AMD Eyefinity or Nvidia Surround

[fffblackmage]

Be sure to list your graphics card(s) and monitors!



I'm thinking of doing a triple-monitor Eyefinity set-up. I kinda forgot about Nvidia's Surround until after I just bought a 7870. Oh well. Either way, I don't think I'll have a complete triple-monitor set-up until Haswell comes out and I go through a major upgrade. So until then, I can muse about how I'll go about this and see what other people have done.

 

[blastingcap]

This is like the 1% of the 1% of the First World Problems....

 

[RussianSensation]

There is not enough information to answer this poll correctly right now. You need to specify the resolution of the monitors and if you intend to use DP or DVI or HDMI or it doesn't matter. For example, a single NV card cannot display 3D on 3x 2560x1440/1600 monitors but it can work in 2D.

 

[sandorski]

I suspect Eyefinity wins this simply because it has been around for years. Perhaps you are more interested in peoples experience?

 

[fffblackmage]

There is not enough information to answer this poll correctly right now. You need to specify the resolution of the monitors and if you intend to use DP or DVI or HDMI or it doesn't matter. For example, a single NV card cannot display 3D on 3x 2560x1440/1600 monitors but it can work in 2D.

If you use more than one monitor for gaming, and you use an AMD gfx card, aren't you using Eyefinity? If you use more than one monitor for gaming, and you have an Nvidia graphics card, aren't you using Surround? Is that not enough info?

I suspect Eyefinity wins this simply because it has been around for years. Perhaps you are more interested in peoples experience?

People's experiences, the pros and cons of each, and the monitors used would be what I'm looking for.

So things like, was it worth it? How well does it work? Why Eyefinity or why Surround and not the other? Surround doesn't require the use of monitors with DisplayPort, so does that make multi-monitor gaming cheaper?

I'm also not sure what monitors to use. I was considering the Dell U2412M and Asus PA248Q, but those are pretty pricey. But then, I'm not sure which cheaper TN panels with DisplayPort are good. Or, if I don't need DisplayPort, what some good choices?

Despite how awesome it sounds, maybe multi-monitor gaming isn't that popular?

 

[KingFatty]

I use eyefinity, got cheap monitors off craigslist. It's main draw for me is opening up your senses/awareness by turning on peripheral vision. It's more visceral and immersive.

 

[guskline]

See rig1 below. I have a single GTX680 running 3 1920x1080 LCDs. Runs surround very well. I use it primarily for flight sims. I previously had 2 EVGA GTX670 FTWs in SLI but decided they would be more useful in rigs 2 and 3 below for single monitor gaming.

As RussianSensation points out below, the number of monitor AND the resolution of them has a great impact on how you run Eyefinity or Surround. I previously ran the 3 monitors with an AMD 6970 which also had 2GB Vram like my GTX680. Howevert, the GTX680 is a much more powerful GPU.
Vram and higher resolution puts much more demand on the amount of Vram. I already own both a regular and mini active displayport. They aren't cheap but without them you'll have trouble running 3 monitors as a single pane.

so far the games I play on the 3 monitor Rise of Flight and MS Flight Simulator give great performance on a single card.

 

[HurleyBird]

Eyefinity currently has more features, and games that use the eyefinity api only play correctly (centered hud) on AMD hardware. It's a no-brainier.

 

[RussianSensation]

If you use more than one monitor for gaming, and you use an AMD gfx card, aren't you using Eyefinity? If you use more than one monitor for gaming, and you have an Nvidia graphics card, aren't you using Surround? Is that not enough info?

1. You can play 3D games on 2560x1440/1600 x 3 monitors on an HD7000 series, you cannot do that on any GTX600 series.

2. If you want to drive 2x 2560x1600 monitors off dual-link dual-DVI, that's only possible on GTX600.

3. If you want to drive 3x 1080P monitors off a reference HD7970 card (2x MiniDP + HDMI + DVI), you need at least 1 active-DP-to-DVI connector if your monitors do not have native DP. You do not need to do this with the GTX600 if you use a combination of DVI+DVI+HDMI. An active DisplayPort adapter runs about $25 on Newegg for 1080P but $100 for 1600P. If the 3 monitors will all have display ports, you could just buy the Asus DirectCUII and drive all 3x 2560x1600 using displayports. However, if you must use DVI for all 3 monitors, all Radeons are afflicted with this limitation except for a handful of custom Sapphire FLEX/Vapor-X models that integrate active DisplayPort adapters onto their circuit boards, allowing you to drive 3x 1080P monitors without an adapter on those cards. Cards like Sapphire Dual-X 7970 or Visiontek 7970 GE come with a free Active DP adapter removing the necessity to buy one. If your LCDs have DisplayPort inputs, you don't need any active adapters. (Source) But if you want to drive 3 monitors using DP only, that's not possible on GTX600.

4. You can pair 3 different monitors with 3 different resolutions on the HD7000 series (1920x1080, 1920x1200, 2560x1440). For NV, in 3D Vision Surround, each monitor must be an identical make and model, and you must use three matching digital connectors. You do not need this for Eyefinity as you can mix and match resolutions and monitors.

5. ZeroCore power state may not work correctly with DisplayPort on HD7000 series, which handicaps its usefulness for Eyefinity configurations. NV cards can enter their full idle states with 2 monitors. For this reason NV cards have lower idle power consumption with 2 monitors.

