Widescreen Gaming Forum

Is it just me or is this forum biased towards ATI nowadays?

At times we can seem biast towards Nvidia, at times towards ATI and at times towards Matrox. Truth is that we are neither. We are biast towards the consumer (end user). Here's a recent example of this:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=19228&start=0

WSGF is a community with people having different type of hardware. Our solutions is about getting games to work on different hardware and we lobby towards vendors and game developers to make this happen.

I would go ATI... If quadfire worked. If PhysX worked. If I didn't have to use a DisplayPort adapter.

Instead I'll probably invest in 4 x 480s...

You don't have to use displayport adapter. Thats only if you buy screens without displayport (kinda like the same that you need 120hz for 3D vision). Unless the delay has changed it, you would probably not have support for 3 and 4 sli in the beginning, so I would advice you to start with two cards if you buy them now and then rather add later. :) For GPU accelerated physx, you need an Nvidia card anyway (either with hack when using ATI as primary card, or directly with Nvidia as primary card). it will be like this as long as Nvidia chose to run GPU physX over CUDA instead of opencl or directcompute like Bullet physics is developing for.

I once had a 9600XT. It was awesome, when it worked. Replaced it with a 7600GS and got better stability and performance. In fact the card is still chugging along in the same PC. And no, not PEBKAC. I know what I'm doing...

So you are saying that this was a global issue and everyone had this (something wrong with card+drivers) or was this a local issue?

What people fail to realise is that nvidia has been doing multimonitors + multigpu for much longer than ATI, just look at SLI Mosaic and Quadroplex. I'll bet that nvidia surround is basically a consumer version of those technologies.

Yes the drivers are taking a while, but it's better than them not working.

I also think that we will see some of the SLI Mosaic method in Nvidia surround.

How much depends. Provided that it was an actual working Nvidia surround being shown at CES in January and not a softTH mockup to show what will come, it means that Nvidia still needed 6 months extra in order to get a working commercial version of this. There are limitations and challenges Nvidia is facing that ATI also faced when they considered a software solution:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2937/10

I think we all hope that Nvidia will overcome these and make an excellent surround support. Only people who cares about the vendors would hope for a less then optimal solution. :)

Unless the delay has changed it, you would probably not have support for 3 and 4 sli in the beginning

Support already exists for 3way SLI on the new cards, whether that will apply to the new drivers and remains to be seen. The link I posted to the tomshardware review on the first page was a test of the cards in 2way and 3way SLI so if your thinking about 3way SLI its a good starting point.

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My Multi-Monitor Focused YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/SkidIncGaming
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"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."

Unless the delay has changed it, you would probably not have support for 3 and 4 sli in the beginning

Support already exists for 3way SLI on the new cards, whether that will apply to the new drivers and remains to be seen. The link I posted to the tomshardware review on the first page was a test of the cards in 2way and 3way SLI so if your thinking about 3way SLI its a good starting point.

Yes, support for 3 way (and 4 way as per 197.55) SLI exist already, but its said that Nvidia will not support 3 and 4 way sli in the first batch of drivers with nvidia surround which was the topic. :)

Tri-SLI and Quad-SLI will be supported however the initial 3D Vision Surround launch driver will only support two way SLI. Tri-SLI and Quad-SLI will come through a driver update.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=167337&st=40&p=1053245&#entry1053245
Since he's not going to be able to use them before there is support, 4X sli is overkill in anything but surround, so I would advice him to start with 2 and then add after driver support is ready.

4X Crossfire works (in the sense that its faster then 2X), but 3X crossfire beats it, so driver support isn't optimal there:
http://www.hardware.info/nl-NL/articles/amdnampoZGCa/Clash_of_the_Titans_3way_SLI_GTX_480_test/10

One thing to mention unless your going to water cool your 3 GPUs you want to get a motherboard that puts at least one gap between the cards. The current cards heat up allot more if there no gap between the cards, this means it'll run its fan faster, so putting 4 back to back without water cooling will probably spin the fans up to an annoying level. The best option is to wait till they release a 2GPU card and get 4way SLI with two of them.

_________________
: ) Skid : )
My Multi-Monitor Focused YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/SkidIncGaming
My Twitch channel which I've been known to stream on from time to time: http://www.twitch.tv/SkidInc
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."

One thing to mention unless your going to water cool your 3 GPUs you want to get a motherboard that puts at least one gap between the cards. The current cards heat up allot more if there no gap between the cards, this means it'll run its fan faster, so putting 4 back to back without water cooling will probably spin the fans up to an annoying level. The best option is to wait till they release a 2GPU card and get 4way SLI with two of them.

