Three display setup performance
 

Hi,

I've browsed through old threads and found some experiences but nothing too recent of multidisplay setup and as the patches have done major work on the graphics so I think it's better to check the latest state of affairs.

So what I'd like to do is a three display setup either with NVidia or ATI products. I've seen this guy and that guy doing it but due to a costly investment would like to learn more.

So what kind of gear do you need these days to achieve that GPU and CPU wise with maxed out setting?

Both NVidia and ATI have solutions for it, but which one would you recommend and why? (I know ATI has still some gfx glitches)

Can I achieve it with one card?

Thanks a million in advance!

I use the MATROX Thripple Head 2 Go (TH2G)

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/pr...o/displayport/

Which basically makes my 3 monitors into 1 monitor as far as Windows is concerned

That is to say I have 3 x 1280x1024 montiors that TH2G makes into 1 x 3840x1024 monitor

Neat thing about using the TH2G is you only need one video card, where as some other multi monitor setups require two video cards, in that most video cards only have 2 DVI outputs, thus you need a 2nd card to provide the 3rd output.

Granted you need one 'good' video card to handle the large screen

Thanks for the hint. What kind of CPU / GPU power you have and what kind of performance do you get and with which settings?

+1

I have to be quick to mention that, unlike IL2FB, CoD does not support "three monitor view".


~S~

What does that mean in practise?

How were those eyefinity setups done or does it emulate 'one big monitor' too like tripplehead2go?

What do you mean? I can natively select my three screen resolution inside CoD without needing to change the config file. That's not the case with IL-2.

Yes and no. Now I can only speak about ATI. I've never had an nVidia setup, not saying I wouldn't I've just always had ATI.

The software side is fairly straight forward. You first setup a display group extending the desktop space to all your screens. Then you setup an Eyefinity group where you set orientation. Then you can correct the bezel (I just leave it) and thats it.

The trickiest part for Eyefinity is the hardware side. Most of the current generation high end cards from both camps should be able to support 3 or more monitors on a single card.

I for example have got 2 Gigabyte 7970s in crossfire, but a single card has 4 display ports on the back: 1 x DVI, 2 x mini DVI and 1 x HDMI, it can have 4 screens attached.

This is what is needed to get it up and running.
http://youtu.be/O_dD4IjNGlA

The tricky part you will be faced with is sourcing the correct Display Port Adapter for your monitors. Almost all Eyefinity setups require an Active Display Port Adapter. I say almost because some brands of ATI cards don't.

Getting the correct adapter will depend on the brand of card you get and the type of monitors you have. If possible use the same make and model of monitor, it will save time.

Now there are varying types of adapters available:

Active and Passive
Digital and Analogue
Different adapters for different resolutions and refresh rates.

Do your research, fortunately ATI have a list of adapters that are certified for all cards, if go with that and you should be right.

http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/...y-dongles.aspx

As for the cost, well it all depends on how resourceful you are. For me, I don't buy 2nd hand. So I spent $900 on the 3 monitors, a card will set you back $500 to $700 depending on what you choose, and the adapters can be $60 - $120 depending on what you need.

If I was to build an Eyefinity setup now, and could only afford one card, I would buy this one:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=21626

6GB of vram ensures you've got plenty for a triple screen setup for years to come.

Good luck.

All games show you the "front view" that is the view when you are looking straight ahead.
This view is more limited than your real life:

...humans have a maximum horizontal field of view of approximately 200 degrees with two eyes, approximately 120 degrees of which makes up the binocular field of view (seen by both eyes) flanked by two uniocular fields (seen by only one eye) of approximately 40 degrees.

What I think they mean is that, whilst the horizontal FoV using both eyes is 200 degrees, only 120 degrees of this is simultaneously seen with both eyes. In other words, the left eye sees an additional 40 degress on the left which is invisible to the right eye, and the right eye sees an additional 40 degrees of the field on the right, which is invisible to the left eye.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binocular_vision)

To cut the long story short, this is much more than the FOV you see in the monitor in front of you.


