Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hello Folks!

I had a thread going about a month back, but it was lost in the database problem that occurred, so I remade my account, and am going to remake this thread with updates on what I've done the past month.

My original system specs were:
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ AMD 970
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
GPU: GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 192-bit GDDR5
PSU: COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro 650w

Monitor 1: Hannspree 27.5" Widescreen Flat-Panel LCD HD Monitor (12x10)
Monitor 2: Acer S231HLbid Black 23" 5ms HDMI LED-Backlight LCD (12x9)

I had to make due with the money I had to spend and either getting a better graphics card and only 1 more monitor, or 3 monitors of the same type and a not as good graphics card. I decided since monitors are cheaper and much easier to pick up in the future that I'd go with a better graphics card and 1 more monitor. I recently purchased the following from newegg:

Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 3gb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814202008

Visiontek Active display port
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815129011

Asus 23" 2ms HDMI LED-Backlight LCD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824236175

From the reading and research i've done online, this set up should work decently for the time being. Also, I've read that even though my center monitor (the craptastic Hanspree) is a 12x10, and the two 23" monitors are 12x9's, that the Eyefinity software will allow me to use a 12x9 resolution for monitor and it will adjust accordingly on my monitor....... I hope? I eventually plan on getting another 23" monitor, but I'm hoping this set up will work.

Looking for input advice on the current set up, as well as the GPU I decided to go with.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Welcome back! I think remember your original post

As far as i see there shouldn't be any major issues with that setup.

When you're going to enable eyefinity i believe the center 16:10/1920x1200 screen will revert back to 16:9/1920x1080 (highest resolution that ALL three monitors support).
You might want to try setting your screen to that resolution manually to see what it does. Ideally it'll basically not use the top and/or bottom 120 pixels rows making it easy to align with your other screens. But i know some screens that stretch the resolution over the entire screen (forcing 1920x1080 into a 16:10 aspect ratio).

Other then that i dont see a reason to not be a happy camper sporting a new wide panoramic view

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LG 34UM95-P (3440x1440) + 2x Dell U2412M; MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G in 2-SLI; i5 4690k w/ Mugen 4 PCGH; 16GB Crucial; MSI Z97-G45 GAMING; Crucial M500 480GB; Corsair Enthusiast TX750M; CM Storm Scout 2

Hey Oraijon!

Yup, it was definitely you that was helping me last time, thanks again for all that information, and the benchmark test page you had sent me, it definitely was the main source of information I used when choosing a graphics card.

Thanks for the information. I'll give that a shot today. My graphics card and display adapter should arrive today, and my monitor tomorrow. I think I recall reading somewhere that you could set Eyefinity with two monitors, if thats the case, I'll see what happens with the two monitors I have now and hopefully I'll be able to figure it out before my third arrives tomorrow.

This is the first AMD card I have purchased. I have been an nvidia fanboy for the past 15 years of gaming so I've got a little anxiety about this whole thing. A majority of the negative reviews I read about AMD are their Drivers, but other than that, they seem like fantastic cards. So I'm definitely stepping out of my comfort zone on this one and crossing my fingers that it's a good experience.

I'll post updates as it comes along, and thanks again for the help.

See i knew it, i recognized your avatar too

Always fun for me to research videocards and multi monitor options

Yes you can setup an Eyefinity group for two screens, but i wouldnt recommend it. What Eyefinity basically does, is tricking Windows into thinking that those two screens are one big screen. Tricky part of this that you basically lose all separation between the screens, which means that everything that should be in the middle of your screen are right under the bezels of your two screens. So for example when playing a shooter you'll have a vertical bezel (or two) running straight down over your crosshairs.

Having said that though, be sure to post pics! Both of your entire setup and inside your case of your yummy shiny new graphics card

PS: Funny you should say you've been an Nvidia fanboy for 15 years. I've been an AMD fanboy gone Nvidia

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LG 34UM95-P (3440x1440) + 2x Dell U2412M; MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G in 2-SLI; i5 4690k w/ Mugen 4 PCGH; 16GB Crucial; MSI Z97-G45 GAMING; Crucial M500 480GB; Corsair Enthusiast TX750M; CM Storm Scout 2

Hah! So what made you switch over to nvidia? I wouldn't have made the switch if I didn't plan on going the widescreen route. AMD just had more bang for my buck in that department.

I actually got to mess around a bit last night with eyefinity. I had my 27.5" in the middle and two 23"'s on the side. Unfortunately the 27.5" didn't do to well in the switching over to 12x9. It letter box the whole thing, like a giant 1" to 1.5" box around the whole screen. Completely threw off any symmetry I was hoping for, and even then, it still looked stretched.

I wasn't going to let that stop me from at least trying it out, so I had the chance to play GW2, Farcry 3, and Crysis 2, all in maxed out settings without a single hiccup. And to be completely honest, since the side monitors were used in my peripheral vision when I was focused on playing it wasn't so bad.

BUT, with that said. I still want it to look nice and clean, so I'm going to try out 3 23" monitors today and see how I like it and go from there. As soon as I get everything set up correctly I'll post some screen shots here.

