Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hey -
I've got two Samsung 204Bs (1600x1200) - sides - and a Dell 2407WFP (1920x1200) - middle.



To cut a long story short I've found that my new Blitz Formula drops my main PCIE (8800GTS) to 8x mode from 16x when a 2nd GPU is in the PCIE#2 slot.

My only triple head gaming need at the time being is Live for Speed. Otherwise I use the three screens for "windows productivity". Whilst I had Live for Speed working fine in SoftTH, the switch to 8X causes severe stuttering in my other games e.g. STALKER.

Unless Asus will provide me with a BIOS update to disable this feature which is only intended for Crossfire users but for some reason kicks in even in non-SLI configs (much contrary to what I'd expect; i.e. unless SLI/XFire, run at 16x/4x), I'm scratching my head for solutions. I don't really want to return the motherboard.

After I sold my TH2G Analogue edition (on getting DVI LCDs), I am thus thinking that to get back to three screens, I'll just have to fork out for the new digital one.

If the DE allows me to use 1600x1200 + 1920x1200 in dual mode from my Asus 8800GTS-320 DVI#1, then that would do it. I'd just get used to having to drop resolution from native, run the widescreen mode so that the main would look right and put up with the wrong aspect ratio on the sides. I'd use the third screen's analogue input so that I could otherwise use it in 1600x1200 from DVI#2.

Alternatively I could foresee using SoftTH to run the three screens using a combination of Dual Mode on DVI#1 and the third screen on DVI#2. SoftTH wouldn't have to push stuff across the PCI bus.

Obviously it seems like unless I get some sort of response from Asus this most likely means forking out even more money on top of an already expensive enough system upgrade...

Your comments / suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Some links:
3Dmark scores, more hardware info

TH2G-DE: 1600x1200 + 1920x1200 (3520x1200) possible?

No.
For all the available resolutions look here ... http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/gxm/products/th2go/digital/home.php

Ok, thanks, no more $$$ from me -> Matrox then. Glad they listened so much to their customers' demands... :P

I'll wait for the X38 (with Dual PCIE16Xs) and get one of those, postpone the HTPC project a bit and put my Blitz into that.

Bit of shame putting such a nice mobo into that but.. at least that nice soundcard will get some good use.

I'll wait for the X38 (with Dual PCIE16Xs) and get one of those, postpone the HTPC project a bit and put my Blitz into that.

And what are you exspecting from the x38 chipset?
It can hardly help you with your problem.

And what are you exspecting from the x38 chipset?
It can hardly help you with your problem.

Dual 16x PCI lanes. It seems to be pretty fair to assume the 16 to 8x drop is what's causing my stuttering; Asus confirmed for me it's with _any_ 2nd PCIE card, not just a Crosslink one.

I could get another P35 and rely on 16x + 4x, however for SoftTH applications I'm thinking the dual 16x speed probably won't hurt.

That I know of all motherboards with dual 16x physical but 8x when both are in use do so regardless of crossfire/sli, they just don't have the 32 lanes needed to feed em both simultaneously. You can run 1x16 or 2x8. They're 16x physically for 1 card uses.

By the way, can someone point me towards a good howto for softth? I had given up trying to get it to work, I mostly get garbled or black screens.

Those other motherboards don't feature PCI Express 2.0... :) Edit: Whilst that link just mentions that PCIE2.0 is there, from what I can gather the bus bandwidth is effectively doubled and dual x16 lanes is supported.

This article on P35 highlights the constraints and states that "the upcoming X38 is due to have the upgrade to PCI-Express 2.0 which has dual x16 lanes that should excel CrossFire performance and bring it up to the same standard as all of Nvidia’s high end chipsets since nForce4 SLI x16." /edit.

I followed the readme and SoftTH just worked for me in LFS. Had to fiddle with the monitor identifiers a bit, that was it.

I guess softth just doesn't like my monitors, so far the only game to start sort of right with it is NWN2 and then the mouse is stuck in the middle screen.
The rest either give me all black screen, all garbled screens or middle regular aspect with sides showing the softth logo.

You using Vista? I had an experience similar to what you described in Vista, after fiddling with the monitor identifiers however I got it running - so experiment with those first?

I found that SoftTH worked tonnes better for me in XP; then again that's before I applied a bunch of special patches to Vista.

Also try for something simple resolution wise like 1280x1024x3 and then go from there.

I won't try SoftTH again until next month when I get my new mobo. It makes me miss my old TH2GO setup... was much easier with those CRTs. :)

No, this is plain XP sp2, and I did try 1280x1024x3 same for 1024x768x3 and even 640x480x3, res doesn't seem to matter.