I asked this question at Tom's Hardware but noone replied so I figured I'd try here aswell. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I recently got the idea to use a triple monitor setup but I have a few questions; searching around on google didn't help so I figured this would be the best place to ask. At the moment I currently have two 768mb GTX 460's in my setup. They're pretty heavily overclocked so I don't think that performance will be a problem. Questions 1. Do two GTX 460's support three monitor gaming? I read around and I know that they support the 3 monitor 3d stuff but I wasn't able to find any answers to this. 2. If they do support it do they support different resolutions? My idea was to keep my 22" 1080p monitor as the middle and use two 17" monitors on each side. The resolution on the side monitors, however, is 1280x1024. The resolution is close enough that it doesn't bother me but it makes me wonder if Nvidia's monitor support will allow me to have different resolutions as far as height goes. Thanks in advance! EDIT: If I were to set my main monitors resolution to 1920x1024 using the nvidia control panel do you guys think that would work? I was just screwing around in there and found the custom resolution tab. After applying it some of things look "fuzzy" but it is otherwise manageable.
1. Yes, 2 gtx460s will do three screen gaming. However, you may hit the memory buffer given they are not 1GB cards, depending on your final resolution. 2. No, three screen gaming needs to be all same resolution. You can have different screens if you only want to have a bigger desktop though. And, I really wouldn't suggest doing that resolution, ideally you need 3 identical screens. Hope that helps
+1 to this ^. You can have three screens running at different resolutions but it will be the desktop only. It won't work for gaming or anything else that wants to use the entire combined resolution. For office type stuff it works though, you can have email on one, web on another and a spreadsheet viewable all at the same time. Developers do this as well e.g. running the debug console in one screen whilst running the app in another. I am not sure if turning your large middle monitor resolution down to match the other two would work as I have never tried it. If it does, a 1920x1080 screen is going to look pretty crap at 1280x1024.
Though I'm personally well-versed in Eyefinity, I don't have experience with Nvidia Surround but assume it's the same and requires matched resolutions; otherwise the higher ones will downscale to match the smallest common denominator and look like total crap. You might want to look into SoftTH instead; its a simple freeware D3D wrapper dll that allows games to display across multiple screens, and perfectly supports mismatched resolutions, bezel compensation, and nonstandard configurations not supported by EF/Surround like PLP or odd number of displays.
Thanks for the replys! I actually did look into softh and it has been an option. I would, unfortunately, need a new motherboard though because I don't have any available PCI-E slots. Although that will probably be the best option. I also don't know if my 650w xfx psu will handle all three cards :/ So just to be clear, do I have to have 3 monitors with completely identical resolutions for nvidia 3d surround?
Yes you do need 3 monitors with identical resolutions or it will scale down to the lowest resolution.
Why 3 cards? Only need 2 for nVidia surround. Or have I not read something properly? lol And as Elton said, yeah 3 identical resolutions. Preferably on 3 screens that are all the same physical size. i.e. 20 inch or whatever.
R0ne, why three cards? SoftTH only needs as many outputs as you have displays, and as most cards are limited to 2 displays that means you usually need two cards for a triple monitor setup. So in your case the 2x 460's are all you need for SoftTH; one 460 will display 2 monitors while the other will drive the 3rd display. Unfortunately though SoftTH doesn't support SLI/CF yet so only the primary 460 will be doing all the rendering. Unless you had an Eyefinity-capable card, it can be used with SoftTH to drive all 3 outputs on a single card. Surround requires two cards by design because Nvidia doesn't have any cards capable of 3 outputs. That's where AMD is winning right now, 4 displays per card.
