Date:
Tuesday , June 29, 2010
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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NVIDIA 3D VISION SURROUND Experience

Many have waited for NVIDIA's 3D VISION SURROUND Technology with bated breath. The wait is over and NVIDIA can now give its GPU owners a 3x1 multi-display gaming experience; and in 3D too! Does NVIDIA's implementation live up to the expectations of those that have been using competitive technology for eight months?

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The NV Surround Desktop

We have been covering AMD's Eyefinity for over half a year. NVIDIA's Surround in terms of the end gaming experience is the same. I hate to sound trite about it, but there are only two things that are really new here. NVIDIA now has multi-display gaming too. And as we suspected back at the GTX 480 launch, GTX 480 SLI scaling is the freakin' bomb!

We can make an educated guess that this configuration will equally impress when using multi-display gaming. NV Surround is not yet supported in the current driver release but we are expecting in within 30 days hopefully. While the price of admission is going to be very high, 3x1 display NV Surround gaming looks as though it will possibly bring a "can of whoopass" to multi-display gaming.

I am glad to say that we were 100% correct on this.

But let's show you what our setup looks like as us geeks always like a bit of hardware pr0n.

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Our box is the best chassis we have seen for cooling the GeForce GTX 480. The SilverStone Raven 2 is without a doubt a great case that we were hoping to give a bit more press to, but the god's of lightning seemed to have it out for us and zapped half the fans in the case in the last few days. We are going to follow up on this soon. I can tell you now, if you are going to build a new system with a GTX 480 or GTX 480 SLI, you owe it yourself to buy the Raven 2. Your ears and temp probes will love you for it. It is not a perfect case, but it is perfect for the GeForce GTX 480.

As you can see we have our three DVI cables leading to our Surround configuration. The displays we are using are 23" ACER GD235HZ panels. I am not sure I would suggest these panels. They leave a lot to be desired in terms of image quality. If you have not been into our Displays Forum, there are tons of very knowledgeable folks in there that have no problem with sharing their opinions openly and a lot of them are very well guided. Positioned behind the panels are two 30" Dell displays that will give you reference to how wide the NV 3D Vision Surround configuration is. It is WIDE! The way you see it set up in the picture above, it measures 64" diagonally and spans 5760x1080 pixels.

Finally our heavy and uncomfortable shutter glasses. They bugged me silly after about an hour of continuous wear. Your mileage may vary. The IR Emitter is sitting behind the glasses. The IR Emitter has a light on the front that will tell you if 3D is turned on, which should be evident by looking at the screen with or without glasses. The IR Emitter has a small dial on the back that lets you dial in the "3D Depth." For most of my gaming I kept it as shallow as possible. As you make the 3D effect deeper, it spreads the images further apart to give you more field separation. The more you use the 3D, the more depth you are supposed to be able to tolerate.

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If you are reading this, you have likely seen us beat Eyefinity into the ground with coverage, and we just believe that easy out-of-the-box multi-display gaming is an awesome thing. It is an awesome thing whether it be on Red or Green cards. Above are a couple of shots that will introduce you to multi-display gaming if you are not familiar with it. But don't our word for it, go check out our readers systems if you really want to be wowed.

AMD has this neat little page that will spell out the multi-display gaming experience to some extent if you are not in the know. The AMD page is applicable to Eyefinity or NV Surround.