Budget Triple-Screen Gaming 133
An anonymous reader writes "A system-builder, Dario D., built a triple screen gaming PC in early 2010 that can still run all of the top games. For under $1,000. See link, and he points out you can do even better with a 2011 build."
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Haha (Score:1)
check out the comments in the thread [hardforum.com]
what a lame forum thread (Score:2)
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Man buys PC from Compaq on sale (Score:5, Informative)
news at 11 right here.
Re:Man buys PC from Compaq on sale (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it's "Man buys a three cheap monitors and a crappy Compaq, adds a midrange graphics card to it, makes a forum post calling it a gaming beast". The thread on [H]ardForum is actually fun to read for the bashing he gets.
Re:Man buys PC from Compaq on sale (Score:5, Informative)
Ya I like how he quotes his amazing system is quoted for running games single monitor. Ummm if you have to run them single monitor to keep them playable (and you do with that mid-low range card) then how is it a 3 monitor gaming machine? Having 3 monitors doesn't make it so. That just means it is a machine with 3 monitors. It isn't a triple monitor gaming machine unless you use those three for games.
Even then he's clearly lying about some things. He says it runs Bad Company 2 well. Ummmm.... No. BC2 hits a system hard. It runs well on my quad core desktop with a 5870. It runs ok on my dual core laptop with a 5850M, which is about the same as a 5750-5770 desktop card. So here you have a system with a graphics card with half the shaders as my laptop and a lower clock speed, as well as a much slower CPU, and you say it going to do well in BC2? Not so much. It is just a very hungry game.
My only guess is he feels the need to try and validate his cheap PC as being "Awesome". No, sorry dude, it isn't. It's a cheap PC. That's fine, not everyone wants an expensive PC, but don't play make believe.
Re:Man buys PC from Compaq on sale (Score:4, Funny)
yet (Score:1)
where i live, even a decade old models of those hyundais still go for prices close to first hand prices in the market. despite we practically have all the car brands that are produced in europe, and some of the ones from usa. (actually some of the european/japanese/korean brands are produced here and exported).
dont look down a hyundai. people here sellin
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I don't think he was paying out the engineering quality of the Hyundais, mechanically they are good cars. I think he was saying "you can't polish a turd".
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i fail to see the 'turd' in that idiom, in the image of hyundai.
Because these jokers are trying to turn the Hyundai into a sports car, when a REAL sports car has the handling to run rings around them, and to still be controllable at levels of power at which the Hyundai would be unmanageable.
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so then looks make a sports car ? or the engine ? or, tires ? what if i replace the engine, and tires ? in the end, they are a fucking engine, and 4 tires.
Congratulations for proving you know jack diddly shit about cars.
It's not about the looks, or the engine, or the tires. It's about everything else which is less than trivial to change. It's about having a chassis+suspension design that produces power oversteer, not power understeer. It's about not including bullshit features that reduce the value as a driving machine and increase the value as a rolling sofa.
A muscle car was an ordinary car with more engine, but a sports car is designed for sport. For exampl
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Do that and let us know
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Its main competition would be cars like the 350/370Z, Camaro, RX-8, Mustang, etc. It is less expensive than most any of those mentioned, but has comparable speed, power,
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I know it's been mentioned below but I figured I might as well repeat. There is nothing wrong with a base model Hyundai for what it is designed for which is basically a commuter car. If you took a tricked out Hyundai and your standard sports car around a race track you would know the difference. The Hyundai would feel like it was made of rubber bands because its chassis, suspension, tyres & centre of gravity etc is not designed to handle those kind of forces.
Anyway coming back to your reply, when som
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I didn't read the whole thread. But since you said that he brought up BC2, yes, the game hits the system hard. I run a 5850 and my setup is a Core2 Q9450 clocked at 3.2GHz w/ 8GB of RAM. On single-screen, it runs the game butter smooth with all the settings max'd, sans for HBAO (additional lighting effects). But turn it up to 3 monitors, and it works the card very hard. Previously, before having to tweak the game down for stability reason, I can get around 40-45fps in 5040x1050 resolution (that's 3x168
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In BC2, do you notice performace degrade in the game with your desktop? I have a C2D 6400 2.13ghz with a 8800 GTS 512 and 2GB RAM. Not good enough to run the game at max settings in multiplayer. Well they are actually for single player, but movement isn't buttery smooth enough for MP, and with a FPS, you need smooth movement in multiplayer. So I play everything on lowest settings. Good again for MP because then you can see everything. I find that lighting and effects get in your way of seeing your opponent.