6. NV's surround has bezel-peeking option in games with a short-cut key. I do not believe AMD solution has this option.

7. In 3D Vision Surround, any monitor connected to the DisplayPort output must use a DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter so that all three monitors are using Dual-Link DVI. For AMD, you do not need a DL-DVI adapter for native DP port connection. (Source)

 

[guskline]

RussianSensation: Thank you for an Excellent explanation of Eyefinity/Surround. Doesn't take long to tie up big bucks in 3 monitors and a high end video card.

 

[TheUnk]

I started with AMD Eyefinity, but after a couple months I switched to Nv Surround. Had way too many problems with Eyefinity. Mainly with 1 random monitor of my 3 not being detected, or it forgetting the correct order. I was running some dual-gpu single card with AMD and switched to 2x480s.

All problems were gone with Nv Surround and it's been working great ever since.

I'm now running 3x580s and am using 3 identical Samsung 1080p monitors. I couldn't stand having them different in size and getting different model monitors to match exactly in display (colors, brightness, contrast, all that stuff) was near impossible for me. For example having 1 be every so slightly greener just killed the whole experience.

Of course the problems I had with Eyefinity may have all since been fixed, but I can't see why I'd ever switch back.

 

[Annon2255]

1. You can play 3D games on 2560x1440/1600 x 3 monitors on an HD7000 series, you cannot do that on any GTX600 series.

Not even in SLI? Or do you just mean with a single GTX600 card?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I got motion sickness the first few times. It's cool being able to see ALL OF THE MAP in Civ V.

 

[jackstar7]

I'm currently running 3x1080p x120Hz on two 7970s, but I'm getting out of the Eyefinity game and switching to a main center 1440p 120Hz (when it finally gets here) and then using two of the 1080 120Hz's for each side just for more desktop.

I have enjoyed eyefinity a lot at different times, but my experience has led me to believe that a single larger monitor will net me a better (more stable) experience, most especially with drivers.

I've tried nearly every driver release and for my setup none since release have allowed my setup to sleep and wake properly.

 

[96Firebird]

Not even in SLI? Or do you just mean with a single GTX600 card?

Single card, where neither the 680 nor the 7970 alone will be very enjoyable at 7680x1600.

 

[supremor]

I have been using NV Surround for the past 2 months or so and personally I love it. I originally wanted to get Eyefinity but I heard of too many bad experiences with people running Crossfire + Eyefinity so that was the main reason I went with Surround instead. It is not without its drawbacks and does indeed have less features than Eyefinity but so far it has worked flawlessly for me.

Also I'm not sure if this was added with drivers or if this is a GTX 6 series only feature but you don't need identical monitors in terms of model or make but they do need matched resolutions as far as I know. I started off running 2 Dell U2412M and a Samsung 2443BW and they worked perfectly in Surround and I had no issue setting it up or getting the monitors detected. I now run triple U2412M's.

One thing I feel its important that I mention is that to my knowledge the only way to switch from one super wide desktop while in Surround to simply an extended desktop like 3 seperate monitors is to turn off SLI and reload the driver. Now that is a very quick, easy and straightforward thing to do but it is quite a hassle nonetheless. I mention this because I heard with Eyefinity there is simply a hotkey to switch Eyefinity mode on/off. Also while using Surround at the desktop you cant properly fullscreen apps but can only "windowed" fullscreen as in you can still see the borders of the program. Nvidia did recently add an option to their drivers to only fullscreen to one monitor instead of windows spanning all 3 like they used so you no longer have to mess with third party applications like Matrox PowerDesk.

Another important point is that most video players get wonky with Surround on and will refuse to fullscreen properly. Either that or if the video is 16:9 (as most video content is these days) and you run 16:10 monitors like me then it will stretch beyond the center monitor since 16:9 is wider. I have gotten around this by using MPC-HC and simply resizing the video so that it retains its aspect ratio but only fills up my center monitor with small black bars on the top and bottom, much like fullscreen on any single 16:10 monitor. Ideally though you would want to turn Surround off if you intend on watching a lot of video.

Now as for hardware wise, I run 2 GTX 670 2GB cards at 1000/6500 and a 3770K. I game at 5990x1200 bezel corrected and have thus far had no issues with getting Surround to work in most any game. You need 3 DVI monitors to run Surround with SLI, I say need because it wont let you use anything other than DVI for SLI Surround.

Regarding ingame performance I will start with saying that I have personally not encountered any VRAM issues as of yet, highest I have seen it go is about 1800MB. Granted I don't play or own BF3 which I hear loves VRAM and I haven't tried Skyrim yet either. You may also need to reduce/remove AA for some games but I personally don't mind that. With that said I would opt for cards with more than 2GB had I had the option to do so with NV (no 4GB 670's here and 4GB 680's were too expensive).
You have to be prepared to face the fact that quite a few games will require tinkering in order to work properly but its usually quite simple. Most newer games should support triple monitor resolutions out of the box but could still have FOV issues. Many older games will require a little tinkering to make them work, it's usually something easy like a .ini edit but some games take more work. Luckily you have the good folks at WSGF that usually have all the info you need on how to make games run in triple wide res or fix any FOV issues and there are even apps that will auto correct these values for you like widescreen fixer or flawless widescreen which can also be found at WSGF and are usually updated for new releases.

I apologize for the wall of text and I hope I made it readable enough, English is my 3rd language but I tried my best. I felt it necessary to share my entire experience as a Surround user over the past couple of months and while it has some drawbacks I have no regrets about getting it and I love playing in Surround. Games like Crysis, Borderlands 2, Red Orchestra 2 and TF2 are amazing in Surround and open world games like Just Cause 2 or Saints Row 3 also benefit greatly from Surround in my opinion. I don't play racing games often but those too work great with triple monitors.

I hope this will be of some help to the OP and anyone considering a triple monitor setup.