6 screen setup

[Grondir]

Hey guys,

Thinking of doing the second phase of my pc upgrades and was wondering what the best setup would be for 6 screens?

Should I get 3 graphics cards and run 2 monitors from each (non-crossfired, so I could get a 5870 and a 2nd 5770)?

Or should I get the 5870 Eyefinity 6 edition and all the adaptors?

Thinking more of route 1 as Eyefinity seems a bit hit and miss still, but any advice?

Cheers

[Sam DeathWalker]

I use 6 computers with one video card each ....

By the way I came up with the solution to the problem of putting 3 monitors on top of 3 (you can't tilt the top ones down towards you cause they hit each other) by going with one big one at very top then 2 under that and 3 under those. All are 1920 X 1200.

No SS yet but am working on it.

I really really doubt one video card will handel six monitors at the same time at any decent resolution unless you are just making some kind of panorama thing and not six or 12 boxing.

[mikekim]

Hey guys,

Thinking of doing the second phase of my pc upgrades and was wondering what the best setup would be for 6 screens?

Should I get 3 graphics cards and run 2 monitors from each (non-crossfired, so I could get a 5870 and a 2nd 5770)?

Or should I get the 5870 Eyefinity 6 edition and all the adaptors?

Thinking more of route 1 as Eyefinity seems a bit hit and miss still, but any advice?

Cheers

option 1 - 3 cards.. unless you are running isboxer, this will suck bigtime as you will have problems with running directx windows to the 2nd and 3rd cards.

option 2 - eyfinity.. have not seen this running 6 at once, have seriously looked at the 3 monitor version. you might be best getting a demo instore first before splashing out, as you will need to have display port connections on all your monitors.

option 3 - not quite as overkill as Sams suggestion, but i personally would look at 3 pc's with 2 monitors attached to each :)

[Grondir]

Don't really have the space or inclination to use multiple pc's, want 6 screens from 1 rig :D.

So looking like the option is wait for Eyefinity/Display Port monitors to come down in price.

Will be switching to JoeMultiboxer as soon as it becomes available, hopefully then 6 monitors and 3 graphics cards in 1 rig will be possible :confused:

[Sajuuk]

How exactly were you wanting to set this up? Were you going to have wow spanned across the six monitors a la an eyefinity setup, or were you going to have one client per monitor with an extra monitor? Since you're really considering six monitors and 1-3 graphics cards I'll go with the second.

I really really doubt one video card will handel six monitors at the same time at any decent resolution unless you are just making some kind of panorama thing and not six or 12 boxing.
Sam, Sam, Sam. You of all people should know that World of Warcraft IS NOT THAT TAXING OF A GAME graphically. The biggest thing grondir wants is more screen space, not (to my knowledge) span five instances of the game at 3240x3840 / 5760x2160.

I should add that a 5850 has no problems rending five clients at 3240x1920, grondir wants to do five clients at 1920x1080/1200 over five monitors (fullscreen) with an extra monitor. an eyefinity6 5870 would have no issues with that. It miiiiiiight have issues rendering five clients at 5760x2160 resolutions, but that's remedied by turning down settings and throttling FPS for all clients. It is doable.


So looking like the option is wait for Eyefinity/Display Port monitors to come down in price.
Low cost (30ish dollars each) Active displayport adaptors are in the works, and should come out soon.

Depending on what you have hardware wise and what your budget is there's a number of things you could do.


regarding Joemultiboxer, Lax is developing it, so I don't think there are going to be any issues with multiple graphics cards.

[Grondir]

Cheers Sajuuk,

All i'm after is the monitors for full screen clients on a 5 team, not ultra high res display.

May give the 5870Eyefinity6 a look then :D, was starting to turn towards 3x460's.

Hopefully those active adaptors come out soon, at £90 for them currently it seems 3x460's may be the cheaper option

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well ya wow is not all that taxing unless you turn shadows full on ....

Ok 5 clients accross 5 monitors seems doable enough as you say Sajuuk.

You will be happy with seeing full screen on all your guys, I only play in full screen. I have one mouse thing per screen so I can do some interesting things like click on all six screens at the same point with a sinlge click. Will Isboxer do that for you, its nice.

Whats on the 6th monitor for you .... I sure can't watch movies and play 36 guys heh.

[Sajuuk]

Well ya wow is not all that taxing unless you turn shadows full on ....


We're multiboxing, we don't give a shit about shadows since we know about the issues with them and multiple clients, nor would they be turned on ANYWAYS (for slaves at least) to improve performance. AGAIN, you should know better.


