Hello

At the moment I'm using 2x GTX 570 with 3x Dell 27" (at 2560x1440 each display). I'm using Vista x64. Now I need to use Soft Triplehead to race with all screens. I'm not really happy with this solution. Since Nvidia GTX680 supports for 3 Displays at the same Graphic Card I'm thinking about a new Graphic Card (more performance, less power needed).

Now I'm not sure if I should buy a Nvidia GTX680 (Kepler 104) or a AMD Radeon 7970. The small VRAM of Nvidia Card (2 GB) I think isn't so good for this high resolutions. At the other hand GTX680 is faster then AMD... and in around 1/2 year Nvidia release the next Graphic Card with Kepler 110 which will have 4 GB VRAM and be faster then the Kepler 104-GPU.

What do you think? Buy Nvidia or AMD or wait for the next Nvidia GPU?

Thanks for your feedback
Pasci

If you have 2 570s, you can use nVidia Surround - you don't need Soft Triplehead.

Not sure what else you play, but for LFS, what you have is more than enough

edit: sorry I noticed the resolution. The 680 would be slower than your two 570s overall mind you, I don't know how much vRAM your version of the 570s have. But you'd lose some raw horsepower according to every benchmark I've read. I suggest you just try using nVidia Surround instead of STH that'd probably give you better performance to begin with. To set it up, it's in the same area where you enable/disable SLI & select the physX processor.

There's a 4GB 680 coming out from EVGA in the near future, might want to look in to that.

Then again, with that resolution, I think SLI 680 would be necessary. Heck, it's necessary even on this single U3011 @ 2560x1600.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

If you have 2 570s, you can use nVidia Surround - you don't need Soft Triplehead.

Not sure what else you play, but for LFS, what you have is more than enough

edit: sorry I noticed the resolution. The 680 would be slower than your two 570s overall mind you, I don't know how much vRAM your version of the 570s have. But you'd lose some raw horsepower according to every benchmark I've read. I suggest you just try using nVidia Surround instead of STH that'd probably give you better performance to begin with. To set it up, it's in the same area where you enable/disable SLI & select the physX processor.

Thanks for your answer

First I have tried to find a solution without Soft Triple Head... looks I'm to stubid to find it. I will try again... thanks - Could it be a problem if I'm using Windows Vista instead of Windows 7 or should on both OS the same options are available?

I'm using two ASUS Graphic Cards:
ENGTX570 DCII/2DIS/1280MD5

I think I need to find an option to use the resolutions of all screens as one desktop resolution, not? Or how I should configure that?

I'm using the driver from Nvidia (296.10).

Bad news to me... Surround gaming needs Windows 7.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Operating System

• Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit
  

http://www.nvidia.com/object/3 ... -system-requirements.html

Hmm, wow I didn't think that - I thought it worked on Vista/7 both.

Really sorry about that!

Upgrading to 7 is cheaper than a new video card(s) though, and well worth it IMO. Though I never had a problem in Vista I think it was because I started using it near the end of it's life cycle ( all the SPs ).

I've been using 7 since the RC came out and been really really happy.

Again, sorry about the oversight I just assumed it worked fine on Vista as well

if its suported in 7 presumably it will work fine in 8 as well
so you could try with a free legal version of windows

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Hmm, wow I didn't think that - I thought it worked on Vista/7 both.

Really sorry about that!

Upgrading to 7 is cheaper than a new video card(s) though, and well worth it IMO. Though I never had a problem in Vista I think it was because I started using it near the end of it's life cycle ( all the SPs ).

I've been using 7 since the RC came out and been really really happy.

Again, sorry about the oversight I just assumed it worked fine on Vista as well

Now I have installed Windows 7 x64. Since that I have found 2 diffrent options between Vista und Windows 7.

First:
Of corse Surround is available.

Second:
I have connect 2 display at the first and 1 display and the second graphic card. With Vista I CAN'T activate SLI in this configuration... with Windows 7 there is no problem to activate it.

I'm really happy with Vista... but I think I buy Windows 7 for playing. I'm not happy about that... but it looks that I haven't a choice (if I will use surround gaming).

For performance information:
LFS with some high res textures (tracks, skies, landscapes) and 19 AI driver... fps counter is around 50 fps (@7966x1440 - additional pixel for screen borders). With only 10 AIs I get ~100 fps... any time with following quality settings: AA 8x / AF 16x

With Soft Triplehead without quality settings (disabled) I've got ~30 fps!

Thanks to everyone for your feedback