Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi all,

I'm here to ask you about my future setup.

I want:
1. Surround gaming 3x1920x1200 display array.
2. It will be good, not 'must have' to have this array run Crysis maxxed out.

I have:
1. Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.8GHz (w/o OC)
2. Sapphire ATI Radeon 4870x2
3. ASUS P5QPro
4. 2x2GB Transcend @800

I know that:
1. 4870X2 supports only 2 displays at once, so I will have to get an additional card to run 3rd display.
2. Triple displays surround gaming setups are supported by only TripleHead2Go and SoftTH yet. Later will be EyeFinity but it is always delayed.
3. TripleHead2Go devices do not support 3x1920x1200, only less, so I have to stick to SoftTH
4. SoftTH renders everything on only one card, if there are several, uses others only for output to display. It does not support CF.
5. ASUS guys told me that I will be able to run my 4870X2 at x16 and other card only at x8 without CF, with CF x8 both. So there is no point making 2x48070x2 CF with P5QPro if I am not mistaken.
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7GeaaCmh3k
This guy has the setup I want he says he got 4870x2 and 3870, but he says the 3870 is a waste of money and recommends getting a cheaper one because it is used only for output. He uses SoftTH, he likes everything he got and recommends no replaces for my build. He is also silent about benchmarking his setup.
7. 3x1920x1200 = 6,912,000 pixels and 2560x1600 = 4,096,000 pixels. So my config will be almost twice harder for my 4870x2 to render than a 30'' display.

I am confused about:
1. Will it be at least working?
2. What FPS I will get with maxxed Crysis played at 4870x2 at 3x1920x1200?
3. If I wont like the FPS, how can I improve the setup? 4870x2 is the best on the market, it fits my needs talking about the configuration even if I have to by a cheap additional card for third DVI output, but I couldn't find a way to extend this setup if I will need to. There is no CF for SoftTH and 4870x2 is the most powerful card.
4. If there will be a bottleneck, how can I improve it? Maybe another RAM freq, more RAM, another motherboard for 2xPCIEx16 run, overclocking CPU, GPU?

I was aiming World of Warcraft, actually. Crysis was just a benchmarking way for comparison.
I realize that it will be a hard try for my 4870x2 to render 5760x1200, but that guy has it working! Not the Crysis, but other games.
I took a look at the specs of new ATI cards and they re good, but here in Russia 5870x2 will cost me another $1000 in November.
http://i28.tinypic.com/2gvjvvp.jpg

Evethough upgrading will be good I will try buying 3 screens and running them on 4870x2 first and then buy a 5870x2 when the price drops.

BTW, I know it will be slightly offtopic, but I was wondering if this surrounding setup reveal much of TN displays cons? You know, the horizontal angles thing. If I will be placing then at a slight angle to each other, but at a right angle to the eye, I still will be getting different colors at the edges and between monitors? VAs and IPSs are too slow for gaming, so I thought TN will be a good choice for gaming, but angles and color inconsistence keep me nervous...

I would be glad if someone commented this or corrected me if I am wrong in any of my statements.

Thanks in advance.

Wait for the new 5870 GPU reviews (next week probably), you may be able to play at 1920x1200 , according to some "leaked" news about EyeFinity :

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=163432

Some people say World of Warcraft at the resolution of 5760x1200 will bring my Q9550 down. Have something like that ever happen to you, thales100?

Some people say World of Warcraft at the resolution of 5760x1200 will bring my Q9550 down. Have something like that ever happen to you, thales100?

No, not at 5040x1050.

Some people say World of Warcraft at the resolution of 5760x1200 will bring my Q9550 down. Have something like that ever happen to you, thales100?

I run WoW in windowed mode (used to dual box) and at 5040x1050 I can have everything on max okay. Dalaran when I was using my Q9450 at stock 2.66ghz can be quite unplayable though, turning shadows down just 1 notch improves performance by a mile.

Also there is still issues with WoW at this res - so its not a perfect example. Flying high through zones causes WoW to crash due to memory errors after a bit on my system.

[quote]Some people say World of Warcraft at the resolution of 5760x1200 will bring my Q9550 down. Have something like that ever happen to you, thales100?

No, not at 5040x1050.

5760x1200 vs 5040x1050 not a big deal. Perhaps they are bullshitting me or talking about situations like OzHusky describes.

OzHusky, do yo uthink the issue might be solved with adding another 4Gb RAM and switching to a x64 bit os?

5760x1200 vs 5040x1050 not a big deal. Perhaps they are bullshitting me or talking about situations like OzHusky describes.

OzHusky, do yo uthink the issue might be solved with adding another 4Gb RAM and switching to a x64 bit os?

You may find the extra screen size wont make much of a diffrence - but it may. And as far as ram and 64bit goes, it wont help.. The crashing involved with wow is a memory access issue when it tries to access more than 1.5gigs of data at once. If you dont have SP1 (vista) installed it will happen even without a surround mode enabled.

Blizzard employ a lot of CPU rendering in the game to get around people not having high end cards, that way more people can run the game on a variety of systems - and still get decent graphics and gameplay. It also why you dont see massive performance jumps when using SLI/Crossfire.

Id just say turn the slider down another notch on the Shadows ;) Seems to be the resource hog when it comes to performance.

[quote]5760x1200 vs 5040x1050 not a big deal. Perhaps they are bullshitting me or talking about situations like OzHusky describes.

OzHusky, do yo uthink the issue might be solved with adding another 4Gb RAM and switching to a x64 bit os?

You may find the extra screen size wont make much of a diffrence - but it may. And as far as ram and 64bit goes, it wont help.. The crashing involved with wow is a memory access issue when it tries to access more than 1.5gigs of data at once. If you dont have SP1 (vista) installed it will happen even without a surround mode enabled.

Blizzard employ a lot of CPU rendering in the game to get around people not having high end cards, that way more people can run the game on a variety of systems - and still get decent graphics and gameplay. It also why you dont see massive performance jumps when using SLI/Crossfire.

Id just say turn the slider down another notch on the Shadows ;) Seems to be the resource hog when it comes to performance.

1.5 Gig sounds like a standard issue of Win32 Virtual Address Space Limit.
I have Windows 7 x64 but I can change it anytime,
Thanks for reporting about Shadows :)

1.5 Gig sounds like a standard issue of Win32 Virtual Address Space Limit.
I have Windows 7 x64 but I can change it anytime,
Thanks for reporting about Shadows :)

wouldn't it be 2GB instead ? since a single 32 bit process can't access more than 2GB of memory all included unless it's LAA (Large Address Aware)

[quote][quote]1.5 Gig sounds like a standard issue of Win32 Virtual Address Space Limit.
I have Windows 7 x64 but I can change it anytime,
Thanks for reporting about Shadows :)

wouldn't it be 2GB instead ? since a single 32 bit process can't access more than 2GB of memory all included unless it's LAA (Large Address Aware)

You're right the limit is 2GB as stated my Microsoft, but try to google "1610612736 out of memory".