New Computer Specs......

[Neil Hewitt]

Eyefinity will handle 3 LCD TVs at Full HD fine, provided you have enough RAM on the card (1GB will do). In theory it can handle a total surface resolution of 7680x3200.

[notgotaclue]

Eyefinity will handle 3 LCD TVs at Full HD fine, provided you have enough RAM on the card (1GB will do). In theory it can handle a total surface resolution of 7680x3200.

Thanks.
I think I have made my decision - I will use this system and run 3 LCD tv's using Eyefinity.

Alioramus 2500K OC @ 4.3Ghz

CPU:Intel Core i5 2500K @ 4.3Ghz
CPU Cooler:Corsair H60 Water Cooler
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Motherboard:Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P
Memory: 8.0GBCorsair 1600mhz Vengeance (2x 4GB)
Hard Drives:Corsair 120GB Force3 SSD S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s
2nd hard drive:500GB S-ATAII 3.0Gb/s
Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA
Graphics card:ATI Radeon HD 6970 2GB
Sound card: Onboard 7.1 Audio
Internet:Wireless 802.11N 300Mbps MIMO PCI card
Case:Zalman Z9 Plus
PSU:850W Corsair TX
Total: £1,121.69

Please tell me if there is anything else I am missing.
Allan.

[jonesthesoftware]

Hi Allan
just to add to the confusion, how will you connect 3 tv's to one graphics card?? TV's have VGA or HDI input socket but the Radeon 6970 has different outputs this is from their website.

Use of 3 or more displays with AMD Eyefinity technology requires a DisplayPort-capable panel or an AMD Eyefinity validated dongle. See http://www.amd.com/EyefinityDongles for a list of validated DisplayPort dongles.

You may need powered dispklay port adaptors to convert from display port to VGA or HDMI
Is this PC only for the outside view?
regards
geoff

[Neil Hewitt]

jonesthesoftware makes a good point - you will indeed need a DisplayPort adapter to be able to do three displays. ISTR my 6970 (which is not Sapphire, it's PowerColor) came with one, but I could be wrong. My card has two mini-DisplayPort ports, one HDMI, and one DVI. So the third display has to be attached via DisplayPort.

Any TV you can buy now will have HDMI ports. No point in even considering connecting via VGA even if it had the port, which it won't - VGA is analog and can't support 1920x1080 AKA FullHD anyway. Assuming you won't be pushing sound out via the TVs, then get one DVI -> HDMI cable, two HDMI -> HDMI cables, and one mini-DisplayPort (or ordinary DisplayPort, depending on the specifics of your card) -> HDMI passive adapter. That'll let you connect the three TVs using HDMI.

Hope that makes sense - it's a bit complicated, I grant you, and I'd forgotten to even mention it, but it's not complex enough or expensive enough to justify going for TH2GO, at least IMHO.

Here's a link to one of the certified adapters on amazon.co.uk at £28:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Accell-B086B.../dp/B0041OEQA6

And you can get dirt cheap but perfectly good HDMI cables via AmazonBasics:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonBasics.../dp/B003L1ZYYM
http://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonBasics.../dp/B001TH7T2U

[jonesthesoftware]

Hi Neil
When I said VGA port on the TV you're right it's not actually VGA spec but it is a PC input using what are commonly called vga cables. My setup actually uses these "VGA" ports on my LG HD TVs as my graphics cards only have the digital out ports (DVI?) and not the HD so I had no choice. Incidentally I have tried my TV's on a HD port from a graphics card and I was a bit dissapopinted as I could see no difference in the sharpness of the image. I expected the HD to HD connection to have been better. Maybe TV manufacturers don't spend much on the PC input circuitry to their TV's as they could because generally it's not used for that purpose.
regards
geoff

[notgotaclue]

Hope that makes sense - it's a bit complicated, I grant you, and I'd forgotten to even mention it, but it's not complex enough or expensive enough to justify going for TH2GO, at least IMHO.

It does indeed make sense.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to guide me through this absolute nightmare...
------ now where did I put that credit card.
Allan.

[Neil Hewitt]

Hi Neil
When I said VGA port on the TV you're right it's not actually VGA spec but it is a PC input using what are commonly called vga cables. My setup actually uses these "VGA" ports on my LG HD TVs as my graphics cards only have the digital out ports (DVI?) and not the HD so I had no choice. Incidentally I have tried my TV's on a HD port from a graphics card and I was a bit dissapopinted as I could see no difference in the sharpness of the image. I expected the HD to HD connection to have been better. Maybe TV manufacturers don't spend much on the PC input circuitry to their TV's as they could because generally it's not used for that purpose.
regards
geoff

Well, VGA is always a 9-pin D plug, whereas DVI is a two-part plug with lots more pins. Both are PC connections, but one is analog and one digital. The video portion of HDMI, BTW, is electrically identical to DVI, which is why you can have a cable with DVI on one end and HDMI on the other, no adapter or converter required. VGA has a max res of 1280x960 (I think) and can't do HD resolutions, and of course since the connection is analog the picture quality will suck.

That said, depending on your TV, a digital connection doesn't guarantee a sharp picture. Many TVs apply overscan to all signals including HDMI so while the display may have 1920x1080 and your input signal is also 1920x1080, the picture is revamped resulting in loss of sharpness. You need to turn off any overscan, or enable so-called 'dot-by-dot' mode, to get a pixel-perfect picture.

[JWS]

Neil,

At the moment using FS9, and will do so until my cockpit is finished I guess. Using a Digital TH2GO with 3 20" screens. Should I ever change to FSX, what kind of card should I look for at least, to run FSX with the TH2GO smoothly? I know that TH2GO affects fps.

Thanks,

JWS

[Neil Hewitt]

I'm no expert on the TH2GO and I wouldn't wish to portray myself as such. I'd imagine any fame rate impact of the unit would be static - ie the same whatever card you plug it into.

My own belief is that even a relatively old card should give you decent performance for FSX on its own. However, you shouldn't discount the impact of drivers, either, and only the more recent cards have great driver support. So my recommendation would be for something mid-range in the current generation. You need a card that can support the overall resolution of the three displays, so 1GB is a must.

A Radeon HD 68xx card, or even a 67xx, would probably do. In NVidia land, maybe a GTX 550 TI. Or a cheaper 560.

As always, YMMV...

[BeaconOne]

Hi,

As neilh says 1GB is a must. I've been running FSX/TH2GO with both GTX460 and GTX570 with no difference in performance. However, I recommend experimenting with the double-/triplebuffering settings of the graphic card when using TH2GO.

Note also that TH2GO does not support HDCP! This may become an issue with some displays, especially projectors.


Regards,
-Henri