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RE: 3d Screens

Spedley — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:50:41 GMT

Is PCI-Express a bus or a serial connection. I was taught that a bus shares the data path between devices, in other words each device listens to all the datat transfered along that bus.
If this is the case then with the correct drivers (the 3d effect is almost all to do with the drivers and not the game) it could be possible to transmit the data once and have both cards receive it.

RE: 3d Screens

Tippon — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:57:33 GMT

[quote][b]picknmix (23/06/2008)[/b][hr]Sadly, the 100% improvement isn't possible for exactly the same reasons it doesn't work that well on SLI\Crossfire.
As...there is still only one processor driving the two cards, and twice as much data must be sent across the PCI bus to provide each card with all the data.[/quote]

Not strictly true:

A quad is not used by the vast majority of games, which are still single threaded, and most enthusiast motherboards have two 16x PCI Express lanes. A single or dual threaded game could be run on two or four cores of a quad, with two identical graphics cards in 3d mode, and effectively be cloned across what would essentially be two systems in one box.

Ideally the game would be single threaded, so would use two cores for the two identical instances, one core for the 3d effect calculations and one core for input and general Windows background usage.

You probably would need 4GB RAM, just because there would be two games running, plus calculations, but if you're going for that much hardware and setup, the extra RAM isn't really going to be a problem ;)

RE: 3d Screens

picknmix — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:30:47 GMT

Sadly, the 100% improvement isn't possible for exactly the same reasons it doesn't work that well on SLI\Crossfire.
As...there is still only one processor driving the two cards, and twice as much data must be sent across the PCI bus to provide each card with all the data.

RE: 3d Screens

Slipstreem — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:53:47 GMT

Yes. Just me being dense. :)

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: 3d Screens

Spedley — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:44:01 GMT

[quote][b]Slipstreem (22/06/2008)[/b][hr]How can two cards doing twice the work be twice as fast as one card doing half the work? :blink:

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:[/quote] I meant that when running in 3D they could be twice as fast as a single card in 3D.
i.e. 1 card per eye.

RE: 3d Screens

Slipstreem — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:25:56 GMT

How can two cards doing twice the work be twice as fast as one card doing half the work? :blink:

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

3d Screens

Spedley — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:54:24 GMT

I haven't seen a review of a 3D screen in MM yet.

With the Zalman Trimon ZM-M220W being <£400 for a 22" display at 1680x1050 I think they are an option now for many people.
I'd love to know how they stack up in 2D performance, is the 3D effect any good, if MM think it's worth the money and what alternatives are available or forthcoming.

Also, is this the perfect usage for SLI/Crossfire? One card per eye would give a genuine 100% speed improvement.