Three display setup performance

[beazil]

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

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by FS~Phat

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.

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).

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by beazil

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[Stublerone]

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.

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by AirHog71

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.

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.

Originally Posted by AirHog71

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.

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!

[FS~Phat]

Originally Posted by whatnot

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).

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.

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by Stublerone

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.

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)

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by FS~Phat

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.

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.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by whatnot

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?

Yes

Originally Posted by whatnot

And then clod will automatically setup proper FOV etc to accomodate for the extra wide resolution?

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~

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

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?