All i'm after is the monitors for full screen clients on a 5 team, not ultra high res display.
Sweet. What kind of power and space limitations are we looking at within your tower? What's your motherboard layout?

With four open expansion slots in your case you can get two of these: ATI 5770 FLEX monitors that can use three DVI (one via HDMI) for eyefinity.
http://vr-zone.com/articles/sapphire-hd-5770-flex-four-displays-in-eyefinity-three-dvi-monitors-possible/9595.html

Personally I think the above card would be a your best low power/heat/expensive option, not to mention you can split up the graphics load of some of your clients to the second card.

[Grondir]

Hmm, didn't know about those 5770 flex... :D

I currently run a 5770 in my rig, tied to an i7 930 with 6gb ram. Am looking at buying 6 of these monitors (http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?prodID=B366862&viewSpec=y&showold=#productTop), with a 1kw power supply and 6gb more ram. And now looks like i'll be after 2 5770 flex cards as well :o

Don't really care about eye candy, sure ultra settings looks pretty, but I can still play the game just as well on low settings like I used to have to

[Speedbump]

Cheers Sajuuk,

All i'm after is the monitors for full screen clients on a 5 team, not ultra high res display.

May give the 5870Eyefinity6 a look then :D, was starting to turn towards 3x460's.

Hopefully those active adaptors come out soon, at £90 for them currently it seems 3x460's may be the cheaper option

Hey Grondir,

I've been pleased with my ASUS 5870 Eyefinity6 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121371) card. I have tried it with a full 6 monitors, 1x Dell 22" Displayport, 2x 22" DVI, 3x 19" via miniDP to VGA. However, since I play my 5 accounts with two computers I only keep 4 monitors active on my main rig and use the other 2 on my secondary. All WoW clients still end up with a separate screen. I had previously been using a 8800GTX to run 3 clients on the same machine, Alt-Tab ftw, and did notice a good boost in FPS by going to the new card. My bottleneck now is my Core2Quad Q6600 and 4GB RAM (which is still fine for 3 clients).

I was hesitant about going with miniDP to VGA adapters, but for my 1280x1024 resolution monitors they have been just fine. (Spec is for up to 1920x1080) When i had purchased mine from Newegg one of the other high review count brands were out of stock. Here is what I picked up: SYBA - SY-ADA33007 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186102) 3x @ $22/each

I wanted to be sure i'd end up with a reliable 3x 22" setup for running in Eyefinity mode. To me, the 6x mode having its center view on a bezel was not all that cool in testing. Anyway, this led me to go ahead and pick up a 22" displayport monitor from Dell for ~$200 as i wanted to proof it from any adapter issues.

Links again:
ASUS 5870 Eyefinity6
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121371

SYBA - SY-ADA33007
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186102

And here is a screenshot of the 4 displays. The dual-boxing window is actually full screen on the 19" monitor. The remaining black area is where the other monitors would be when hooked up. Looks kinda odd, but that is how it takes the screenshots and actually looks in front of me.

http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/8220/4screen3wow.jpg (http://img812.imageshack.us/i/4screen3wow.jpg/)

Hope this helps in making your decision. :)

Speed

[Sam DeathWalker]

I got 5 of these: http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?prodID=B31657&viewSpec=y&showold=#productTop
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11868_ca/11868_ca.HTML

Yours way better contrast ratio, bit better brightness, and faster; but the dot pitch on mine is way better. But considering we update at 60fps thats a bit more then 16ms.

you can get them way cheaper on ebay, but they not made anymore.

I have a hannspree 32" for the 6th, also 1920 X 1200, I guess thats the same company you are looking at its a lot brighter then my HP's, and the extra dot pitch is not noticable (at least at 5 feet distance) and it is a lot cheaper so you wont go wrong with your choice. Still the HP's are very crisp, with my hard contacts set to the 3 feet away distance I have a very very sharp view.


DOnt forget if you get 6 montiors the same size when you tilt the top row of 3 down towards your they hit each other ...... assuming you also tilt the 4 outside ones also towards you. All mine when I look at them its at 0 degrees offset. Monitors lose a lot when you dont look at them stright on.

[Sajuuk]

Monitors lose a lot when you dont look at them stright on.

It depends on the type of panel in your monitor. With IPS panel monitors you don't have such a tight viewing angle.


