Displays Triple monitor 1x30" 2x20"(MW2+GTA4 Pics Added)

Hi,

I need help in finding 2 of the best monitor to run in portrait mode to fit either side of my dell 3008wfp for a nice triple monitor gaming setup.

According to the dell site my 3008wfp is 481mm tall but with my tape measure my srceen is 461mm tall (this is outside to outside edge of screen)
My screen res is 2560x1600. So I need a screen with a res of 1600x**** so the pixel match up or can I get away with 1680x****?
Looking at the monitor below my dell has a pixel pitch of 0.25 compared to 0.282 on the screen im looking at below. Will this be a huge differences?

Also if anyone owns the screen in the link below can they give me the exact lenght so I will know if it will fit perfect either side of my monitor as the dell site saids 2 different sizes.

I have so far found this;
http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&sku=294157

Thanks in advance for any help.

Regards
Simon.

 

why portrait ?

your gunna lose some vertical res for a triple setup.

what graphics card do you have ? or were you thinking about triple head 2 go setup ?

if so MAX res from 3 monitors is : 3840 x 1024 which is pretty poor against 2560x1600.

 

Hi,

Lets say I buy 2 20" monitors @ 1600x900. If I turn the screen into portrait mode the screen res will be 900 wide x 1600 high which will match my 30" dell res of 1600 high x 2560 wide.

So if you add 900+2560+900= 4360x1600 = 6976000 pixels

or if I brought 2 20" screens with a res of 1600x1200 and turned the screen around in portrait mode I will have 1200+2560+1200= 4960x1600 = 7936000 pixels

Can you see where I'm coming from?

 

Graphics cards 2 5870. I have display port going to my 30" and would imaging using 2 dvi for the other 2 monitors.

 

ok i see where your coming from now.

im not sure that ATI eyefinity supports 2xportrait and 1xlandscape although it might but i cant find any info on it.

3x portrait is ok though as is 3x landscape.

 

I believe it does support 2x portrait and 1 x landscape all thou I don't have 2 other monitors to test it.
Someone on youtube http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=4960x1600&search_type=&aq=f has got it working but its with triple head to go. Plus he is using older monitors.

Regards
Simon.

 

that isnt a triple head to go its SoftTH which is a driver using a secondary PCI-e card.

crossfire wouldn't work to start with so your second 5870 is almost a waste.

This is a temperamental thing at best its not gunna work with alot of games especially new ones.

eye infinity is an official support of ATI so will have much better support and updates for games.

 

I see what your saying, so lets say for argument sake that I can run that setup with 1 in landscape and 2 in portrait with ati eyefinity.

So what about pixel pitch and my other questions?

Regards
Simon.

 

well the smaller the pixel pitch the tighter the pixels are packed together giving a better image.

but that depends how they measure it !!!!

i dobut you will notice the difference between 0.25 and 0.282 providing they have used the same measurement method (Horizontal, vertical or diagonal).

they could infact have the same pixel pitch if the 0.282 is diagonal and 0.25 is horizontal.

pain i know but it will make barely any difference in the real world i reckon.

 

Ok, thanks for the help.

The last thing I need to know is the correct lenght of the monitor in the link in post 1, as I want it to sit flush with my 30".
The dimensions of the monitor on the dell web page is not correct.

Regards
Simon.

 

It doesn't work with eyefinity. I have the exact setup you describe.

 

If you go to my other thread: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=180303 that is the setup I choose in the end.
But like you said Eyefinity does not work as of yet.

Simon

 

I wish it did. Have you gotten anything to work? I have never even seen a game run on all three monitors at the default res.

 

ohhhhhhh, I read the thread. Is it Xfire? I have a 5970 and a 5870, will it work if I disable it? Could I bother you to tell me what settings you have in your config file? Do you leave everything at auto?

 

Ok, sorry for all the posts, but I tried L4D and HL2 with SofTH and no go. Can you explain to me, like I was a 5 year old, how to get a game working in 4360x1600? I'm desperate here

 

That weird res just won't work for a lot of games.

Try Valve's support forums to see how to set Source games to that res, that's your best bet.

That multimonitor setup will look awful, things will look squished on the side screens..

 

That weird res just won't work for a lot of games, assuming your multimonitor software plays games.

Try Valve's support forums to see how to set Source games to that res, that's your best bet.

That multimonitor setup will look awful, things will look squished on the side screens..

 

The best place to check for game compatability with tripple head systems is WSGF where they have a large list of detailed reports for tripple screen gaming along with various fixes and mods that are required to get the games working and looking correct on tri-screens.

Unforutnately ATI's infinity currently only works for all screens as landscape or all as portrait, not a mixture at this time.

Another method would be to use Matrox Tripple Head 2 Go, this device however does have hardware limitations for the max resolutoin supported...

3 x 1680 x 1050 *(Available when TripleHead2Go Digital Edition is connected to the system's dual-link DVI output under Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems.)
3 x 1280 x 1024
or 2 x 1920 x 1200
Both of these methods require just a single graphics card and may be used in conjuncation with XFire/SLI.

