Widescreen Gaming Forum

As the title suggests im in a bit of a quandry.

I have got 2x24" screens which while being all well and good, sucks for games bigtime due to the crossfire being split etc

I have an option at the moment of going for another one fairly cheap but have heard rumours that 5760x1200 isnt possible :(

I basically want source games etc to work as well as live for speed.

I assume that my pc is powerful enough (listed at bottom). It does 1920x1200 well enough at high quality

I saw this card Asus ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 TOP which has 4xdvi ports.


Anyone with information?


OR is it possible for me to "move the screen" eg move the crosshairs etc or move my vision in live for speed?


Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 3.6Ghz
8Gb DDR2 800Mhz @ 4-4-4-12 (impulse buy ^_^)
2XBFG 8800 GTX OC2 with HR-03 Plus
eVGA 780i
1X 24" Benq 24fpw
1X 24" Dell 2407Wfp A04



Thanks, and sorry for asking such n00bish questions :|

You have two basic options.

1. Purchase a Digital TripleHead2Go (~$320) and run a resolution of 3840x800. This is 1280x800 on each screen, so the monitors will not be at their native resolution. However, a TripleHead2Go is the easiest way to implement triplehead gaming.

2. Purchase a low-end secondary GPU to connect to your third monitor (~$50) and connect two monitors to the primary card. Use SoftTH (free) to run 5760x1200. If you do this you have to run the card in non-Crossfire mode, however (unless ATI cards can output to multiple monitors when Crossfire is enabled; nVidia cards cannot). SoftTH requires significant tweaking to obtain proper operation, and doesn't work with all sims, but it is capable of the resolution you desire.
http://www.kegetys.net/SoftTH/

This is an XP only solution:
Use a nvidia geforce card and horizontal-span the 2 displays. This is what I'm currently doing with 2 Samsung 245BWs. This won't work in Vista because spanning mode capability has been removed. Also, no idea about if ATI cards have span modes. I am 100% sure this'll work with a 8-series or newer Geforce card though.

Adding in a 3rd monitor will be problematic though. The TH2G won't push native resolution and SoftTH is at best a hack...it's going to work some of the time...on some games...in a spotty way. With 1920x1200 monitors I think the only viable solution is XP + horizontal span. I have another post in this forum about 2 DH2G and 4 24" that might be insightful. I think with 1920x1200 monitors your viable hardware accelerated options are limited to even counts of monitors...ie: 2 or 4. Odd counts of monitors like 3 there is no good solution for in 1920x1200.

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