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a 5670? Damn that's what I've got and I can tell you it don't play BC2 at all. Totally unusable because the card only has 512 megs. Yes there are a few with 1GB but that doesn't help since the simple doesn't have enough bandwidt - it's a 128connection. If it was a 256bit connection, then it might, might be usable but I don't know of anyone who makes one with a 256 bus.
Hilarious (Score:1, Insightful)
a gamer saying someone else shouldn't "play make believe"
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I'm glad someone brought this up. In BC2, do you notice performace degrade in the game with your desktop? I have a C2D 6400 2.13ghz with a 8800 GTS 512 and 2GB RAM. Not good enough to run the game at max settings in multiplayer. Well they are actually for single player, but movement isn't buttery smooth enough for MP, and with a FPS, you need smooth movement in multiplayer. So I play everything on lowest settings. Good again for MP because then you can see everything. I find that lighting and effects get in
I find it works good (Score:2)
Q9550 and a 5870 is what I've got and I've turned up the graphics detail (HBAO is on though FSAA is not) and it runs real well in all situations. I'm not supre FPS sensitive, but for FPSes it has to be pretty good and it keeps me happy.
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It does run Bad Company 2, game looks great at 640x480
Here's someone that's proud of his 20" 1600x900 monitors. He's going online and bragging about something that most people toss out to replace. He's like a child that says "LOOK MOMMY I FOUND A BUG!" I pity the kid, I really do. His friends probably all laughed at him whe
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Yeah, hate to say it but i'm with you on this
just because it has 3 monitors doesn't mean it's a gaming beast
I don't think it'll get 40 fps+ on some of the newer games, Heck I don't think it could handle (world of) Warcraft or Starcraft II on max settings over 40 FPS without some massive, massive tweaks to the OS
And no AA? Only on one screen? ....
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looks like the common current here is nobody fucking cares about how much you overpaid on your video game machine either
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I care enough to call you an idiot.
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u mad bro?
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I used to think the dream was having 3+ monitors connected to a single system. I even bought three 30" Apple cinema displays and stuck with them for a year. The conclusion I reached was that I'd rather have a single monitor and use multiple hot-keyed desktops, instead. I can swing two monitors, if I'm using one for a set of information and the other for another set (or one for primary work and the other for watching video, perhaps). Anything more than that and I begin to feel the expense would have been bet
Nothing to see (Score:1)
$1000? Overpaid for all that gloss... (Score:2)
Seriously, I'd pay twice that just to get rid of the fingerprint magnets.
The responses in his thread pretty much hit my point of view: If I had $1000 to blow on a gaming setup in 2010, I sure as hell wouldn't have brought 3 cheap-ass POS monitors, an off-the-rack Compaq and what look like the crappiest speakers money can buy...
If I was planning on spending just a grand on a gaming PC, it'd be a single $200 monitor setup with a $300 video card, $200 processor and $300 for the rest (Mobo, RAM, maybe a system
Not only that (Score:3)
But it turns out triple monitor gaming hits the video card pretty damn hard. All those extra pixels and polygons seriously strain the GPU. So whatever a given GPU can do on a single monitor of a size, it is doing a good bit less on 3 monitors. What that means is you are going to lower your visual quality settings or lower your FPS.
A 5670? No thanks, that is not at all what you want for 3 monitors. You discover a fairly heavy hitting card is called for, maybe more than one card. A 6970 isn't too much for tha
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No, they can (Score:2)
I've never met or heard of anyone who could hear with a hearing condition such that they can't hear the difference between cheap, extremely frequency limited speakers and better ones, or who can't localize audio behind them and so on.. They can hear the difference, they just get caught up in the screen for some reason.
I'm not saying everyone needs high end audio gear, or that everyone can hear subtle differences. However there are dramatic changes from really cheap speakers to normal consumer speakers.