Some games, and IL2 was one of them, have the option (in CONF.INI) to make the game render not only the "front view" but, the "left side view" and the "right side view" as well, at the same time.

This tripples the field of view you can normaly see in a game.
The disadvantage is that you can not enjoy this on a flat screen in front of you; You need three separate monitors and you have to incline the outside monitors toward you otherwise, the view may look very strange. It is difficult to explain but here is a picture of how strange it looks if you keep the monitors in front of you instead of inclining them:
http://grathos.de/temp/TripleHead2Go_01.jpg

The other disadvantage is that you need a very good graphics card because the game has to render three times more information that before (needless to say that the later is the reason why CoD fails to provide the three monitor view).

This been said, there is a way to adjust the field of view in CoD (using the mouse) to make it wide in order to resemble the three monitor view however it is a rather clumbersome way for my taste and it makes it impractical for dogfight situation where you have to switch from "zoomed in" to "wide view" while tracking the enemy and estimating the required lead for deflection shots.

~S~

I wouldnt bother upgrading to triple screen just for CLOD. It doest work well enough to justify it even with my madly modded and overclocked system running 4way SLI. I have to lower settings to get it smooth and above 25FPS at 6048x1080 with 3x24" monitors. Its stilll very playable but its not as smooth or detailed as a single screen.

Lots of other games work well with 3 screens though including the old IL2 1946.
Here's an old video I made with a very early version of CLOD. The latest retail patch runs better but its not consistently smooth enough to justify running 3 screens. If you do go down the 3 screen path for CLOD you will need 3GB vram video cards as a minimum as it uses 2.5GB Vram at 6048x1080.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbJfvrd553U&feature=plcp

I am thinking of that too. And friends of mine can run it smoothly with single 7970 , but also with some lowered settings. So, do you generate enough frames? In other words: Is it a fps problem ir do you have stutters? Would be interesting to find out. If it is stutters, I would claim nvidias ram interface to be slower. ATI could perhaps help with a 384 bit interface, which always seems to work better for streaming engines like arma or clod.

Would be great to hear an answer and perhaps someone, who has an ati with such a ram interface and at least 3gb vram like phat also has (just because he is already running 2,5 gb vram and more).

Running a triple setup is something I've done for about five years now. I started with a triplehead2go, and got rid of it after nvidia released the ability to do "surround" as I had sli 275's at the time.

In this game I was very frustrated with the inability of my SLI 470's to render well in this game at anything more than very low settings. I was getting about 25 (med to high settings) fps where I'd have liked to get over 30. Low settings look like garbage in this game - you cannot tell when you hit ea, there are no effects for fire, etc. so you really lose out on alot unless you set effects at medium. This is automatically a 15 fps cost, so I'd go from about 40 fps to 25. And 25 is not enough to enjoy this game...\

Fast forward to today. I recently upgraded to a pair of SLI'd 680's. I get absolutely no stuttering on "high" settings. If I go to "very high" settings my framerate will stutter(mildly) due to the fact that I only have 2gb on each card. I could have spent more for 4 gb cards, but that would have defeated the purchase (2 680's for < $1000 shipped), but it was a game changer for me. Now I enjoy around 40-60 fps on the "black death" track. PS all framerate settings are taken from this track.

This game is very poorly optimized for modern systems imho, at least accross large fields of view, and it takes a high end modern machine to get a good framerate accross three views. I'm certain it was the same for the first people using the "use3renders=1" command before.

The good news is that the game runs very well on one monitor, but if you really want to play accross three monitors you will need a SOLID system to run it.

My specs are Intel 2600k at stock speed (can't get overclocking to work reliably even with water cooling so I gave up) the two sli'd 680's, 8 gigs 1600 ddr3, 128 Gig SSD (OS) and 1 terabyte storage drive. All works fine and dandy, but I suspect anything short of SLI'd/Crossfired LAST generation very high end or better would be needed to get "good" framerates with good graphics. At least at triple sized resolutions.

