Widescreen Gaming Forum

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an appeal for data. A lot of us have been waiting for a good surround vs eyefinity review including the 460s to show up, but there is still nothing to be found. I've noticed a few members here already have GTX 460 SLI surround setups, so please allow the rest of us to pick your brain for the following:

What resolution are you playing at?

What games to you most frequently play? At what typical settings? How fluid is gameplay at those levels?

Framerates are a big help if you've been measuring it.


With some help I'd like to divine the "best" resolution to couple with these cards for the best "mainstream surround" setup. With the money we have to throw at a 3 monitor purchase, it would be nice to get it right the first time.

I've been speculating that 3x 1680x1050 is the closest to ideal for this setup, but I have zero data to back that up. My train of thought is based on the overall MP of resolution that the cards and their 1GB of memory must push. For reference:

2560x1600 = 4.1 (Most comparable single screen resolution)
4800x900 = 4.3 5040x1050 = 5.3 5760x1080 = 6.2 5760x1200=6.9 7680x1600 = 12.3

My general theory (aka the zero data SWAG theory) immediately discards 4800x900, 5760x1200 and 7680x1600. The latter two are far too large, the former only appears on under 20 inch monitors and would ruin immersion. That leaves the competition at 5040x1050 vs 5760x1080. You add an entire megapixel going up to 5760, but only 30 vertical lines. There is no good argument for needing the extra 700 horizontal lines in surround, you're plenty wide enough either way. That makes 5040 is the obvious choice, but the line grays in practice. 1680x1050 is limited to 22" monitors and the supply of them (and seemingly all 16:10 resolutions) is drying up. 1920x1080 is very widespread, available in nearly any size, and is the focus of far more good deals these days.

With enough input hopefully we'll be able to answer that dilemma. Is 5760x1080 crippling to this set-up, or is everyone running it with no problems?

For everyone else in the same boat as me, the closest review i've seen is the GTX 280 SLI surround review at HardOCP. Its a 1gb memory card with performance in the same ballpark: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/07/08/nvidia_gtx_280_sli_3d_surround_experience/1

Can't help with personal experience, but the GTX460 SLI is about on a par, or sometimes faster than HD5870 crossfire from what I can gather. Shouldn't have problems playing anything unless you want like 3x 2560x1600 DX11 on Metro for example, and you want more than 40 fps say.

_________________
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Watch this space for a GTX460 SLI 1GB vs GTX460 SLI 2GB Surround review covering Aliens vs. Predator, Dirt 2, Just Cause 2, Burnout Paradise, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, Devil May Cry 4, Crysis, Far Cry 2, Need for Speed: Shift, GTA IV and STALKER: Clear Sky.

I'm just wrapping up the 1GB benchmarks now. Well, when a benchmark has finished downloading at 100KB/s... :(

While I'm far too lazy to actually do benchmarks and tell you specific frame rates, I can however look down my Steam games list and tell you how they run:

5955x1080 (My Bezel adjusted res)

Alien Swarm : Max, AA ON over 60fps
BF:BC2 : Max, AA ON, HBAO OFF about 60fps
Borderlands : I'm guessing Max, but I haven't tried it because it's my worst purchase ever, useless fooking game.
MW2: Max, AA ON over 60fps
CSS(and other source games, TF2, DOD:S, HL2 etc): Max, AA ON over 60fps
Crysis: Haven't tried!
Dead Space: Max, can't remember if this has an AA setting :( over 60fps
Dirt2 : Max, AA ON, Drivers off though for some reason 40-60fps
GTAIV: Haven't tried!
Just Cause 2: Mostly Max, GPU Water off 30-50fps
Kane & Lynch 2 Demo : Haven't tried!
Mafia II: All Max, AA ON however it seems to do nowt, Physx Medium. 30fps
Mirrors Edge: Can't get it to run properly
Nation Red: Max, AA ON over 60fps
Singularity: Max, AA ON over 60fps
[b]WoW: Max, AA ON over a gazillion fps

So to answer your question, I think 460's SLI can handle 1920x3 well enough. There's yet to be a game where I've thought, "well this is shit, I wish I'd bought 480s".

If I'm feeling in a good mood or bored or a combination of both, I'll update the 'haven't tried's' with results at some point.

_________________
Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

I've been speculating that 3x 1680x1050 is the closest to ideal for this setup, but I have zero data to back that up. My train of thought is based on the overall MP of resolution that the cards and their 1GB of memory must push. For reference:

2560x1600 = 4.1 (Most comparable single screen resolution)
4800x900 = 4.3 5040x1050 = 5.3 5760x1080 = 6.2 5760x1200=6.9 7680x1600 = 12.3

My general theory (aka the zero data SWAG theory) immediately discards 4800x900, 5760x1200 and 7680x1600. The latter two are far too large, the former only appears on under 20 inch monitors and would ruin immersion. That leaves the competition at 5040x1050 vs 5760x1080 . . .