Plus
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As for the speakers, don't even get me started. I cannot believe the junk most people use. They'll spend $1500 on monitors (3 Dell U2410s are popular for triple gaming setups) and another $600 on video cards all in the name of a "more immersive" gaming experience and then buy $30 crap speakers to play on. I don't know what it is. Same thing as people who drop $3000 on a premium high end bigscreen LED/LCD-TV, $400 on a high class Blu-ray player, $100 on useless Monster HDMI cables, then listen on the cheap included speakers.
I won't try to claim that they're the best but as far as I know I have the loudest computer speakers in my town. [photobucket.com]
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But speakers are a pretty mature technology. You don't really get much for jumping to the higher priced models. If you keep the volume down, you can get pretty high fidelity from pretty inexpensive speakers, and it gets worse: higher priced models tend to be optimized for volume rather than fidelity.
For instance, a sibling post has described a speaker set up which would rapidly degrade ear performance if it was deployed for computer gaming and actually used at anything more than a small fraction of its qu
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I haven't bought a video card for a few years (been buying Thinkpads pretty much exclusively since my last gaming PC), but I'm assuming $300 is still mid-range...?
Hell, last time I bought a video card for gaming, I spent 500€ (brand new 7800GTX)... have prices come down so far?
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A $100 card will generally play everything currently selling at a very respectable resolution and very high to max detail. The only exceptions are usually very, very poorly ported console games that require 3x the system specs they ought to, and even those will usually look at least as good as they did on the console.
I'd call $130-150 mid-range these days, $85-130 low-end (but still gaming cards, and not at all bad).
I suspect this is largely because the current consoles are so far behind PC hardware right
Current Multi-Monitor Gaming is Complete Crap (Score:2)
Peop,e
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Peop,e really need to stop pushong multi-monitor gaming until it stops being complete crap.
Unless...you're a multi-monitor gamer playing multiple games. I'm sure there's some savant out there with a dual-everything--monitor, keyboard, mouse, the works--setup that he ambidextrously pwns noobs with on an hourly basis.
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Or a multi-monitor gamer playing the same game multiple times [google.com]. I once heard of a guy doing 15-man raids by himself.
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Multi-monitor gaming is pointless, and will remain pointless, until video cards can render separate views, or a single view with cylindrical or spherical projection
The cards are perfectly capable of rendering this, iff the game tells them to do so. That most game developers have not seen fit to include such options is hardly the card manufacturers' faults...
OTOH the fact that DirectX can only render to a single device at a time and my two monitors present as separate devices with no option to switch them to being a single device on the fly does appear to be partially NVidia's fault.
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I attacked the problem from another angle. My single screen cost was around £1300 (~$2k) when I bought it a few years ago... probably cost around half that to buy one similar now. I have this 40 inch 1080p LCD on a desk I built myself so the screen is a better height. I turn the FOV up a little above standard in first person shooters, not terribly high but just what feels right to me. I am happy... I would like a few small screens to go around my main screen now though I think.
It prints money (Score:2)
CmdrTaco is drunk tonight (Score:1)
Lol, really? (Score:1)
Compaq? Really? It'd be cheaper to just get a simple case, a half-decent MB with OC abilities, etc. and build it yourself. Seriously, add a front case fan to a microtower and the 240 will pull 3.5 GHz (tested with mprime for 48h) without problems.
Of course, I scale the OC back to 3.35 when it's in server mode.
Also, gaming and cheap are contradictory. Unless your definition of gaming involves modded controllers and flashed Xbox 360s.
Guess which one has more FPS/$ ?
sweet i'm off to the fry's clearance racks (Score:2)
well i'm off to fry's to build a "gaming beast" from a clearance compaq and some debadged hp refurb monitors
hey though don't doubt my building skillz i'll need to break the "warranty void if removed" sticker from my compaq to pop that bad boy open to install my mid range graphics card ...
Newest games at max settings? (Score:1)
The post states that it runs the newest games at the highest settings. I find that seriously hard to believe. Fire up, say, RIFT. Throw a quad core i7 at it with 12gb ram and a $600 ATI and on a 30" screen in native resolution (2560x1600) you will get 20-40fps. And that's not even at max settings. That's at very high, but not "max" settings.