Another alternative that gives a similar field of view is to do two projectors. You get a similar view to 3 screens, but at the cost of only rendering two screens instead of three. The other advantage you have of course is that you are not stuck with rendering in "native resolution". You can opt for a lower resolution (and it won't look like ass) on a projector and it will render fine, as opposed to doing the same thing with LCD's.

Now you can also dumb down your resolution. Even with my 470's running 3x800x600 in this game looked and ran good, but it looked terrible on 3x1680 x1050 native res monitors.

So you guys can get an idea of what resolution I'm using for my comments (except where noted) it's 5040x1050

Well the video doesn't look too bad when it comes to performance, was that rendered in real time? What I was planning on doing was setting up a curved screen with three projectors and the setup would naturally be for different kinds of sims, but CloD mostly.

So do you have two GPU's in your setup? Which cards do you have and which settings do you lower to get a smooth fps and how is the fps on those settings (over london, over countryside, over channel etc).

Well that's pretty much what I wanted to hear: It might not be optimal for getting most out of three screens, but you can get it to run smooth and stable if you put enough hardware into it.

I will probably end up running it on 3 x 1280x800 resolution as it's the projectors native res meaning I'd end up with 3840x800. If I'd go for 3x full hd short throw projectors I'd end up spending a price of a car on it, but I can get lower res short throw for 500-800 EUR a piece.

So at the end of the day the configuration of three displays is such that windows just sees one big screen with 3x display resolution? And then clod will automatically setup proper FOV etc to accomodate for the extra wide resolution?

Would be great to see some vids from your rig to see how it performs!

I also wonder if GTX 670 would do the trick as in CPU charts they don't seem to have much of a performance difference.

I am also currently waiting for full hd projectors to become cheaper or with led technique as I would burn down the lamps in half a year with my gaming amount! :) I would like to built a 3 projector curved display with no bezels, but is currently too expensive. A hd ready resolution wouldn't come into my house,, because I do not get the wished vertical and horizontal resolution, that I would like to have (except I would drive 6 projectors ;) ).

This is interesting when it comes to led technique, high hz, perhaps 3d and full hd. But currently not affordable.

Do you have graphics glitches with ATI these days running Clod? I've seen reports of dashed lines in the horizon etc but I'm not sure if they've got it fixed with the new engine.

I've always been in the nVidia camp but don't mind changing if ATI can offer a better overall solution.

One card for the whole lot does sound quite tempting as it would cut down the costs and simplify things quite a bit. And it supports four screens it seems. I wonder if it's possible to set up three as one and then have one 'control screen' for navigating windows and clod menus and then just render the game on the grouped three screens?

Thanks a lot for your insight on this issue!

Yes realtime video.

I have 4 GPUs - 3GB GTX580's
The game is heavily dependant on CPU even at such high resolution as it has a lot more objects to calculate rendering for. Remember the GPU can only fill the screen as fast as the CPU can calculate the co-ordinates for the objects.

Thats why one of my CPU cores goes to 100% and the GPU's only from 70-80%.
The lower the load on the CPU generally the higher the GPU usage and FPS from what Ive noticed with the game.

I have to drop tree's and buildings to minimum, SSAO off and textures to high and turn anti-aliasing off. I get average of 30FPS over london but it can drop to the low 20's.

The bezels kill it for me too and also curved screen is also a more immersive than three flat surfaces. I guess we'd need to wait for OLED screens to get rid of bezels and again it would be 20k€ to get any decent sized screen.

So I think I'll go for a compromise of 800p native resolution and see how it works out and check how it scales 1080p.

I'm thinking of Optoma EW605ST which give a 96cm wide image from 50 cm away. Then combining that with Warpalizer into a solid curved arc of 3m wide. I wonder how the hz will serve for gaming however:

Horizontal Scan Rate 15 - 91kHz
Vertical Scan Rate 25 - 85Hz (120Hz for 3D)

Beazil seems to get a bit more out of the 680's with 40-60 on black death. Don't know how that correlates vs low level London however.

