Multi-monitor WoW / single machine

[Stealthy]

My GTX 580's finally came in this week and I installed them last night and took the 5-box team for a spin.

System Specs:
Intel i7 950
12GB RAM
2 x Nvidia GTX 580
3 x Asus VE276Q
Win 7 Pro 64-bit

On the main Window I have the graphics settings at 'Ultra' with shadows turned down to 'Good'. On the alts the graphics settings are at 'Fair' with shadows set at 'Low'. This gets me 30-40 FPS in Orgrimmar and 60FPS (capped) out in other areas.

Resolution in each screen is 3240x1636, with the 4 alt screens aligned along the bottom of the monitor.

Apologies for the crap quality photos - I used my phone to take them.

Flying:
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa56/Stealthy_One/IMAG0061.jpg

Main screen maximized:
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa56/Stealthy_One/IMAG0074.jpg

Alt screen maximized - reduced eye candy, notably less vegetation, lower quality shadows.
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa56/Stealthy_One/IMAG0068.jpg

Cheers,
S.

[F9thRet]

Now that is interesting how you did the alts. I would have never thought about sharing the windows quite like that.

Stephen

[MiRai]

Very nice. I've got 2 vertical mounted monitors myself in my cluster, not sure WTF I've been doing all this time w/o them. :)

[pinotnoir]

Nice steathy! Are you running those two cards in SLI?

[Kicksome]

Wow, that's a pimp setup. Nice.

[Stealthy]

Nice steathy! Are you running those two cards in SLI?

Yep - for Nvidia Surround you have to run the cards in SLI (i.e. not possible on a single card).

For ATI cards on a dual card setup with Eyefinity, Crossfire is supported for full screen gaming only. For windowed gaming (i.e. multiboxing WoW) you get no benefit from the second video card, and when you're pushing around these kind of resolutions, you really want that 2nd card helping out.

And you can't just disable Crossfire and connect some of the monitors to the second card - for Eyefinity all monitors must be connected to the same video card...so pretty much Nvidia is the only way to go (currently) for this setup.

Cheers,
S

[Nikita]

Im a newb when it comes to computer specs. So here it goes! How many HDD do you have? Do you have SSD installed? Whats the purpous of 2 x Nvidia GTX580? What type of ram do you use? :)

[Cookiebo]

that looks awesome man...

[Stealthy]

Im a newb when it comes to computer specs. So here it goes! How many HDD do you have? Do you have SSD installed? Whats the purpous of 2 x Nvidia GTX580? What type of ram do you use? :)

Currently I'm running 2 x 1TB drives in a RAID configuration, but I will be moving to an SSD RAID setup in a few weeks (2 SSD drives already on order).

The technology to run multiple monitors as a single display is called Nvidia Surround or ATI Eyefinity, depending on which manufacturer you go with. For Nvidia cards, you need two video cards running SLI (http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_learn.html) mode to get Surround working. ATI currently have some limitations around windowed gaming (see my post above), so Nvidia was the only choice for this kind of setup.

This (http://www.corsair.com/memory-3/intel-memory-solutions/intel-triple-channel-kits/cmx12gx3m3a2000c9.html) is the RAM I'm using at the moment.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,
S.

[Mercurio]

That's awesome Stealthy! Looks quite immersive!

[Nikita]

So lets say I wanted to multibox 5 chars on 5 different comptuer screens. Would I need 2 x video cards?

[mikekim]

So lets say I wanted to multibox 5 chars on 5 different comptuer screens. Would I need 2 x video cards?

easiest way is to get 1x eyefinity card and 5 screens

[Kromtor]

i've stayed away from using monitors on their side ever since i noticed that while it doesnt hurt the game's framerate it did on my cards cause the actual frame rate to be halved or more. it was very evident with the mouse cursor latency that occured that the monitor was not receiving new frames at the usual rate. newer 3d cards may support this without this problem, but my gtx8800's were clearly not sending every frame to the monitor at the same speed or frequency. just be cautious when sinking money into it.

[Aesthier]

I have got to say that is simply gorgeous. For some reason monitors standing on the ends like that always strike a very artistic note in my heart. Very well done especially the alts in the bottom of each screen.

[ghonosyph]

i dont think i could stand that bezel thingy in the middle of all my shiz >.< how can you stand it? otherwise, does look sexy!

[Knytestorme]

Yep - for Nvidia Surround you have to run the cards in SLI (i.e. not possible on a single card).

For ATI cards on a dual card setup with Eyefinity, Crossfire is supported for full screen gaming only. For windowed gaming (i.e. multiboxing WoW) you get no benefit from the second video card, and when you're pushing around these kind of resolutions, you really want that 2nd card helping out.

And you can't just disable Crossfire and connect some of the monitors to the second card - for Eyefinity all monitors must be connected to the same video card...so pretty much Nvidia is the only way to go (currently) for this setup.

Cheers,
S

Hmm, interesting comment.

I'm considering moving from 460 SLI to 2 x 6970's running 3 monitors each and just running 1 client per monitor, enabling eyefinity3 on one card as I want to play more intensive games....are you saying that would not be possible?

Though looking at your setup I might just get a 3rd monitor and keep the SLI for a while

[RSM72]

A single 6990 might do that.

[Knytestorme]

A single 6990 might do that.

Yeah, I was initially thinking of 6990CF but atm they only do 5 monitors natively and I don't want to run monitors in portrait mode for WoW

[Stealthy]

The 6990 is a dual GPU card, and has Crossfire enabled by default - it's subject to the limitations mentioned above (i.e. in Windowed mode games, only one of the GPU's will be active), so you'd be wasting money buying this card to multibox wow. :(

Here's a link explaining the limitations in case anyone is confused:
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/ATICrossFireXtechnologysupportforfullscreenDirect3 DorOpenGLacceleratedapplications.aspx

Cheers,
S.