So I find it hard to believe that this system which came in at less than double the price of a current card but includes an entire system and three monitors could possib
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As much as I despise MMOs that aren't EVE, I've been giving Rift a go and have to wonder if you've played with the launch client as I haven't experienced any such stutter at all. Even with plenty of NPCs and a couple dozen players or more on the screen with the highest presets (plus a little). In fact, I found myself impressed with its performance after a few hours and a few big public quest experiences.
I didn't participate in the beta, so I wouldn't be surprised if the performance was fairly atrocious then
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He is using 1600x900 monitors and his numbers are for running games on only a single monitor, not all three. The HD5670 that he is using can do that, but only when it comes to games with low system requirements (i.e. console ports), with Crysis and other demanding games you of course don't stand much of a chance with that card on max settings.
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Oh, I had missed the "only running on one monitor" part. Well, then that's even more ridiculous. Those are mid-range laptop monitor resolutions.
just awful (Score:2)
Let me re-phrase that title (Score:1)
>A system-builder, Dario D., built a triple screen gaming PC
"A man went into a shop and spent £1000 on a computer"
I'm glad I don't pay a subscription to slashdot.
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Although if you had we would also have to put up with such gems as:
"Man bought a subscription to slashdot."
AMD Technology (Score:1)
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If you want to use ATI's Eyefinity mode (which I don't use), you just add a $25 adapter, so that you can plug the third screen into the ATI card... however, doing this removes the ability to maximize windows on any given screen (because all 3 of them are literally considered one), and I use that 10x more than I would triple-screen gaming. (also, both ATI's/nVidia's triple-screen gaming modes give you stretched images on the side screens, unless you position the monitors in a perfectly straight line... which, most of the time, I think nobody is actually willing to do)
3 PCs on lan do the same trick for Doom 1 (Score:3)
Already tried this in 1994 or 1995.
As 486's would suffice, I guess cone could do this at the cost of 2nd hand displays.
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3 Xbox 360s do the same for Forza 2, but that doesn't mean that a triple-screen rig isn't cool.
I'm on the lookout myself for a 20" 1680x1050 since I have two of them. Their color temp is different but life ain't perfect. I'm not going to win any speed contests with a GT 240 and a Phenom II X3 720 but it does what I need, it was cheap ($700 into the whole system with 8GB RAM and 320GB disk, and a nice sparkly case) and it's all relatively low-power.
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are there any photographs/photos. and/or video clips of this in action? I have never seen one in action. I'd try it myself, but I only have one monitor. :P
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I don't have any, but there is a proof:
http://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Command_line_arguments [chocolate-doom.org]
Networking options
-left
Run as the left screen in three screen mode.
-right
Run as the right screen in three screen mode.
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Ah cool. I want to see it in action. I don't have hardware setup to do that. :(
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come on, you could problably get some 486's for free on the scrap-heap ;-)
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Bah, too much work just to do see a triple screen DOOM 1/2. :P
SYSTEM BUILDER??? (Score:2)
The guy bought a COMPAQ! How can you call someone a system builder for upgrading a graphics card and adding 2 monitors to a pre-built low-end Compaq?
Also, how can you post on Slashdot as "news" a forum post that gets so much bashing on that same forum thread? Oh, right, sorry CmdrTaco, didn't notice you there...
Since I had read about it when HardOCP had the also unfortunate idea to post it on their front page, I will give a quick overview of the things that were seriously wrong:
-The title was something abou
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A lot of people REALLY do think this way - they tick a few options, get a box delivered, then think "I built this!".
Quite depressing considering how incredibly easy it is to put together a typical desktop PC these days.
And yes, in 2005 a triple screen desktop machine was a normal desktop machine plus a $400 Matrox graphics card. Not far past that I did it with two or three nvidia cards (AGP+PCI+PCI). These days dual PCIe makes it very easy to have quad desktops.