Yes


No (only IL2 does this)
Think of it like if you are trying to see an extra wide film on your TV. Your TV will gives you a choice: 1. crop part of the left and the right in order to fill the whole screen (top, bottom, left, right), 2. show the full width from left to right but with two black stripes (at the top and the bottom of the screen) in order to keep the proportion right, 3. fill the screen top, bottom, right, left causing distortion to the proportions.
COD does #2 that is you see much less from top and bottom than if you would run the game on a 4:3 monitor.
IL2 on the other side will handle the three monitor view correctly, that is increase your field of view to tripple the original size without reducing your top/bottom view.


~S~

I might be a bit of a simpleton on this, so please try to bear with me. But doesn't the portion of the screen which remains visible correlate directly to the aspect ratio of the resolution your monitor(s) have?

So for the sake of an example if you have 16:10 aspect ratio with with 12 1280x800 resolution and you multiply it with three horizontally it becomes 48:10 or 4.8:1. Isn't it then natural that I get proportinally less than a guy with 4:3 screen?

Like these two screenshots, 4:3 vs 16:9.

They're not identical and 100% comparable images, but close enough.

Maybe it's easier to explain this way around: if it would work correctly in Clod what should it do with a 3840x800 resolution?

OK, I did the work using one of my old screenshots (with SLI GTX8800)
Needless to say, you want to see three monitors, well, it is gonna be big pictures :D


Optimal Resolution 1024x768 (in order to identify the dots ;) ) and 4:3 :)
note: I do not know whether CoD has been optimized for 16:9 or 4:3 monitors but at least for IL2 it was 4:3
This is a screenshot from the days we were trying to identify the Russian PE-2s which were becoming "invisible" over woods (you can recognise the dot under the number 3 in the centre screen)

Using the same IL2 3monitor 3072x768 (3x1024)x768 screenshot as base.

IL2 single monitor view 1024x768
http://grathos.de/temp/CoD/IL2_1MON_VIEW.jpg

IL2 three monitor view (3x1024)x768 = 3074x768
http://grathos.de/temp/Perfect_FullView_8800.jpg

As you can see from the two above screenshots, my horizontal field of view trippled and I did not lose any of my vertical view thanks to IL2's 3monitor view option in the conf.ini

CoD single monitor view 1024x768
http://grathos.de/temp/CoD/IL2_1MON_VIEW.jpg

CoD three monitor (current) view (3x1024)x768 = 3072x768
http://grathos.de/temp/CoD/COD_3MON_VIEW_WRONG.jpg
As you can see there is a major loss of vertical view because CoD just expanded the original 1024 pixels horizontal view to 3072 pixels horizontal view. The detail is of course much better (than in my "streched image" example but the loss of vertical view is considerable.

CoD three monitor (not available today) view (3x1024)x768 = 3072x768
This is what a real three monitor view should look like in CoD
http://grathos.de/temp/Perfect_FullView_8800.jpg


I hope this explains.

~S~

Il2 will NOT automatically select the correct settings. A person can, via the config.ini set up for three monitors rendering left window, center view, right window via the use3renders command - but it will ONLY work if your monitor is set to a 4:3 resolution and not 16:9 or 16:10 monitors. It's a big source of frustration for many users, myself included. Thankfully there are other solutions out there such as San's FOV changer and two other "mods" I am aware of that will allow users of three monitor setups to gain a "wider perspective", but the original software will not automatically configure itself as such.

Not trying to be disagreable - just pointing out something I and many other users have had a good deal of experience in the past. S!

Thank you for a very detailed analysis on the situation. But how come I'm not seeing that zoomed in limited view for CoD in this video for example but a pretty decent fov:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=jO0MYcI344c

Is it because of Eyefinity vs triplehead2go?

Neither, nor.

I can only assume, he adjusted the FOV using the following solution:

This solution unfortunately changes your front view and it is very difficult to dogfight and aim after that so, impractical.

~S~