Rumor: No NV Surround with the late 256. Driver?

[Paratus]

Picked this up over at [ H ]

http://hardforum.com:80/showthread.php?t=1513163&page=18

Quote:
Just out of curiosity ManuelG, will the non-3D Surround features (to clarify, we're wondering about the ability to use our three monitors with SLI enabled) be included in the first 256 series drivers? I know that myself and a good friend of mine have been eagerly awaiting these new drivers in hopes that we can retire our SoftTH hacks in favor of an officially supported solution. If you're allowed to comment on this subject it would really put our minds at ease, we have no problem waiting a couple more months for this either."

"With the initial launch driver, this will not be supported but it will with a future driver. There will be two modes, NVIDIA Surround and NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround. Obviously the difference is one will use NVIDIA 3D Stereo technology and have hardware requirements similar to the current NVIDIA 3D Vision hardware requirements. The other is NVIDIA Surround which is what you are referring to which will support three displays or projectors synchronized together in landscape or portrait mode. All three displays must run at the same resolution, refresh rate and sync polarity. "


I'm sure there's a bunch of folks here who would find this dissapointing if true.

Keys, any chance you can find out when surriund view will be enabled?

 

[JAG87]

Don't care.

Give me proper dx 9-11 TRSSAA, and an option for dx 9-11 FSAA, and I'm a happy camper.

And fix dx11 BC2 load times!

 

[Lonyo]

Don't ask Keys about it, he wants to be given a break.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29713031&postcount=55

Give me a break Lonyo, that's what you're going to go with? If they come out tomorrow, shall we have this conversation again? Or the next day?
http://www.nvidia.com/object/3D_Visi...echnology.html
According to this link, 3DVision surround 256 drivers are due April 2010.
Last time I checked, it's April. And unless there are any complications (and it can happen), those drivers are due out within the next 10 days. Are you really gonna go with this? A technicality that most likely won't be there by the time someone orders a card and it's shipped to them?

 

[yh125d]

I made the mistake of thinking eyefinity was gonna be more important than it is. I realized that one big screen > multiple small ones, even if you lose the enhanced FoV and resolution


QED, don't really care

 

[NoQuarter]

I hope they do get Surround working sooner rather than later, the more games that support it from the box the better. Contrary to yh125d I like it a lot

 

[RaiderJ]

I made the mistake of thinking eyefinity was gonna be more important than it is. I realized that one big screen > multiple small ones, even if you lose the enhanced FoV and resolution


QED, don't really care

Nice thing about it though, is that you can invest in more monitors and have them be utilized. I'm running dual 24" monitors, and would like to run three (but can't afford it right now).

At least for me, I don't see myself upgrading past 24" monitors anytime soon, I'm out of desk space. Ideally, I'd have three LED backlit, 120Hz, 24" monitors, but I'll have to wait on those for now

 

[MarcVenice]

Weird, if they enable three monitors to run in 3d surround, why not just three monitors withouth 3D? This would mean no 3 monitors desktop either, just use three screens in game with 3D. That would make it a useless technology imo.

 

[Paratus]

@Jag

I would have thought you'd be the target market since 480 SLI seems wasted on a single panel.

Did your 480's advertise the feature on the box?

 

[Madcatatlas]

Don't ask Keys about it, he wants to be given a break.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29713031&postcount=55

So what, its not like he is the one coding the feature!..

Im guessing the difficulties are stemming from the excessive power usage when 2 cards are involved. There is probably no workaround without introducing many other bugs.

 

[JAG87]

@Jag

I would have thought you'd be the target market since 480 SLI seems wasted on a single panel.

Did your 480's advertise the feature on the box?

Wasted at 2560x1440? You know, there are many games I still can't max out @ 60 fps. Don't remind me of that, I get a hollow feeling inside.

And yes, it does advertise the feature on the box but just like any hardware I buy, I never read the box

 

[NoQuarter]

So what, its not like he is the one coding the feature!..

Im guessing the difficulties are stemming from the excessive power usage when 2 cards are involved. There is probably no workaround without introducing many other bugs.

My guess was something to do with SLI bandwidth and sending the frame buffer alternating directions each frame. SLI normally functions in AFR by sending the frame from the slave card to the master card for the frame the slave card is responsible for.

