Widescreen Gaming Forum

:lol:
So after a few weeks and can't image how many $$$$ spent. Below is the system I built myself. Keep in mind that all this started out because I had (2) 20" widescreen monitors and a crap ATI X1950Pro that didn't have good resolutions.

New and "Final" system:

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32Bit
eVGA 780i mother board
Intel Quad Extreme QX9650 Overclocked to 4.05GHz
4GB Corsair PC2-8500 C5 SLI-ready memory @1066 Overclocked
(5) 150GB RaptorX 10,000RPM drives (RAID5 chassis, configured RAID1)
(3) eVGA 8800GTX graphics cards with 3-Way SLI Bridge installed
(3) Acer AL2416W 24" widescreen monitors
Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Ed
1200 Watt Power Supply
Freezone CoolIt FX1000 Water Cooler

This system is running really stable and really fast. This all stated because I wanted to get surround gaming while playing NASCAR 2003, GTR-2 and Flight Simulator X. I'm finally happy with the above and let me tell you; Crysis is AWESOME at 3840x1024 on (3) 24"Widescreen monitors!!!

Thanks again for all the posts a few weeks ago... it really helped steer me in the right direction.

Very nice, I wish I had that kind of budget. :D

This might be a dumb question...Im assuming that you have the cards in a Triple SLI config to consolidate and maximize power and performance. Couldnt you run one monitor off of each card and span it as one large 3x1920x1200 resolution monitor??? Im a stickler for running my monitors at the largest possible resolution during gaming...especially RTS,MMO and FPS. Or couldnt you run two cards in SLI mode, have them render the image and use the third card to get the third monitor and run all at native resolution...

Im new to this surround gaming thing so...

Budget or not what I've always considered insanity is the idea of a pc that needs over 1kw of power, when most outlets have a fuse that blows past 1.5kw or so ...

The only possibility to combine SLI & multiple monitors is TH2G, iirc.
Crossfire is multi-monitor compatible, but it doesn't work too well, i was told.

power consumption of a 3*8800GTX+quad core is supposed to be lower than 800W at full load. however it can also be close to 400W in idle which seems to be more of a problem to me.

I guess disabling the 2nd & 3rd GPUs in the Windows Hardware Manager might save some. also under clocking for 2D-usage might save some power consumption.
Its a shame that it needs risky and complicated V-Mods to change voltages on the 8800s, otherwise one could really save power in idle & OC when needed. :(

This might be a dumb question...Im assuming that you have the cards in a Triple SLI config to consolidate and maximize power and performance. Couldnt you run one monitor off of each card and span it as one large 3x1920x1200 resolution monitor??? Im a stickler for running my monitors at the largest possible resolution during gaming...especially RTS,MMO and FPS. Or couldnt you run two cards in SLI mode, have them render the image and use the third card to get the third monitor and run all at native resolution...

Im new to this surround gaming thing so...

Currently Windows does not support 3D rendering to displays rendered on multiple GPUs. SoftTH is a hack to get around this limitation, but only one GPU does the calculating while the other is for output only.

ATI is developing a system that works like you describe, but there's nothing out there right now that can achieve it.