermi has been written. Yes I know this was about the GTX 200s but this driver has been the redeeming factor of Fermi and this tech just happens to backwards compatible so that only helps to make nVidia look good.

Had thought about keeping my 3 280s when I heard about this but it was time to move on after two years.

At any rate, great job nVidia, you're almost back on your game and I hope that you can continue to do good work.
 
TwistedAegis said:
I finally bought my 30" Dell 3007 model, and this comes out. :( I certainly can't afford two more, but at the same time would love to get a 2nd GTX280 and set this up with smaller monitors. Sigh...decisions decisions.
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Yeah, I had toyed with the idea of going with 3 30" but to me that's simply to big for a desktop setup that's less than 24" in front of me. In addition 7680x1600 is simply too many pixels for newer games plus I just had to go 3D. I do with I could connect another monitor beyond three that aren't part of the Surrond array without need a separte card as I'd use that for a media playback display.
 
Did the two GTX280s provide the same kind of experience that you would get from a single 5850 with the current drivers? I noticed that in the eyefinity review you had 24" monitors and 22" for the GTX280s. I was just thinking that 2 GTX280s used come up to the price of a 5850.
 
bezant said:
Did the two GTX280s provide the same kind of experience that you would get from a single 5850 with the current drivers? I noticed that in the eyefinity review you had 24" monitors and 22" for the GTX280s. I was just thinking that 2 GTX280s used come up to the price of a 5850.
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You might take a look here as this page could give you a bit of comparison.

http://hardocp.com/article/2010/01/05/amds_ati_radeon_eyefinity_performance_review/8

From my personal experience, I am going to GUESS that a 5850 is going to come up about 10% to 20% short of a GTX 280 SLI setup at 5760x1080 depending on the games and effects.
 
Good stuff, glad to see it can be had fairly inexpensively, (if you already have a decent NV card.)

I've got a general multi-display layout question, how does something like this, (either NV or ATI's soloution,) work with having the central screen in landscape mode and the other 2 in portait?
 
FallenMystic said:
Good stuff, glad to see it can be had fairly inexpensively, (if you already have a decent NV card.)

I've got a general multi-display layout question, how does something like this, (either NV or ATI's soloution,) work with having the central screen in landscape mode and the other 2 in portait?
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All displays have to be in the same orientation. No PLP, sorry.
 
You have to admit this is smart on Nvidias part to force people to purchase two cards instead of one and they get the extra cash from forcing people to use SLI.

Is there any game that is in development with Eyefinity or NVSurround in mind? I'm not too into gaming anymore so am a bit behind the times. And please dont tell me that Nvidia is going to force all the developers that they pay to do one or the other. It would be nice if games could support both solutions.
 
BoogerBomb said:
You have to admit this is smart on Nvidias part to force people to purchase two cards instead of one and they get the extra cash from forcing people to use SLI.

Is there any game that is in development with Eyefinity or NVSurround in mind? I'm not too into gaming anymore so am a bit behind the times. And please dont tell me that Nvidia is going to force all the developers that they pay to do one or the other. It would be nice if games could support both solutions.
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Yeah it was smart from a business stand point. Kill two birds with one stone.

More money because people buy two cards.

With two cards performance is better than the one card solution from ATI and they don't need Display Port crap which goes back to point one.
 
BoogerBomb said:
You have to admit this is smart on Nvidias part to force people to purchase two cards instead of one and they get the extra cash from forcing people to use SLI.

Is there any game that is in development with Eyefinity or NVSurround in mind? I'm not too into gaming anymore so am a bit behind the times. And please dont tell me that Nvidia is going to force all the developers that they pay to do one or the other. It would be nice if games could support both solutions.
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First off, there is nothing "smart" on NVIDIA's part. It is technically impossible for its 200 or 400 series GPUs to support more than 2 displays per GPU.

I would suggest most game devs will be now taking multi-display gaming into consideration. No doubt we will see some flagships for the video card companies.

From my understanding from discussions with AMD and NVIDIA, neither company will be locking others out of multi-display and making it "proprietary."
 
Edit: forget my question..I need to learn to read better.
 
DooKey said:
Is it technically impossible because it's impossible to make 200/400 GPUs use more than two DVI per card? Or because they simply didn't put more than two DVI ports on each card?

Edit: forget my question..I need to learn to read better.
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As I understand it technology does limit cards to two DVI ports now that I think about it. Could Fermi do more than two displays per card if Nvidia went the Displayport route that ATI did?
 
does this work on the gtx 250?
 
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Very nice read. I am looking to pick up some new LCDs (wife has actually given me the ok to do so) to do 3 monitor gaming.

Has nVidia hinted at when we will able to use Tri-SLI in 3 monitor gaming? I know for now, I'll have to find the regular SLI bridge and use 2 way SLI and use the 3rd GTX285 for PhysX?
 
I thought that 3x SLI for the 200s is supposed to be in the WHQL driver next week.
 
capreppy said:
Very nice read. I am looking to pick up some new LCDs (wife has actually given me the ok to do so) to do 3 monitor gaming.

Has nVidia hinted at when we will able to use Tri-SLI in 3 monitor gaming? I know for now, I'll have to find the regular SLI bridge and use 2 way SLI and use the 3rd GTX285 for PhysX?
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I thought you already could, at least with the 4xx series, from what I have read of other forum users' posts.
 
Kyle, oeps, i mean Steve ofcourse sorry, any chance you could try that setup with the games set to play in windowed mode ? I am someone who loathes loading screens and game all my games in maximized noborder windowed mode. Ati crossfire with or without eyefinity does not support it and i was hoping nvidia maybe did so i can alt tab as much as my heart desires during the downtime or for casting with live streaming capture ma favorite games to the internet streaming them.

Any testing/results on windowed mode games in that setup would be highly appreciated!
 
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