Supposedly the SLI link is capable of 1GB/s. Nvidia already stated (according to EVGA forums) that its Surround implementation would be limited to 5760x1080 max (ie can't use 1920x1200 monitors). The reason this would be is because the bandwidth required to send that frame buffer is too much.

ATI already said the Crossfire link is barely enough to handle Eyefinity resolutions and it's likely some frames get sent via PCI-e bus when the Crossfire link is saturated causing the stuttering a few users have reported when running Crossfire Eyefinity. The Crossfire link is capable of 0.9GB/s but you can double them up between your 2 cards, providing 1.8GB/s.

If the SLI link is capable of 1GB/s and a 5760x1080 resolution is 6220800 pixels, and each pixel is 4 bytes of data, the frame buffer would be 24883200 bytes or 0.023174286 Gigabytes. If this is all true, the max frame rate transfer between cards would be 43 frames per second not including necessary overhead but assuming it has to send the full frame.

In Eyefinity's implementation the frame buffer only needs to be sent across the Crossfire link every other frame (when the slave card is on duty). In Surround's implementation the frame buffer or at least a portion of it needs to be sent across the SLI link every frame (from master to slave, then slave to master).

If the drivers are capable of it it could be possible to send 2/3 of the frame buffer from slave to master for one frame, then 1/3 of the frame buffer from master to slave the next frame, cutting the bandwidth required for frame copies in half (sort of).

The SLI bridge apparently was designed to be uni-directional also, which may cause some latency issues waiting for the bridge to clear up to send data the other way.

Also using SFR rendering method gets terribly complicated as both cards would be rendering parts of the frame the other card needs.

Uhm.. as you can see I've thought about this topic too much

 

[Paratus]

Damn! You have been thinking about this! I hope they figure it out. Multi-monitor gaming is begging for multiple GPUs.

Plus in NV's case they're leaving themselves open to a lawsuit ala the ATI HDCP ready crap for features that aren't fully implimented.

 

[Sylvanas]

Lets face it. The main reason we are interested in the 256 driver is the number is 256 which is 59 bigger than 197 so it must be 59 times better right?..... I'm more interested in performance gains and fixes than anything like 3D surround. ATI did well with the release of 10.1-10.3 which included many fixes and new features so hopefully this Nvidia driver will do the same.

 

[Grooveriding]

Of course it's not coming with the drivers. Like everything else we heard from NV, it was just hype/crap/lies to try to get people to wait six months for a part that barely outperformed what had been available for half a year.

 

[Harmattan]

Of course it's not coming with the drivers. Like everything else we heard from NV, it was just hype/crap/lies to try to get people to wait six months for a part that barely outperformed what had been available for half a year.

^This^

Props to NoQuarter for hypothosizing on (one of) the likely issue(s).

 

[MrK6]

Of course it's not coming with the drivers. Like everything else we heard from NV, it was just hype/crap/lies to try to get people to wait six months for a part that barely outperformed what had been available for half a year.

lol. Seems like this is exactly the case. I think AMD caught everyone off guard with Eyefinity, and maybe now NVIDIA is realizing just how difficult it is to implement a multi-monitor solution. It looks like they got egg on their face (again) due to their arrogance. I could care though, like 3D vision, multi-monitor gaming (Eyefinity, Surround, w/e) isn't something I'm interested in until the technology improves.

 

[aka1nas]

Grrr, that is the only thing that I need the stupid driver for. I have my triple-wide setup sitting here just waiting for it. SoftTH is ok, but it's a bit lame rendering everything off a single GPU and taking the performance hit from SoftTH.

 

[Paratus]

Well good news! Kind of........

Arcording to that thread at [ H ] the 256 drivers WILL have surround capability.

The bad news is they said the drivers will be out sometime this summer.........

Could mean by the end of May, most likely means end of September.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Of course it's not coming with the drivers. Like everything else we heard from NV, it was just hype/crap/lies to try to get people to wait six months for a part that barely outperformed what had been available for half a year.

This can't be quoted enough. I have family members now trying to wait for Fermi redux talking about how awesome it "will" be.

