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PostPosted: 07 May 2008, 22:47 
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We had 2 Th2Gos running 6 screens with a single nVid card in vertical span mode in the labs a little while ago.

Just for fun we were running Crysis across all 6 monitors seen as one. Frames-per-sec were okay, but indeed the bezels got in the way. :)
You mean there's a chance I tried it before you guys did? :D I don't play FPS (due to motion sickness issues) but can imagine aiming would be a pain. I mainly play third person (almost completed Guild Wars, finally) and it's not too bad with that.

Would it be possible to create a TH2G that would support three rotated widescreens (preferably 24" but even 22" resolutions would be good)? I'm guessing the rotation could be done in hardware (though maybe not in the current version) but it might be easier (and cheaper) to make the hardware treat the screens as stacked (rather than as side by side) and then use rotation in the graphics card drivers.


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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 07:21 
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[quote]We had 2 Th2Gos running 6 screens with a single nVid card in vertical span mode in the labs a little while ago.

Just for fun we were running Crysis across all 6 monitors seen as one. Frames-per-sec were okay, but indeed the bezels got in the way. :)
You mean there's a chance I tried it before you guys did? :D I don't play FPS (due to motion sickness issues) but can imagine aiming would be a pain. I mainly play third person (almost completed Guild Wars, finally) and it's not too bad with that.

Would it be possible to create a TH2G that would support three rotated widescreens (preferably 24" but even 22" resolutions would be good)? I'm guessing the rotation could be done in hardware (though maybe not in the current version) but it might be easier (and cheaper) to make the hardware treat the screens as stacked (rather than as side by side) and then use rotation in the graphics card drivers.

It's cool to see people running 6-screen. For awhile I had a softth+th2g analog 5-screen setup, but it was pretty unwieldy with the 21" CRTs I used. :lol:

I'm one of the original th2g early adopters that bought it on preorder when it initially came out. I'm always a sucker for new technology. Especially doing things over the top for the "just because it can be done" coolness factor. :)

I think the big stumbling block is that the chips used in the DH2G and TH2G cap out before that pixel count. They simply don't have the bandwidth currently rotated or not. I do agree with you though that in an "ideal world" I'd kill to see a new TH2G that caters to the new 1920x1200 gamers. In the next year or 2 I truly believe the 1920x1200 resolution will be the market segment previously targeted by the 1280x1024 display. A TH2G with 3x1920x1200 and 3x1200x1920 would be a must buy for me. Market research would have to be done before anything like this could be humored as plausible though. I do believe HD is ramping up to critical mass for the average gamer now and that 1920x1200 will gain significant market share in the future. It only makes sense to target that new market with products.

On another note, I agree with you on the 1200x1920 rotated screen needing to be a target audience too. Not just the 1920x1200. I often use 2x1200x1920 horizontal-span in XP. IMHO, it's too cool. Going triple-head with that would be icing on the cake for me. It would put to shame any 30" currently on the market with a better pixel count.

While softth in this configuration is currently an option, I'm pretty cynical about softth. It's maintained by a single programmer as a personal project that on a whim he released to the world. He could just as soon on a whim fall off the face of the internet tomorrow and all softth users would have no alternatives. I see too many issues with implementation, limitations and future support to justify using softth as a critical component in such a triple-head setup. Closed source "one-man-band" software solutions are not the answer. There needs to be a hardware solution.

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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 09:24 
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If you really want so many screen,s you could use one DualHead2Go and one TripleHead2Go, then set span mode in your (Windows XP?) Video driver. then you have five screens, and free look in the middle. you could also turn the screens 90° to incease the height. Works great with the Dell ones

so you*ll have 5x 1200x1920 which is 6000x1920 rez! :D

just keep in mind that you may have some problems in severwal games due to Direct X 9 resolution limitations.


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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 15:59 
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As stated previously in this thread, screens in span mode have to have identical resolutions. Your solution won't work.


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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 16:00 
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We had 2 Th2Gos running 6 screens with a single nVid card in vertical span mode in the labs a little while ago.

Just for fun we were running Crysis across all 6 monitors seen as one. Frames-per-sec were okay, but indeed the bezels got in the way. :)
Cleary the solution is to use a Parhelia to drive three TripleHead2Gos. :shock: :D :wink:


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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 16:53 
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Given that one of the Asus 3870X2's has four dual-link DVI ports, and CrossFire, unlike SLI doesn't disable multiple screens, I'd love to see two of them in some eight-screen goodness as well. :D


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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 18:33 
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Given that one of the Asus 3870X2's has four dual-link DVI ports, and CrossFire, unlike SLI doesn't disable multiple screens, I'd love to see two of them in some eight-screen goodness as well. :D


Any information on how it handles spanning? Can it use those 4 video outs as one 3D area? I'm pretty much clueless on the mechanics of the ATI side of things.

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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 19:40 
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Yeah, I don't know much on that front myself - I've only ever used two screens at a time maximum. I've just seen some comments about it on forums.

If I could get my hands on that 3870X2, I'd see about scraping up four TFTs to try it out with.


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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 20:37 
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Cleary the solution is to use a Parhelia to drive three TripleHead2Gos. :shock: :D :wink:


Did I mention I prefer watching video, not slideshows? :twisted:

Yeah, I don't know much on that front myself - I've only ever used two screens at a time maximum. I've just seen some comments about it on forums.

If I could get my hands on that 3870X2, I'd see about scraping up four TFTs to try it out with.


Dispite my sig, I also do own a Phenom 9600BE, ASUS Spider 790FX mobo system. It has 8800GTS in it though. I'm not adverse to using what works. If 3870X2 would work spanning 3 I could move my 8800GTSes over to the Opteron 165, eVGA nForce4 SLI mobo system I have next to it. Problem is I suspect it wouldn't work. Most of us in this type of forum would have heard about it by now if it did.

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PostPosted: 08 May 2008, 21:17 
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Yes, quite. :)

I suspect that it will work for 2D stuff - ie: Windows. But I also suspect that it won't work for fullscreen D3D or OpenGL. If it did, I bet it'd need a wrapper. There might be some luck to be had in SoftTH with it, or running games in 'fullscreen windows', as Hitman 2 and Contracts had to be run for widescreen resolutions.

...

I just ordered an 8800GT, as I was trying to go 'cheap' (it's an eVGA one, as it happens) and a 3870X2 was really pushing the definition of cheap right off the cliff... ;) ...so spending any more right now really isn't an option. :(

Because it's an 'Asus Special' graphics card, none of the stock type cards have the same 'four DVI' thing. It's that one card or none. If I could actually find it from one of the places I tend to order things, I might be tempted to buy it purely for testing purposes.


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