The only problem I ran into was Skyrim. I downloaded that Flawless Widescreen program, but I'm not entirely sure I was using it correctly. I open the program up, clicked Skyrim, and I didn't really see any other buttons to press after that, so I just loaded Skyrim. I click the default button in set up (on Skyrim start screen before it actually enters the game), so the resolution came up blank, and ran the game. The game stretch all the way across the monitors, but it was like super zoomed in, All I saw was the Skyrim logo, and couldn't see the menu, or my mouse =/.. Hoping maybe the issue will fix itself when I have 3 of the same size/resolution monitors

*crossing my fingers*

What made me switch to Nvidia was the desire for more performance (had a 7970 at the time) but i've had a lot of problems with my 6950 crossfire set in terms of microstuttering, so i refused to go Crossfire again. So i went with a dual 670 setup instead. Also didnt help that the AMD drivers at that point worked pretty horrendous for me

3x 23" should work nicely, ideally you always want three identical monitors to make sure it all works correctly, and to make sure the colors are the same across your screens. And you can always sell your old screens
How did that work out yesterday for you?

For skyrim Flawless Widescreen works flawlessly (hur hur ) for me. But i think after setting the options up in the Skyrim launcher you first need to open your skyrimprefs.ini (in C:\Users\...\Documents\My Games\Skyrim) and manually change the resolution to your triple screen resolution (i.e for 5760x1080 iSize H=1080 iSize W=5760).

After that loading flawless widescreen and then starting the game it should work.

_________________
LG 34UM95-P (3440x1440) + 2x Dell U2412M; MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G in 2-SLI; i5 4690k w/ Mugen 4 PCGH; 16GB Crucial; MSI Z97-G45 GAMING; Crucial M500 480GB; Corsair Enthusiast TX750M; CM Storm Scout 2

I'll give that Skyrim thing a shot and see how it goes.

I had a 3) 23" monitor set up going last night, and it worked fantastically. Played FarCry 3 on ultra settings the whole time. Only time my FPS dropped was when I was high up and had a large view of water, other than that it was perfect.

Currently running off three different monitors (long story) But I am RMAing the crappy one from ACER where the black looks gray, and I've got a second ASUS on it's way in right now. Figure I'll toss the two matching ones on the sides and my other 23" in the center and it should look good until I am able to get a third. I think I'll wait to post pics of my set up until then. (hopefully Monday or Tuesday of next week).

My worries about switching over to AMD for the first time is settling more and more every day that goes by that I don't have any problems. Everything has worked well so far. My card from Newegg actually came with a free digital copy of Crysis 3 and a key for Bioshock infinite (<3 Newegg). But I haven't scratched off the codes yet. Want to make sure the card isn't a bust and get screwed on an RMA. The card it's self is rather large an heavy, and starts bending down from the weight on the back end of it, which worries me, but other than that it's working great. Card was sitting pretty at 57c throughout my whole gaming run last night

Thanks again for all the help, advice, etc. Definitely appreciate the back and forth conversation. I'll update again after the weekend!

And then i go for an wsgf-less hiatus for a while

But i got curious how things are going now

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LG 34UM95-P (3440x1440) + 2x Dell U2412M; MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G in 2-SLI; i5 4690k w/ Mugen 4 PCGH; 16GB Crucial; MSI Z97-G45 GAMING; Crucial M500 480GB; Corsair Enthusiast TX750M; CM Storm Scout 2

No worries at all Ora, I actually went on one myself, But I had to make sure I came back to update you since you have helped me along this whole time, it wouldn't be fair unless you got to see the final product.

Installation went smoothly, didn't run into any problems at all!!! I'm absolutely loving it, I haven't tried out the Skyrim thing yet, but I will eventually, I've got plenty of games to keep me busy, and I've started graphic design as a hobby so that's taken up quite a bit of time on it's own.

Here are some pics of my set up as of now. It's really nice having it set up in the corner of my desk and room as it allows me to hide the millions of wires, my external hard drives, my xbox, router and modem behind all my monitors for a really clean look!!!









The monitor on the right side is the one that is different from the other two, but its not really all that noticeable unless you are focused on it. It's working out great.

Now my next mission is to find out if I can install a 4th monitor (the large 27" you can see in the pictures, with just my one card. It has four out puts 2xdvi 1xhdmi 1xdp. I am currently using the two dvi's and the dp, I tried plugging in the large monitor to the hdmi port, my computer recognizes it, but doesn't allow me to activate more than 3 monitors, so I'm thinking it's not possible with 1 card.

But, things are going fantastically smooth, and I couldn't be happier with the set up. Thanks again for all your assistance in getting me through this whole ordeal lol, Probably couldn't have done it without you, or if I did, it wouldn't have been a fun experience lol!

Looks nice! Cool setup.

You can run up to 6 Monitors via one card (7970 was it?) But you can't use 2xDVI+HDMI! Either 1DVI+1HDMI or 2x DVI! Not all 3 at once! But using Display port it works with up to 36 monitors!

Edit: Except you have a Sapphire FLEX edition GPU

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We gonna send it to outa space!