Another method is to use softTH which is a bit like a software version of the Matrox TH2Go only using Direct3D and/or CUDA, softTH works with many different monitor configurations such as mixed landscape and portrait monitors and even has support for each screen to use a different resolution.
This software only works for DirectX games and not OpenGL (although there is an unreleased beta that the software author is still testing).
SoftTH works by copying a set of files into each games install folder along side the games .exe file.
Once you have configured your screen setup in the config file, then when you next load your game you will be presented with extra resolutions in the game from which you may select.
SoftTH requires 2 graphics cards however the 2nd card does not have to be anything special, as the 1st primaray card will render the complete scene, softTH then disects the complete scene and sends the rendered scene to each of the monitors, in the case of the 2nd display, as it is not ding any rendering what so ever, it does not need to be a powerfull card, the only requirement is that it is at least PCI-E.
having started using softTH recently for my own setup, I can tell you that it is unfortunately not as compatible with many games as one would surely like, but for the games that it does work.... simply WOW!

 

Place the softTH files in both...

U:\games\Steam\SteamApps\common\left 4 dead
and
U:\games\Steam\SteamApps\common\left 4 dead\bin

Same for L4D2
U:\games\Steam\SteamApps\common\left 4 dead 2
U:\games\Steam\SteamApps\common\left 4 dead 2\bin

and TF2
U:\games\Steam\SteamApps\delphium83\team fortress 2
U:\games\Steam\SteamApps\delphium83\team fortress 2\bin

Works a treat
However you may find that your HUD will not be on the center screen, but usually on the far left and right screens.
This can be fixed using custom hudlayout.res files which you can find from WSGF.
L4D2 Center HUD fix
TF2 Center HUD fix

I am currently testing different resolutions and HUD layouts in order to make a script to automaticly adjust the HUDlayout.res after each game update, and so that the user may select their resolutoin and it work out the values required to center the HUD.

EDIT: try copy and paste this into your softTH.cfg file. Good luck.

Code:

;
; SoftTH 1.09 configuration file
; by Kegetys, http://www.kegetys.net
;

[config]
; deviceIDLeft/right: Direct3D device ID's of left and right monitor, or 'auto' for automatic
; secondaryWidth/Height: Left&right monitor resolution, or 'auto' to use same as middle screen resolution
; secondaryRefresh: Refresh rate of left & right monitors, or 'auto' for automatic
; secondaryFormat: Secondary device image format: 'RGB32', 'RGB16', 'RGB16D' or 'RGB32CUDA'.
; uploadMethod: Method used to upload image to secondary card(s): 'blit', 'D3D' or 'D3DCUDA'
; forceAffinity: Set to 1 to force process affinity to all processors/cores.
; borderSize: Size in pixels of frame border between monitors that is discarded
; sideExtraWidth: Width difference between middle and side monitors, or 'auto' to autodetect from desktop resolution
; noHotkeys: Set to 1 to disable all hotkeys
; noOSD: Set to 1 to disable on-screen display when changing settings
deviceIDLeft=auto
deviceIDright=auto
secondaryWidth=900
secondaryHeight=1600
secondaryRefresh=auto
secondaryFormat=RGB16D
uploadMethod=blit
forceAffinity=0
borderSize=0
sideExtraWidth=auto
noHotkeys=0
noOSD=0

[Direct3D]
; ** Advanced setting for Direct3D games **
; lensCorrection: Lens correction, set to 1 to enable support. >1 to enable by default
; lensCorrectionEdge: Lens correction edge offset
; hideNondefaultDevices: Hides all but the default adapter from the game
; forceHorizontalFOV: Forces horizontal FOV to be three times as wide
; forceResolutionWidth/Height: Forces device to be created with this resolution
; force16bitDepth: Force game to use 16bit depth buffer, can improve performance and reduce memory use
; sleepBeforeRead: Time in ms to sleep before reading back buffer data from video card
; useMultihead: Uses multihead features of primary card if available, can increase performance and reduce memory use
; delayedPresent: When useMultihead enabled, delay primary monitor present to sync with secondary head
; d3d8dll: Path to D3D8.dll/D3D9.dll to use or auto for automatic (system32 dir)
; altResetBehaviour: Do not reset lost main device after secondary device initialization (WDDM crash workaround)
lensCorrection=0
lensCorrectionEdge=0
hideNondefaultDevices=0
forceHorizontalFOV=0
forceResolutionWidth=4360
forceResolutionHeight=1600
force16bitDepth=0
sleepBeforeRead=2
useMultihead=1
delayedPresent=0
autoSquash=0
altResetBehaviour=0
d3d8dll=auto

[hooks]
; Win32 API hooking settings - Used for some extra compatibility and game-specific fixes
; doHooking: Enable/disable hooks in Direct3D, with OpenGL hooks are always enabled
; doScaleMouseCoordinates: Scale mouse coordinates for getCursorPos to fix games which do not handle negative screen coordinates properly
; doScaleFromLeftScreen: Spread out mouse coordinates from left screen to full width
; doScaleWindowRects: Scale focus window WindowRect
; doScaleClientRects: Scale focus window ClientRect
; mouseXoffset: Number of pixels to offset mouse cursor position in X axis, to fix misplaced cursor due to negative screen coordinates. auto = use X resolution
doHooking=1
doScaleMouseCoordinates=0
doScaleFromLeftScreen=0
doScaleWindowRects=0
doScaleClientRects=1
mouseXoffset=auto

; Triplehead screenmodes to add to resolutions list (width multiplied by three and border added)
; width x height x refresh rate in Hz
; 'auto' adds current primary monitor desktop resolution
; Must be last in this file
[modes]
800x600x60
800x600x75
800x600x85
1024x768x60
1024x768x75
1024x768x85
1280x960x60
1280x960x75
1280x960x85
1280x1024x60
1280x1024x75
1280x1024x85
1600x1200x60
1600x1200x75
1600x1200x85
4360x1600x60
auto

 

How do you work that out?
Check my other thread and see the pictures of in game from my setup.

Simon