Triple display, best set up

[Yuka 0]

I'm looking to upgrade my PC in the coming months (perhaps even weeks) and I'm really considering a triple display system as I do a lot of flight sims and I could use the advantage for other things.

I realize that there may be the chance of a performance hit because there will be 3 displays and I'd like to prepare for that.

Would I have to run 3 video cards or could I get away with 2 cards that both have dual monitor output? Would that give me the best bet for running smoothest at the highest graphical settings? Could I take advantage of SLI technologies? I'm really looking for the method of putting this together that will yield the best performance. (not looking to spend more than $3000 USD)

I have never used SLI first hand but I have read about it. The last time I really did research on this was about 2.5 years ago, when I built my current desktop.

[Dwarden 1124]

lot of people runs software TH frok Kegetys ... for n displays with single or more cards

http://www.kegetys.net/SoftTH/

read, learn, check softTH forum ...

[Silverr 0]

3 x 19" 1280x1024 + GeForce 8800GTX 768MB + TripleHead2Go adapter = 3840 x 1024

[sickboy 13]

Now I thought I was nuts with my 52" Full HD LCD

3 or 4 19" wow How is the performance with Geforce 8800?

[Silverr 0]

Small CTF maps is about 140fps

Large C&H ones - about 90fps

[sickboy 13]

Small CTF maps is about 140fps

Large C&H ones - about 90fps

Tnx! Single player or Coop, any numbers on those?

What's the rest of your specs, if I may ask?

[alext223 0]

@ Dwarden: thanks for the link. Got two monitors, so will check it out in a sec.

@ Silverr: You lucky devil! Almost have 5.1 surround video. But I think the consumer tech is not there yet to do 7.1. Yet.... ( And Matrox adapter. Go figure. )

@ sickboy: Always wanted to do that. but don't have the TV. What res and settings do you run ArmA at? What FPS do you get

@Yuka: Can't speak from experience, But by the looks of it, you have the right place to look. Guru Kegetys. ( COME ON! As if he ain't a guru! )

Have fun with your new rig Yuka!

[Yuka 0]

So the best bet for highest performance (not just in ArmA) would be to run SLI on a high end card (probably the 8800) and use the TripleHead2Go adapter.

[GAU-8 0]

yup

[andersson 285]

But it cheaper to buy one good graphicscard and one really cheap and go for softTH. So if I were you I would try that first as you can get a cheap PCI-E for almost nothing. If you dont like that you can always invest more and upgrade to TripleHead2Go.

But I suggest you read up on the subject first, especially on the 3H2G..

[shinRaiden 0]

Uh, there's some fuzzy comments posted here that are in need of correction.

Quote[/b] ]

I'm looking to upgrade my PC in the coming months (perhaps even weeks) and I'm really considering a triple display system as I do a lot of flight sims and I could use the advantage for other things.

I realize that there may be the chance of a performance hit because there will be 3 displays and I'd like to prepare for that.

Would I have to run 3 video cards or could I get away with 2 cards that both have dual monitor output? Would that give me the best bet for running smoothest at the highest graphical settings? Could I take advantage of SLI technologies? I'm really looking for the method of putting this together that will yield the best performance. (not looking to spend more than $3000 USD)

I have never used SLI first hand but I have read about it. The last time I really did research on this was about 2.5 years ago, when I built my current desktop.

DirectX is the limiting factor, ordinarily your full-screen rendered scene is limited to a single device. That's due to DRM policies. As a result, you're not going to be able to span across multiple graphics cards with independent outputs in full-screen mode. (You can however span multiple devices in windowed mode, with the various penalties involved.)

A SLI rig aggregates two or three devices into a single virtual output, avoiding that issue.

To multiplex the outputs, you would need a device that expands one output to multiple display interfaces, such as the TH2G. Support for triple 4:3 aspect ratio displays is built into ArmA, and triple 5:4 displays are relatively simple to manually configure.

SoftTH is a work-around to create in software a virtualized wrapper to span multiple devices. It has its limitations as well. If you have a single video card, there is no need for SoftTH, you only need to enable desktop spanning (Nvidia-only capability) across the two outputs on the card. SoftTH comes into play when you have multiple or dissimilar video cards that you wish to span across in Fullscreen mode, and you are not concerned with performance or synchronization penalties.

[Silverr 0]

Ho-ho-ho.. Guys from Matrox saw this topic and though: "Hmm-m-m.. looks like our device work nice with ARMA too.. lets make a announce about it.