Anyone running a Triple Monitor Display?

[JG5_emil]

Hi Chaps

I've posted this over on SIMHQ also. I am planning a new system and would like to have COD running with three monitors. I am thinking about getting 3x24" monitors and will need a PC to run it. I am open to both Nvidia/ATI and Intel and AMD although I have a sneaking suspicion that the only system CLOD will like at the moment for triple monitors will be Intel and Nvidia.


So has anyone got COD running well on 3 monitors? If so could you please post your system specs.

Cheers

Emil

[Longbone]

Hi mate,
look here
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=23069
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=23180

[JG5_emil]

Cheers!

I saw Roadczar's thread and video which gave me hope but it still looks like he gets quite a bit of stutter from what I could tell from the video on youtube. If there is further optimisation I will definitely consider a crossfire / eyefinity setup.

[Troll2k]

There is always the Matrox Triple Head To go (th2g).

[Timberwolf]

Cheers!

I saw Roadczar's thread and video which gave me hope but it still looks like he gets quite a bit of stutter from what I could tell from the video on youtube. If there is further optimisation I will definitely consider a crossfire / eyefinity setup.

I know there still working on bugs on crossfire / eyefinity i wouldn't worry about it too much it should be fixed soon. Depending on your cash flow you can get raedon 5000, 6000, series cards cheap and there still "mid" ranged crossfire cards I have 1 5770 HD card running a 47" TV and 2 17" montors which i haven't hooked up yet ..just cause it would look silly but now i want to see how it looks ...thanks alot lol .BTW the 2 same 5770 should be around $250 CDN

[335th_GRAthos]

Running IL2CoD windowed at 3072x with three monitors (3x1024) here (my rig in in my signature below) using te RAMDRIVE solution (I do not know Ramdrive may be a placebo effect).

Not happy (yet) because the option to use 3renders (three times normal field of view in order to fill the left, centre, right monitor window) is not working.

I have moderate settings (no forrest, small detail of buildings, medium texture and ground, little ground shading, few buildings) and have reasonable fps at 55-65, no stutters at all playing online.

[335th_GRAthos]

and by the way, ifyou want to have the 3renders option available in CoD, make sure you post your requirement under http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=23405 ;)

[JG5_emil]

Bumping my own thread?

Still very little talk from anyone with triple monitor displays?

I am waiting in the wings (excuse the pun) to buy a PC powerful enough to run COD across 3 monitors, I don't just want to take a chance as it wont be a cheap expense.

I was thinking to be going with Intel + Nvidia as so far my experience on COD with both of them has been fairly good. The question is what exactly will in need in terms of processor/graphics cards....will I need SLI? Is the Nvidia Eyefinity equivalent as good as ATI's?

There must be others out there running triple monitors?

[335th_GRAthos]

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=23199


But tripple monitors is worthwhile only when the game will offer a 3renders view (like IL2FB used to have). This is still not the case.

My 2cents: There is no graphics card that can run the game well today so, anything you buy now is a medium term solution.
Intel and NV is the right solution today, the price premium (compared to AMD and ATI) is considerable.
Buy an NV GTX580 card with 3Gb VRAM, not less.
Since prices of GPUs drop considerably every quarter, you may be well enough to buy only one and wait for the second (for the SLI configuration) when the game will offer 3renders support, this will save you some money.

~S~

[ATAG_Doc]

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=23199


But tripple monitors is worthwhile only when the game will offer a 3renders view (like IL2FB used to have). This is still not the case.

My 2cents: There is no graphics card that can run the game well today so, anything you buy now is a medium term solution.
Intel and NV is the right solution today, the price premium (compared to AMD and ATI) is considerable.
Buy an NV GTX580 card with 3Gb VRAM, not less.
Since prices of GPUs drop considerably every quarter, you may be well enough to buy only one and wait for the second (for the SLI configuration) when the game will offer 3renders support, this will save you some money.

~S~

That is right. That's what I'm doing. Why spend that now ya know? I get great performance on a single 480 but for me I think it'd be wise (if I wanted to buy a new today or one very soon) to buy a single 3GB 580 and wait until SLI is ironed out before purchasing the second. But since I am happy now I will wait until I have a performance issue that only purchasing one would be a viable solution.

[JG5_emil]

Thanks for the replies.

I'll probably aim for the fastest processor I can get with a SSD and a GTX580 as you suggest and then get a 2nd when SLi is working better.

To run SLI, do you need to have identical graphics cards?

Would it be worthwhile to have 2 x SSD one for windows and one for COD?

[FS~Phat]

I can run COD in 5760x1080 eyefinity 3 x 24" with a mix of high settings and medium textures and low buildings/trees at 70FPS smoothly. To be honest the FOV is completely screwed and the quality of graphics at these settings just doesnt cut it.

I can get it to run at everything high at 40-50FPS but not very smoothly.

This is compared to 1920x1080 everything on high with 100>200FPS.

In my opinion triple monitor is a waste for COD at this point in time.
The new gen ATI 69x and NV 58x cards might do slightly better especially with more vram but i dont think they will ultimately make that much difference.

