I don't NEED to be told which route to take. I'm simply gathering the opinions of others to see what they would do in my particular situation.
I just don't see how a single 24" screen in 3d could be as immersive as 81" of real estate surrounding you.
Those 81" of screen real estate will be be like wallpaper once you've
properly experienced 3D gaming. Like Sirpauly said, you're just gathering opinions on people who haven't experienced both (and from people that are against 3D gaming based on old experiences, never having tried 120hz or HDMI 1.4 3D gaming). Noticed I said
properly, because a bad 3D configuration will just about turn off anybody (including myself when I first started).
I have two 3D setups on home. First is an office gaming rig connected to an IZ3D monitor. I mainly used ATI cards for this setup, however the IZ3D drivers worked just as well for my GTX275 when I had it installed. My primary gaming rig is on a Samsung 46" LED 240Hz 3DTV powered by a newly built Sandy Bridge Core i5 2500 PC gaming cube (temporarily equipped with a Radeon 5870 from my old setup). I can use either IZ3D or Tri-def drivers. The notion that you can only 3D game with Nvidia is absurd, and shows ignorance. IZ3D generally has the best feature set out of all 3, Nvidia's 3DPlay/3Dvision generally the best performance. Tri-def somewhere in the middle. Don't take my word for it, just visit mtbs3d.com
For me personally, NO EYEFINITY setup I've seen in person (3*3 at a local computer store) compares to 3D gaming on my 46" TV (I'd imagine 55" would even be better). Even on my (now retired) 1680*1050 IZ3D monitor, I would not give up 3D gaming just for "peripheral" vision that having a 3*1 setup would have. I wouldn't even want both (surround 3D gaming) unless the bezels were somehow removed completely.
You can have different types of 3D settings. Some prefer mild 3D, or the "just barely 3D", and some prefer the 3D that makes everything in good 3D but look like miniature toys (dollhouse effect). I use 3D settings to make everything "lifesize", or make the TV/computer monitor a window pane into another world. This typically requires stronger than usual 3D settings (high convergence coupled with high depth). Once you experience this kind of 3d, you wouldn't want to go back from this kind of immersion...the difference between 2D gaming is suddenly like night and day, black and white and color. No wall of screens in 2D will ever give the same sense of immersion. This is about the closest you'll get to "the holodeck" compared to a stack of 2D monitors, and the bigger the screen the better.
Here's an old post with screenshots I did a while back. If you know how to view these screenshots in cross-eyed view, you can get a sense of the 3D effect of these games. Of course, these are just tiny screenshots, and don't compare to full resolution, in motion 3D gaming, but the depth perception is powerful enough to give an insight.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33945031&highlight=stereoscopic
(be sure to click on the image heading to expand the image a little bigger for a better 3D effect).