I prefer the 16:10 aspect ratio. I recently upgraded from three 22" monitors to three 24" monitors, (from 5040x1050 to 5760x1200). I enjoy the extra screen space with deeper immersion. The versatility of the 16:10 aspect ratio with its enhanced vertical screen space works well with my multi-purpose rigs.

Thanks for the help so far guys. ez' your general numbers and feel for the games are very helpful. It sounds like 1920x1080 is perfectly reasonable, I play a cross-section of games similar to the ones you mentioned.

Phantom, do you do play many shooters? Do they handle x1200 well? I'd love to stick with 1920x1200, but it seems like 5760x1200 would be murdered w 1gig of ram on newer games.

Ideally I'd like to be able to handle metro2033 (w AA off) with whatever resolution I land on. However the bulk of my games aren't nearly that demanding, so if I sacrifice quality on that one game to gain resolution on all the rest I wouldn't be too upset.

Paradigm Shifter: I'm looking forward to the review!

Gainward have released a 2 gig 460, maybe that would help :wink:

Since eZ`s data indicates >60 fps at 1080 resolution for many titles, then good frame rates at 1200 resolution may be well within reach. That is why I mentioned my preference for three 16:10 monitors running 5760x1200 resolution.

Phantom, do you do play many shooters? Do they handle x1200 well? I'd love to stick with 1920x1200, but it seems like 5760x1200 would be murdered w 1gig of ram on newer games.

I tend to play slightly older reduced-price shooters (Left 4 Dead, Fear 2, Shattered Horizon, Wolfenstein, etc). I wait for the newer shooters to come down in price before playing, so I don't have performance figures for the latest, most demanding titles (Metro 2033, for example).

So long as graphics card GPU performance is the only limiting factor, ie no CPU speed nor VRAM frame buffer bottlenecks, I find that video performance scales close to linearly with resolution for small spreads such as

5040x1050 (5.3 Megapixels)
vs
5760x1080 (6.2 Mp)
vs
5760x1200 (6.9 Mp).

For example, if on 5040x1050 (5.3 Mp), a game plays at 100 fps, then we can use simple math to roughly predict performance at adjacent resolutions:

5760x1080 --> ~85 fps

100 fps x (5.3 Mp / 6.2 Mp) = 85.5 fps

5760x1200 --> ~77 fps

100 fps x (5.3 Mp / 6.9 Mp) = 76.8 fps

I agree, changing 5040x1050 to 5760x1080 and changing 5760x1080 to 5760x1200 are much smaller jumps, about 11%, than going from 5040x1050 to 5760x1200 (about 30% increase).

I'm not using the GTX460, but the info below may be helpful.

While planning my GPU and monitor upgrades back in April, the information available in media and user reviews indicated that the graphics cards I considered, 5870 Eyefinity 6 2GB and 5970, could handle both 5760x1080 and 5760x1200.

I chose the ATI 5870 Eyefinity 6 2GB card over the 5970 because the 5870 Eyefinity 6 card has 2GB VRAM frame buffer capacity, which is double the 1GB effective frame buffer per GPU of the dual-GPU 5970. In other words, I figured the newer, more demanding titles will benefit more from having twice the VRAM than from having twice as many GPUs, as shown in the 1GPU : 1GB : 2GPU : 2GB boxes in the right margins of Ibrin's Eyefinity6 Review.

Here are the specs for two of my systems with benchmarks in Far Cry 2 at 5760x1200 res and 4x AA:

i7 940 2.93GHz
6GB RAM DDR3 1333
HIS HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 2GB: 38.07 Frames per Second
+
Phenom II x4 965BE 3.4GHz
8GB RAM DDR3 1600
HIS HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 2GB: 32.6 Frames per Second

Benchmark Settings

I've found one review of the 2GB variant of the GTX 460: http://en.expreview.com/2010/08/08/exclusive-review-of-zotac-geforce-gtx-460-2gb-edition/9041.html/9

They only tested up to 2560x1600. At that resolution two games out of their test battery clearly topped out the 1GB cards and there was a significant boost using 2gb. They saw a maximum gain of 30% in one game (2560x1600 8xAA farcry 2). The rest of the time it was negligible. I even found the Palit 2GB cards at MWave for $270.

However I've always been a framerate over eyecandy guy, and I don't foresee that changing. Its unlikely I'll ever want to run 4xAA or higher on those games to the point where I'd consume the 1GB of vram if I stay within a megapixel or so of 2560x1600. My current plan is starting to lean heavily towards keeping it cheap and letting thin-bezel and 120hz mature and buy a nice permanent setup in the future.

Everyone has been a tremendous help so far, thanks for the feedback. Paradigm Shifter, I'm still eagerly awaiting the benchmarks, it could very well answer my 2GB vs 1GB question directly.