Widescreen Gaming Forum

Greetings - I JUST purchased the TripleHead2Go and 3 Dell 2007FP 20" LCD's to setup surround gaming, however, I just read the full review on Tom's Hardware, and a section of it now has me very concerned...

I have a Nvidia (BFG) 7800GS (overclocked) 256MB Video Card that I want to use to drive this new setup. I want to run all 3 monitors at 1280x1024 for the maximum supported resolution of 3840x1024. My question is will this single card be able to crunch and handle this resolution for the games that I play (Half Life 2, FEAR, Ghost Recon AW, Splinter Cell 2/3) etc. OR do I need to have dual cards to do this (i.e. it's wishful thinking)...

I am OUT of money so if I need another video card I am going to have to cancel everything. If you are experienced this this PLEASE post quickly.

THANKS A LOT!

Oh, I forgot my system spec's:
Dell 8250 P4 2.8Ghz
1GB RAM
500+GB hard drives all running SATA.
Nvidia (BFG) 7800GS Overclocked w/256MB DDR2
PC Power and Cooling 420w PSU
Windows XP Professional w/SP2

Thanks!

Quick answer,

NO

You will not be able to run that kind of resolution (max) with your video card. It will run like a slideshow.

You can however, run non-native resolutions... i think somwhere like 1900x400.

I would look too horrible, but it will look a lot worse than full resolution.

For that kind of res, you'll need a very good CPU to prevent GPU bottlenecking and 2 PCI-E cards in SLI.

Also like to point out that you bought widescreen monitors. At the time they are not supported and your images will looked stretched.

In the future, they are likely to support widescreen though.

What about a dell xps with a HT P4 3.6, 2GB DDR2 memory and a 7900gt? Im heading over to my dads house tomorrow to test his TH2G system out before i buy one of my own and was just curious as to what i could expect at that res (3840x1024). If its choppy then i wont bother buying this. Thanks.

Pretty sure you will have to use SLI to get a descent frame rate out of it. Just check out Paddy's review on the left taskbar.

That will give you a good idea on what to expect.

Thank you for the responses... The DELL 2007FP 20" LCD is a 4x3, not a widescreen. I am aware that the THTG does not support widescreen res at this time.

So question... I did an experiment tonight. With my video card I ran my current 21" monitor (Samsung 213T) AND a Dell 2405WFP widescreen at the same time. The Samsung is plugged into the VGA port, and the Dell is plugged into the DVI port on my card. I went into dual screen mode, then set my resolution for 3200x1200 @ 60hz (so that's 3,840,000 pixels right)

I ran Half-Life 2, FEAR, Splinter Cell's, and several other games perfectly at this resolution using the game tips in this forum. Even during the heated battles they are all running smooth, no noticable lag at all. I've been playing for several hours already.

So at 3840x1024 (using THTG) I would have 3,932,160 pixels, just 100,000 more than the setup I am playing right now. Is this right?, or am I missing something? Does running a video card in dual mode work differently than using the THTG connection (just from the VGA port)?

I am a little confused, can anyone clarify?

THANKS!

I'm not sure about your last question but I wouldn't have thought so ...
And ... the games you will be able to play will often depend on the game ...

If you are happy with them at 3200x1200 then you should be happy with them running in triplehead ... but you may have to lower some things ...

HL2 ... runs with high FPS considering all the eye candy it has ... and so I would have thought it would do 3840x1024 on your system.
FEAR ... may struggle a little
Oblivion will struggle.
and so on ...

3840x1024 = 3932160
3200x1200 = 3840000
1920x1200 = 2340400

I think you should be all right but as I say you may have to turn some stuff down for some games ... :(

Paddy - Thanks for your response. I must say you have an AWESOME gaming system indeed! I don't expect to compete with that. You set the bar really high :)

Did some more testing this morning... I am running Half Life 2 at a full 3200x1200 (as I stated before). I can put AA up to 2x before it starts to struggle a bit. I can put Filtering up to 4x before it starts to struggle. Everything else is set to "High"/max settings.

Next I tried Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter... It dogs big time. Had the turn the res down and set my textures to "Medium" then it played ok, but I hear only best gaming rigs play this game really smoothly anyway.

Next I tried Splinter Cell Pandora and Chaos... They both run great at 3200x1200, everything on full/high.

Question: Is FEAR more intensive on your system than Half Life 2 is? I have not played this game yet. Also is Half Life 2 - Episode 1 about the same as HL2 cpu/resource wise? I figure you have played, and probably finished it already.

Thanks again Paddy!