Your better off getting the biggest 1920x1080 or even 1920x1200 monitor you can find. I have a single 26" ASUS VK266H 1920x1200 im using for COD which I can highly recommend.

If you have IL2 1946 however, eyefinity works fantastically!

[335th_GRAthos]

To run SLI, do you need to have identical graphics cards?

Yes




Would it be worthwhile to have 2 x SSD one for windows and one for COD?

If I were you (and knew a bit about computers) I would leave the SSD disks and instead put at least 12Gb of RAM in the machine so, that I can use 6Gb as Ram and another 6Gb as RAMDISK and use Link Shell Extension in order to make links of the ramdrived directories to the game. Explanations here: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=20228
Having the game loaded on RAM will be always faster than an SSD.

I use a normal 1,5Tb 5400rpm HDD in my machine (I just happened to have this disk and I installed Win7-64 on it at a moment of desperation when my high performance 10.000rpm HDD had WinXP + IL2FB on it and I did not want to risk anything on my main setup), never noticed any performance problem, even when loading Win7.
So SSDs is a high price for the value, still.

It is my 2cents (as always) but the next most important thing you should be doing, is to have clean installations:
On my WinXP with IL2FB on it, there is no other software installed except the tools needed for the game.
On my Win7-64 with CoD on it there is no other software installed except the tools needed for the game.
On my working WinXP there is whatever I feel like installing...
I practice this for some years now, installing separate hard disks and using mutlti-boot switches. They are expensive and difficult to find but it is worth the money if you want to be sure you always have the max performance out of your system:
This is how they look like, you will ned to search a lot to find something in the area of EUR40.00
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0045/8422/products/idex-351_large.png

~S~

[JG5_emil]

thanks again chaps! Solid advice.

[FS~Phat]

Just did some multiplayer in 5760x1080 with some radeon pro tweaks and got an amazing 70>100FPS with everything almost maxed out with 2xAA! It was using 99% of all 4 GPUs... so maybe I was too quick to dismiss eyefinity. The FOV is still not perfect but damn its pretty immersive with that much horizon twisting around you in dogfight!

https://blufiles.storage.live.com/y1p8VqhCDrNSTumaerKiFG0eE2QLCnAPIs3CfS_J0hPnMRzXMk Rr4o8DzGWn8M6SQq9GyU2JuitxYM/COD-eyef.jpg

https://blufiles.storage.live.com/y1ph_abskyGfYbx2jAIOYHKubmVWrbm6N8X4vbM9kpJhf22dsQ C2YN0DBtNRedeILj004kNGWex9mI/COD-eyefset.jpg

[JG5_emil]

Cheers Phat!

You have started me thinking some dangerous thoughts :p

Do you think 2 X GTX 580 in SLI with 3 Gig Vram each not do the trick? Or maybe three way SLI?

[FS~Phat]

Based on current optimisations I would say 2way 580 3gb would rock once they sort out sli support. 3 way might give an increase but not with Current CPU speeds and code optimization. COD is still highly CPU bound until they start splitting tasks onto cores or threads.

[DayGlow]

Have the latest patches allow you to set custom fov or is it still stuck up against the redicle until you manually pull it back?

[FS~Phat]

Still no custom FOV.
I have a new quadsli GTX580 setup now that I havent tried with 3 screens yet.
I think it will be smoother than the ATI setup because these GTX 580s have 1.5GB vram and I noticed quite a few of the maps use up to 1.3GB vram.
That would explain some of the stuttering on 1GB vram cards!

[JG5_emil]

I bought a single 27" 2560x1440 res monitor and a GTX 580 with 3 gig VRAM to get started fingers crossed this works out ok. SSD Sata 3 and an i5 processor with 8 gig ram.

[HeavyDelta]

I'm running three Samsung P2770FH 27-Inch monitors with two GTX580's. With everything on high except forest and building amount, it runs around 40-50fps and looks good. It is kind of annoying since the menu screens straddles two monitors and makes it hard to read, but the actual gameplay is pretty good looking. I can post screenies if you'd like to see.

[HeavyDelta]

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7969/shot20110812153519.th.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/836/shot20110812153519.jpg/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

Everything on high except buildings and forest 3840x1024. I think the FOV is pretty good. The weird warping you get like on the right side when you turn your head isn't really perceived while you play, since you are looking left.

[335th_GRAthos]

My pictures with 3monitors are here
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=23199
3840x1024 desktop, 3072x1024 CoD window

I am not happy with the current setup because the ultra-wide view limits the vertical view thus, you see a lot less of the instrument panel compared to the normal 4:3 view.

The 3renders=1 view in IL2FB was taking account of this and provided full 4:3 view on each monitor thus eliminating the problem.

~S~

[Phazon]

Yep the game does not use Hort+ for scaling. It uses vert- which means the wider the view, the less you see on the top and bottom.

[ATAG_Doc]

Yep the game does not use Hort+ for scaling. It uses vert- which means the wider the view, the less you see on the top and bottom.

Will this be address you think?