I currently run a 5770 in my rig, tied to an i7 930 with 6gb ram. Am looking at buying 6 of these monitors, with a 1kw power supply and 6gb more ram. And now looks like i'll be after 2 5770 flex cards as well

Well it seems money isn't too much of an issue since you look to be spending upwards of 1500 euros. But what's wrong with just getting one flex card and getting an active adaptor? Yes, you could do both and then be able to further split the load across graphics cards, but it seems kind of unneccesary. (Although right now the high priced active adaptors cost half as much as the card itself.)

Look into IPS monitors if you want to go whole hog. They might not have the best response time, but the viewing angles are amazing. It's something I wish I had done more research instead of compromising on these TN panels.

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://www.overclock.net/online-deals/800950-buy-hp-2335-23-1920x1200-monitor.html

Its not avalable but talks about ips panel. I picked mine because apple had the best display so I found what panel they use (its the LG one stated in that thread). Also some had the pink hue NONE of my five have this pink problem.

Still you won't go wrong I am also satisfied by my Hannspree although black black sometimes looks dark blue.

[Erron]

A good source of information about using the ATI Eyefinity setups with gaming can be found on the Wide Screen Gaming Forums.

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com


I've been considering the 5870 as a good solution for a 3x2 monitor setup myself.

5870 Review (http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/ATI_Radeon_5870_Eyefinity6_-_Featured_Review) - Benchmarked with a lot of current FPS and RGP's.

I am currently using 6 PC's, one to drive each monitor, but I think my next build will be to do 2 computers running 3 monitors each.
Using Six PC seems a bit over-kill for WoW; it was the only option for other games I've boxed (AoC, Vanguard, Warhammer Online), especially when hardware boxing was the only workable solution. Now that hardware has stepped up so quickly in performance.

I can tell you running all 5 clients maxed out sure is pretty, I am using 24" monitors at 1920x1200 it looks amazing - with tools like ISBoxer, not sure the extra effort to keep that platform running is worth it.

Has Lax shared his plans for support for Eyefinity or multiple card support for Joe MultiBoxer? Seems like that would be an important consideration.

[Sajuuk]

Has Lax shared his plans for support for Eyefinity or multiple card support for Joe MultiBoxer? Seems like that would be an important consideration.

I would not be worried at all.

[Oswyn]

I'd love to get this 6 monitor setup

http://www.samsung.com/uk/system/consumer/product/2010/05/27/ls23murhben/07_1.jpg

http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/pc-peripherals/monitors/gaming/LS23MURHB/EN/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail

~$3500 from NewEgg/Amazon

[Grondir]

Cheers for the info guys, guess i'll just have to go for a look in the shops and see if they can demo a few setups for me. Not going to part with the best part of £3000 without having a proper look :D

[Harrypott]

I'm currently running a 5870 with dual screens, I gather I could add a 5770 (assuming my MB/PSU supports it) and hook two more screens up to this system without messing around with eyefinity and end up with 4x screens? And using ISBoxer to tell each wow what GPU, Any downsides to this? slower swapping of wow instances between the GPU's?

and to extend it further, I could add a second 5770 if I get a MB that supports 3 video cards..
1x5870
2x5770
and hook up 6 screens to one?

[Sajuuk]

Or, you know, just get some active DP->DVI adaptors and use two cards instead of three?

[Harrypott]

Or, you know, just get some active DP->DVI adaptors and use two cards instead of three?

That would require using eyefinity, It seems boxers have mixed feeling about using eyefinity for boxing?

The 5770 vid cards are fairly cheap too.

[Sajuuk]

That would require using eyefinity, It seems boxers have mixed feeling about using eyefinity for boxing?

The 5770 vid cards are fairly cheap too.

Um, no.

You clearly don't know how it works. To use three monitors on one card you don't HAVE to use eyefinity. It's an OPTION, not a requirement. There is nothing wrong with using eyefinity for boxing.

I have three monitors plugged into my 5850, I can have them all act as one display OR (OR) (OR) (DEFAULT) use them as different independent monitors.

Why would you say that when the grondir was thinking about getting a eyefinity6 5870 earlier?

[Harrypott]

Um, no.

You clearly don't know how it works. To use three monitors on one card you don't HAVE to use eyefinity. It's an OPTION, not a requirement. There is nothing wrong with using eyefinity for boxing.

I have three monitors plugged into my 5850, I can have them all act as one display OR (OR) (OR) (DEFAULT) use them as different independent monitors.

Why would you say that when the grondir was thinking about getting a eyefinity6 5870 earlier?

I was under the impression you couldn't hook a third screen to a 5870 without enabling Eyefinity... and obviously using an active adapter or DP enabled monitor... and actually tried it awhile back but obviously not hard enough.

[Igg]

See this thread.
http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=29036