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Key word here is BUDGET, get it? (Score:2)
Most people who are commenting negatively here and on the HardOCP forum are completely missing the point. This is a BUDGET gaming rig, built for running the latest games. Yes, he was a bit "overzealous" in his descriptions, I'll give you that, but considering some of the true "hardcore" gaming geeks would spend that much on the damn graphics cards alone, I think there is some value here. Not everyone can afford the "top, top, top of the line" $3,000 gaming rig, nor do many see the point in such an "inves
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Too bad he can't claim in real life that he is the one responsible for so much hate, lest he get bitchslapped.
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Oh man don't start another flamewar lol. I do want to address what you said about consoles however. And I have a perfect example for you of why PC gaming can be superior, won't die, and frankly, we can't let die:
Online multiplayer.
I don't own a PS3. I have a 360. So I can't speak for the PS3 ecosystem. But the problem is that there is no one to play on-line multiplayer. The whole draw of XBL is the online component. And something like BF:BC2, MoH, or CoD:BO are all about the multplayer. Except there is no o
Likewise with the consoles (Score:2)
With the PC, you can buy a game and people will still play it, sometimes even years later. Forget even that, with PC, you can at least buy a game and play it online *at all*.
With the consoles, you can buy a game and people will still play it, sometimes even years later. Case in point: People still hold tournaments for the 1999 and 2001 editions of Super Smash Bros. Forget even that, with a console, you can at least buy a game and play it shared-screen *at all*, as opposed to the PC market where game modes designed for home theater PCs, allowing two to four gamepads on an HDTV monitor, are an afterthought if even that.
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You again. Okay, this is like the 3rd or 4th time where you've given that single lame reponse, in 4 different stories, over the course of 2 or 3 months.
Get over it. That one insignificant strawman didn't cut it the first time, nevermind the 4th. Do you sit online waiting to troll for that one thing in *every* gaming story?
And a split screen tournament is your answer to online MP? Please.
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Super Smash Bros.
split screen
Where did I mention any games that are split screen?
wow... (Score:1)
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Holy crap those responses in his thread are cuntish. The guy comes along, builds a reasonable rig for under a grand that looks nice and has 3 screens and they shit all over him with retarded comments like "nnnthis won't runn Rage onn super max duper settinnngs-hai". Half of the responses even openly admit to not reading his entire post. Never mind that most new games don't even take full advantage of new PC hardware anyway, being as they are built for the console lowest common denominator. As someone who recently (about 8 months ago) built his own 'gaming' rig for under a grand I certainly sympathise with his efforts.
Yeah, everybody took the original post out of context. The guy's point was that you could build a good gaming PC for much less than a cost of an iMac. And the only reason the games wouldn't run on the three screens was because he didn't buy the $100 adapter (which still would have kept the price less than the price of most iMacs).
I call bullshit! (Score:1)
Still it's a nice triple display setup.
The last generation of consoles is six years old. (Score:1)
if you're going all out... go all out (Score:1)
Album (Score:1)
Major problem (Score:2)
So here's the major problem with multi-screen gaming. Well, a couple problems actually. Prior to my build of a 3x 30" 2560x1600 gaming rig, I knew going in that one of the problems would be the same problem top gamers have had since the days of Robotron - too much screen real estate. Playing fast paced games, such as FPSs, multi-monitor set ups are actually a hindrance. I first experienced this with Robotron, in so far as the fact that the larger the screen, the more your eyes have to move. The more yo
Games with real support for multiple screens? (Score:1)
software (Score:1)
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Have fun using your crosshairs to aim on a TWO screen monitor. Or driving down a race track. Or swinging at a fastball. Or playing any other game that requires you to be able to look straight ahead.
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And by monitor I mean system. But you probably knew what I meant.
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And thanks to a 20" not being able to support 1080i HD you don't need a new video card, any card since 2007 will run any game at 1600x900 just fine.
Best part: guy doesn't know how to build PCs, this is all running on a $300 Compaq!
Gotta love the replies in the thread:
"Good for you!"
"so you built a triple screen gaming , , , , "
And my favorite: "I'm gonna
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Actually, it's the current 20" monitors that are trash. 20" used to mean 1680x1050. Before that it meant 1600x1200. Now it means 1600x900. Why does monitor technology keep moving backwards?
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