I saw Nvidia recommend this too, but can't remember where... :oops:

One important thing for others that read this thread, is that there IS single card support:

# Single card

* GeForce GTX 295

http://www.nvidia.com/object/3DV_System_Requirements_Surround_Technology.html

So if there will be a 2 GPU card with GT100 or 104 chip, it will probably support Nvidia surround as single card solution. :)

As long as the card will have three outputs.

As long as the card will have three outputs.

*3 outputs that can be run at the same time, and has 2 Processors (IE 295)

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http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_sli_mosaic_mode.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/qplex_display_configurations.html

nvidia surround will most likely be SLI Mosaic mode rebadged for consumer use.

SLI Mosasic has been around for ages (G8x series had it), and the driver support is there, it's just locked out... same as how SLI gets locked out and stuff.

I think ATI should be worried tbh. SLI Mosaic has been around for longer than Eyefinity, is a commercial grade solution, supports 3D, and if you believe nvidia's marketing - scales extremely well.

Why has it taken so long to get the driver ready for release then? I have no idea... maybe 4xx series compatibility is slowing it down as the driver should be ready already for the 2xx series.

If nvidia can sort out 3-way and 4-way support for their surround solution, then ATI won't stand a chance. It's been shown that 4-way SLI *can* and *does* scale well once you put it under a decent load... the kind of load you'd expect to experience running 3 monitors :) Compared to quad/tri fire where all I seem to read is reports of slowdowns and worse performance, which is one reason why I can't risk ATI... :- The display port flickering also bothers me, as I recently got good cheap new monitors that don't have a DisplayPort.

Nvidia Surround may seem like a half-arsed rush job, but the technology is basically already there - it's not like they're doing it from scratch. Or at least if they are then I'd be VERY VERY surprised, and it would invalidate a lot of my arguments :-

nvidia surround...

Nice post, i have three GTX 480 and three 2233RZ patiently waiting for this surround solution. :mrgreen:

Nvidia Surround may seem like a half-arsed rush job, but the technology is basically already there - it's not like they're doing it from scratch. Or at least if they are then I'd be VERY VERY surprised, and it would invalidate a lot of my arguments :-

I don't think that Nvidia surround would ever have been made if ATI didn't make Eyefinity. Fermi was originally intended to be released around the launch of Windows 7. The hardware were delayed, but if Nvidia had intended to release surround with it, they probably wouldn't have delayed the release 8 months after the launch of W7. Though Fermi was delayed, Nvidia surround will also support GTX260 to GTX295, so they had hardware to develop the software on.

The tech is not basically there. I also think that Nvidia will use some sort of SLI Mosaic, but remember that the requirements in games vs. applications are a bit different (look at Eyefinity vs. extended, where you have PLP support in extended, but only in windowed can you use PLP with Eyefinity).

Nvidia surround is depended on SLI. Hopefully they will implement a fallback option where you can use a single card for rendering and second card for output like softTH. Otherwise, all issues related to SLI would potentially be a larger issue in surround.

Using dual cards (regardless of ATI or Nvidia), have a potential of creating latency, sync and bandwidth issues.

Nvidia is facing the issue that they also would need to sync 3 screens over PCI-E and SLI bridge, while ATI are syncing them on the same card. Each frame needs to be perfectly synced (unless they want an uproar from gamers complaining about everything from screen lag to tearing) and latency, sync and bandwidth issues that already exist in SLI can break the sync over 3 screens.

If the "wait for sync" will be too long, gamers would complain about input lag and how surround kills their headshots. Gamers like to complain and keep the vendors in check. :lol:

As we know from SLI and Crossfire, there is no "one solution fits all games", so if surround becomes to dependent on SLI support, the experience might differ from game to game on SLI support alone. Using Mosic also might prevent the use of AFR or split-screen(scissor) rendering, so it might require a separate SLI profile.

I am painting this a bit black, but its to get some perspective here. Many of these issues aren't solved over SLI already, so it might not be realistic to believe that they will be solved when you add 2 more screens and 3D support.

I think we all (regardless of hardware) hope that Nvidia will come with a perfect solution that will raise the bar for multi-mon support, but we don't know anything before we actually have seen it in action. Nvidia IS facing hardware issues that needs to be solved and some that might not be possible to solve with current hardware. The important thing IMO is that they are coming with a solution and the competition this will bring, would force some developing money into improving on it. :)

One thing I personally hate, is if I would be locked to one vendor due to feature support and without Nvidia surround, I would be once I get my own setup (wife factor, so I only get one shot of making one, so this one must count). :P