I have some old but decent CRTs I can dust off to make use of eyefinity just to give it a try. It's been awhile since Nvidia has gotten any money from me and it looks like it will be awhile still.

 

[Lonyo]

Well good news! Kind of........

Arcording to that thread at [ H ] the 256 drivers WILL have surround capability.

The bad news is they said the drivers will be out sometime this summer.........

Could mean by the end of May, most likely means end of September.

Hey man, don't complain.

If they come out tomorrow, shall we have this conversation again? Or the next day?"
It's a technicality

 

[Madcatatlas]

haha!

Thanks for the laugh Lonyo


To be honest I belive Nvidia were thinking "there arent that many people with 3 screens for surround anyway", it can wait.

Meanwhile people change screens, screens (displays) arent that expensive and people are actually willing and happily trying out what Eyefinity can bring to their gaming experiance.
Eyefinity took everyone, including Nvidia, with their pants down to their ankles, and as mentioned above, Nvidia just cant work fast enough to make something as enticing for their own cards.

The biggest problem ? it needs SLI to work. you just cant avoid the fact that less than half of the people who will be getting a Nvidia card, will be getting 2. I think im being generous. The same can be said for Ati, but they only need that 1 card for 3 screens.

Problem number 2: as mentioned by Noquarter, it is perhaps the design of the SLI bridge that is a hinder.

Problem number 3: two displays hooked onto 1 card = alot more power used. 2 cards in SLI with 1 monitor attached = alot more power used.
2 cards in SLI and with 2 or more monitors attached = ALOT more power used.

Not the easiest starting point for the Fermi aka Termi generation.

 

[aka1nas]

My guess was something to do with SLI bandwidth and sending the frame buffer alternating directions each frame. SLI normally functions in AFR by sending the frame from the slave card to the master card for the frame the slave card is responsible for.

Supposedly the SLI link is capable of 1GB/s. Nvidia already stated (according to EVGA forums) that its Surround implementation would be limited to 5760x1080 max (ie can't use 1920x1200 monitors). The reason this would be is because the bandwidth required to send that frame buffer is too much.

ATI already said the Crossfire link is barely enough to handle Eyefinity resolutions and it's likely some frames get sent via PCI-e bus when the Crossfire link is saturated causing the stuttering a few users have reported when running Crossfire Eyefinity. The Crossfire link is capable of 0.9GB/s but you can double them up between your 2 cards, providing 1.8GB/s.

If the SLI link is capable of 1GB/s and a 5760x1080 resolution is 6220800 pixels, and each pixel is 4 bytes of data, the frame buffer would be 24883200 bytes or 0.023174286 Gigabytes. If this is all true, the max frame rate transfer between cards would be 43 frames per second not including necessary overhead but assuming it has to send the full frame.

In Eyefinity's implementation the frame buffer only needs to be sent across the Crossfire link every other frame (when the slave card is on duty). In Surround's implementation the frame buffer or at least a portion of it needs to be sent across the SLI link every frame (from master to slave, then slave to master).

If the drivers are capable of it it could be possible to send 2/3 of the frame buffer from slave to master for one frame, then 1/3 of the frame buffer from master to slave the next frame, cutting the bandwidth required for frame copies in half (sort of).

The SLI bridge apparently was designed to be uni-directional also, which may cause some latency issues waiting for the bridge to clear up to send data the other way.

Also using SFR rendering method gets terribly complicated as both cards would be rendering parts of the frame the other card needs.

Uhm.. as you can see I've thought about this topic too much

There's plenty of PCI-E bandwidth available if they have to route it through the bus. SoftTH can manage it purely in software already and maintain somewhat playable framerates@5670x1200 for most modern games.

 

[NoQuarter]

There's plenty of PCI-E bandwidth available if they have to route it through the bus. SoftTH can manage it purely in software already and maintain somewhat playable framerates@5670x1200 for most modern games.

Yea, but their goal is to keep performance up by going through the SLI bridge, going through the PCI-e bus to communicate between the cards has the bandwidth but supposedly latency and sync becomes an issue.

 

[Lonyo]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/...unch_of_Multi_Display_Stereo_3D_Solution.html

ETA for 3D Vision surround this time... end of June.

So... maybe end of June (but don't hold your breath).