Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi there,
I've been lurking around this site for the last 6 months, and now I'm splurging on an Nvidia card (8800gts EVGA) and an Intel rig, from my old Althon 3700+/AGP ATI 1950pro card. I'm doing this expressly for the TH2G experience and because as much as I love the ATI card, the drivers really do stink. I'll be running 3 NEC 19" GX2s and they take both DVI and VGA inputs. Am I going to see a difference with the digital version of TH2G or should I just up the money for the analog version and be done with it?

I'm mainly building this for WoW, CS:S & assorted gaming. Also using the rig for some graphics stuff. Sad to spend all this money, but I've been spanning two monitors with WoW for 3 weeks now, and I absolutely love it, even though there is a split smack dab in the middle of the screen (using CTViewport to shift the display slightly).


Anyway, thanks for any help you can lend, and this is an awesome site. WSGF makes my techy nerdy spidey senses tingle. :)
-wererabbit

:welcome

There is a thread all about this around here somewhere...

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moboP8P67-M-PRO-V3 cpuI5-2500K-3.3GHZ ramOCZ8GB gpu260GTX hddOCZ-VERTEX II-SSD psuNEOHE550W hudBENQ20"

It's close enough now, I am waiting for the digital version. Unless you absolutely NEED that thing in the next 4 weeks, I think it makes more sense to wait.

No matter how hot you are for surround gaming (and it does own!) you should wait for the digital version!

I had gotten quite used to the picture quality afforded by DVI, and the change back to analogue when I got my TH2Go was quite a disapointment :(

It's fine for games, but if I'm using 3dsmax for hours, the picture quality drives me batshit!

I for one shall be upgrading to the DVI version the second it's available :)

I'm an analogue owner, and have been pretty happy with it using a 22", 21" CRTs and 17" LCD - check my rig out here. There's a couple of vidoes at the end of page #1 too, if you have the bandwidth - I'm heavily into LFS racing.

However the PC is used for a fair bit of programming as well and I suddenly decided that I'm sick of the CRTs now. So have decided to go with LCDs. As I want surround gaming 3 widescreens were a bit overkill (for my budget: The Dell 24 has a dot pitch I like, but haven't been able to check the cheaper 22"s which I know will have a larger one so therefore playing it safe with 20") - and wondering what the future brings for the Digital version, I'm starting off with 2x Samsung 204Bs.

They are 1600x1200 - very good quality, couple of minus points but overall great stuff. At 36w per screen they'll use less than my current 22 incher! I had a look at 1280x1024 19"s but they were crap, the resulting bad dot pitch stared into my eyes (actually Samsung ones..) - 17" is the the biggest you'd ever want for 1280x1024. I'm someone who likes my pixels small, the 1920x1200 I have on my 17" laptop is pretty much ideal but well..

As I'm wondering if I'll be able to get a 24" Dell widescreen in the middle, I'm waiting to see what people will be able to do with the new Digital one. Regardless if it ends up being 3 Samsung 204Bs I want one of these(*) stands. :)

Now, I'm ok with display being scaled whilst gaming, my rig doesn't have the power required yet to do full res anyway. 1024x768 actually turned out to look quite nicely scaled down, so no issues there - I sit farther away from the screen whilst racing.

My current problem is that the analogue 1600x1200 pass through looks crap; with only two DVI outputs on my GPU I am thus stuck with one awesome display and one pretty average one for my desktop use. So I'm thinking:

a) Get the new digital TH2G, sell my old one? Would use in dualmode to drive first two displays in full res using Windows productivity, 2nd DVI output to drive third screen.

b) Get a dual DVI *PCI* video card (not express) such as this?

PC is currently a 2.3ghz AMD 64 (230x10) w/1GB of memory and a Gainward 7800GS 512MB AGP Card. The system has lasted for a good while, the 7800 put new life into it about a year ago. I guess my further upgrade path half a year or a year down the track is to get a 4gb, Quad Core PC with Dual SLI etc - something that should have the necessary brawns to drive 2x1600x1200 plus 1x1920x1200 in SoftTH. But that's then, I want something that'll work well now.

So I guess the REAL decider for me will be if TH2G will support 1600x1200 plus 1920x1200 in the DualHead mode, _in addition_ to a scaled 4:3 + 16:10 + 4:3 output. That would make it more interesting. Further to this, I'm also wondering whent he Digital2 version comes out that will let me do 1600x1200x3, or 1600x1200x2 + 1920x1200x1. Is that ever going to happen?

Also has anyone been able to hack a scaled 4:3 + 16:10 + 4:3 output for the old one?

Thanks for any input - will be appreciated. So many options... :)

*) Link didn't work properly when using the url thing so putting it here: http://publicspace.net/blog/default/2006/11/30/ergotron-lx-triple-display-lift-stand-review/

So I guess the REAL decider for me will be if TH2G will support 1600x1200 plus 1920x1200 in the DualHead mode, _in addition_ to a scaled 4:3 + 16:10 + 4:3 output. That would make it more interesting. Further to this, I'm also wondering whent he Digital2 version comes out that will let me do 1600x1200x3, or 1600x1200x2 + 1920x1200x1. Is that ever going to happen?

Also has anyone been able to hack a scaled 4:3 + 16:10 + 4:3 output for the old one?

The TH2Go (digital) splits the display output to identical resolution equally, the maximum being two 1920x1200 displays . So either get 2 1600x1200 displays or 2 1920x1200 displays for dual displays output.

DL-DVI maximum bandwidth is 330MHz

The following are the required bandwidth for multidisplays at 60Hz with reduced blanking...
3200x1200 [(1600x1200)x2] 3.84 Mpixels at 60Hz is 248.75MHz
3840x1024 [(1280x1024)x3] 3.93 MPixels at 60Hz is 252.75MHz
3840x1200 [(1920x1200)x2] 4.61 Mpixels at 60Hz is 296.25MHz.. below 330... (supported)
4800x1200 [(1600x1200)x3] 5.76Mpixels at 60Hz is 367.5MHz.... exceed 330...(not possible through DL-DVI... maybe possible with *display port* or HDMI 1.3)

1600x1200x2 + 1920x1200x1.... non identical outputs... but is possible to power the 2 1600x1200 using TH2Go digital and the 1920x1200 display using the other free dvi output on the nvidia card. For a (4:3 + 4:3) + 16:10 displays. Spanning using nvidia drivers(software) in 3d gaming on non-identical display output as of yet is not possible...?(maybe).

p.s. personally I will be running both digital (when released) and analog TH2Go on one graphic card for a combined display output of 3840x2224 (or 3840x2048) for a 8.54Mpixels(7.86Mp) at 60Hz or a combined 549MHz (505MHz) bandwidth from one of the analog RAMDAC and one DL-DVI output.

for additinal info... the IBM T221 monitor at 3840x2400 = 9.22Mpixels display runs at 45Hz.. requires only 441MHz bandwidth provided by a combined two DL-DVI outputs of workstation class graphics.

calculation done from an xls file provided from the vesa.org website.

Thanks for the opinions, guys. I'll hold my horses until the DVI version comes out. Hopefully CDW will carry it as I get a discount through my work there. Funk, have you checked out the NEC 90GX2 series of 19" monitors? They have a fantastic image. I own two currently and prefer them over every other monitor/lcd I've seen except the $1700 panasonic plasma over at costco... :) They're not as big or high a resolution, but the image is crystal clear, and the color depth is fantastic. About $200 over at Newegg.com.

Thanks again!