Widescreen Gaming Forum

Might be worth setting up a thread with a poll and petition posts here so nVidia and thier partners could gauge the interest in the feature for consumer Geforce cards. I can point a few key people at EVGA to the thread. Personally, I think it's something that could generate definite sales for them, if they'd only see it as an option. I really would like to see this capability more mainstream. It's something both ATI and nVidia are short sighted on. They currently only see money and competition in the multi-card/single-display 3D market, when there is a whole other market of multi-card/multi-display 3D to carter to. Only Matrox seems to get that right now. IMHO, more options on the market the better. I also see SLI Mosaic Mode the potential work-around for resolutions over 3x1680x1050 for triple screen. I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate an up to 3x2560x1600 option without messing with SoftTH config files.

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Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

Hi

Great point BHawthorne.
Yes, hopefully my next card will be a dual (or quad ;) ) core gpu that fully supported 1920x1200x3 @ 60Hz.

The technology is currently possible, if they will make it.
I went ahead and got 3 Acer X263Wbi monitors. I do believe that either nVidia or ATI, possibly in parterns with Matrox will have something on the market in the future.

Interest seems to be growing, especially now that lcd's have came down in price. It is becoming more common for folks entering that would have considered it too expensive only a year or so ago.
One can now buy 3 22" monitors for the price a single one use to sell for not all that long ago.
It's now a time when a gpu that offered support right from the card would probably go over well. And if such a card would also support single through 4 monitors, right out of the box,,, well, I could see it doing well.

I'm sure it would be a very expensive card, no doubt. I wouldn't consider anything else though and buy one. I believe others would too, simply for the potential it would offer.
Of course it would have to run at the higher res with acceptable frame rates in games.
It would be very useful as a workstation card. I feel sure it would do well in the business sector too.

Yeah, I see this coming,,,, Hopefully soon!

I've looked into geforce to quadro mods since my 8800 are close to fx quadro 5600 but as far as I can tell the tools to do so are xp only and even then, wouldn't add sli mosaic capacity, from what docs I could find, it seems to be dedicated hardware in their quadro plex solutions that's simply not present in a regular pc/sli situation.

I can't see however why it would be impossible to do so even through a pure software application, I mean they keep boasting how cpu like their cards are, how bout using it to show some new functions.

They've finally added 2 monitor + sli support, so they're even part of the way there already.

My take on the whole SLI Mosaic thing is it's target has been for professional applications like video walls and super hd applications that exceed dual-dvi bandwidth. We pretty much have the same needs but on a consumer level.

My guess is that SLI mosaic mode is locked down in much the same way SLI is locked down in general -- that is by doing a hardware check. Manufacturers can unlock SLI capability by buying a lisence from nVidia. This has worked rather seamlessly with X58 based mobos and other hardware. It's no leap of logic to believe the capability is all there for any G80 or newer SLI setup to do SLI Mosaic mode yet it's locked down in the drivers.

The whole reason why I know about SLI Moasic mode to begin with is one time I ran into a "quirk" within the nVidia control panel once when I had it open and did a driver install (Yes, I know, really wrong way to do a driver install without cleaning out old driver before hand). I had access to the SLI Moasic window in the control panel and had it show up in the tree of options.

I see no reason why SLI Mosaic mode couldn't be lisenced out as an option to Geforce card users. It's a new avenue for income for nVidia if they did. SLI mode is locked down for revanue reasons, so one would think they could use the same revanue mode for SLI Moasic mode too.

Anyone out there with experience with SLI Mosaic mode care to chime in and explain it's use and limitations a bit? It would be much appreciated. I know awhile back WSGF had a nVidia community rep contact create an account here. Maybe it's time to make use of that contact and see if he can shed a little light on things.

_________________
Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

I can't see however why it would be impossible to do so even through a pure software application, I mean they keep boasting how cpu like their cards are, how bout using it to show some new functions

SoftTH has already proven it can be done in software, the latest version even has a CUDA frame copy mode that greatly improves performance.

Softh is all well and nice but it was made as an add-on hack, while brilliant it's only a workaround to the existing framework. I'm talking about implementing it natively for the cards, drivers-wise.

Softh is only usable wrapping around for d3d games and then, only some.

No ogl, no universal compatibility for games, and usually only for the very technically-minded to tweak around the .cfg for just about every game that it even works with.

And lastly, try reading a reply with all the posts that came before it, I clearly meant for NVIDIA to put their software where their mouth is, not some 3rd party app.

Softh is all well and nice but it was made as an add-on hack, while brilliant it's only a workaround to the existing framework. I'm talking about implementing it natively for the cards, drivers-wise.

I was attempting to agree with you. I was simply pointing out that SoftTH is a nice proof of concept that shows triple-screen spanning is fully possible.

And lastly, try reading a reply with all the posts that came before it, I clearly meant for NVIDIA to put their software where their mouth is, not some 3rd party app.

You might want to "try reading a reply with all the posts that came before it" yourself.

There's always the possibility of Nvidia and ATi implementing a proper span mode that can be used across two cards (and three monitors), which would make both the TH2G and SoftTH redundant.

Oh yeah, I would totally buy 2-3 Nvidia cards to use per each monitor if they unlocked the Mosaic mode for Geforces :D.