Temo Jick
Gallente
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Posted - 2011.01.28 07:31:00 -
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As it happens IÆm building a new gaming system for a 3 monitor 3D set up at the moment. Well I mean IÆve designed one and I am waiting for some of the parts to arrive still. But at any rate this means I have recently been doing an awful lot of research into current hardware.
So hear is my recommendation assuming youÆre interested in playing more games then just eve.
Personally I wouldnÆt recommend a single ATI/AMD card. Yes you can run a three monitor setup with just the one card, but remember every monitor you add multiplies the number of pixels that graphics card has to render. If youÆre running at a resolution of 1680 by 1050 now, your GPU is rendering 1,764,000 pixels with two more monitors youÆre looking at 5040 by 1050, thatÆs 5,292,000 pixels!
ThatÆs one heck of a lot of work for a single card to do. Add some full screen rendering options like anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering to that and your frame rate is going to take one heck of a hit, even with a top quality GPU.
Most of the benchmarks I have been able to find show its much more cost effective to run two mid-range nVidia cards then either one top range ATI/AMD card, or two mid-range ATI/AMD cards. Two top-range nVidia cards also beat two top-range ATI/AMD.
There are some grate sources of information on the web, even some nice video reviews, if you like nerdy tech speak you should do some googling.
ATI/AMD did implement their three monitor solution before nVidia but nVidia surround dose seem to beat Eyefinity at the moment. It is also capable of rendering a 3D image in surround (shutter glasses and 120mhz monitors required).
If your on a really tight budget just get a new ATI/AMD as you have a crossfire MoBo. DonÆt expect the best performance in the world but it will likely be good enough for eve, as space doesnÆt take much rendering power. Be warned though that nether Eyefinity nor nVidia surround are officially supported under windows XP.
If you have a bit more cash on hand some enthusiasm for PC gaming and a desire to try out those three monitors on a range of the latest games I would recommend a new MoBo, two shiny nVidia cards and probably a new PSU as you havenÆt told us what you have, which usually means you donÆt know, which usually means nothing as reliable as you would want to run SLI.
Of course you would also need a copy of windows 7, as nVidia surround wont work under XPà and windows 7 is a resource hog so you will want more ramà Essentially a new computer..
Good luck to you.
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