OK...I've typically preferred nvidia cards and that's what I have now (running on a 460).

I'm planning to go to a triple monitor setup, so I'm comparing between eyefinity/surround capabilities. My primary concern is for performance in the DCS (A-10, FC2 / FC3, etc) arena as well as iRacing.

Searching for eyefinity/surround comparisons is difficult because of how much has changed in the past couple of years. One concern I had was I read somewhere that with Surround, if you ran a game full screen on one monitor, nvidia would "shut down" any displays that weren't part of it. Is this still the case?

Anyone got a link to a _current_ comparison of pros/cons between the two solutions?

Thanks!

T

When you say "surround" do you mean TripleHead2Go?

IMHO unless you already have a TH2Go splitter, it's cheaper to go the Eyefinity route. As you are pushing more pixels, you'd obviously want the best card you can afford. Not sure what you mean about nVidia shutting down any displays.

Surround is Nvidia's version of Eyefinity...so no, I don't mean TH2Go.

There are ups and downs to both sides...like with Nvidia Surround, only the top product line (600 series) can do 3 displays from 1 card.

As to shutting down displays...my understanding at least as of late last year was...well...suppose I was going to run BF3 but wanted to keep a teamspeak session and email client up on separate monitors. When using multi screens on nvidia, I believe anything that wasn't the "primary display" would get shut down.

Oh, so is that what they're calling it? Well, if it's only on the top cards, then you definitely pay through the nose. My old HD 5770 can do triple-screen, and it's less than £80 now.

"Surround Gaming" is their term for it, but I can understand abbreviating it when its clear from the context.

You can only do it _on one card_ with the top of the line cards. I could add another 460 and do it that way as well - I've got plenty of power supply available for a SLI (crossfire) setup. Monetarily, it's cheaper for me to add a 460 than it would be to pick up an AMD rig that would push pixels like 2 460s...although if I switched, I would probably scale up rather than just "match" 2xGTX460. I'd probably just say F it and get a 7970.

Hmmm. I've no idea how it's marketed on that side of the pond, but I've never seen it called "Surround Gaming". Over here, it's referred to along with their "3D Vision" functionality...."3D Vision and Surround Technology"...where the former ("3D Vision") refers to using high refresh displays along w/ 3D glasses and "Surround" refers to multiple displays.

Also as I understand it...some of the other relevant pros/cons that I think still persist:

Eyefinity - you need to be careful about what connections your monitors have as you have to use certain combinations of DVI / DP connectors. Nvidia uses any combo of digi/analog connectors you want.

Surround is limited to 3 displays, Eyefinity isn't.

Probably best to wait until the 660/670s are out. The 660 looks a bit weak at 192bit and 1.5GB though... real shame. ArmA 2, RoF and BF3 push around 1.28+ GB of video RAM on my PC at 1680x1050. Crysis 2 pushes over 1.5GB with the high res texture pack.

In summary, if you want to future proof your card and want to play at high resolutions/multiple monitors you do need 2GB or more.

I have been using AMD crossfire since the beginning of the year- 2 MSI 6970 Lightning cards.
Sadly, I cannot recommend Crossfire. In fact, I advise against it. I have removed the 2nd card due to DX errors and other lockups in games like BF3 and Skyrim. AMD might be a good choice for a single card, but From my experience I have to say that they don't have their act together when it comes to Crossfire. I now wish I had gone the NVIDIA route instead.

The newest NIDIA cards allow you to plug in and run up to 4 monitors, I think.

My personal opinion 3 monitor current or near current cards:

For legacy engines simming (FSX, IL COD, Skyrim, rFactor2 etc) : GTX 680 or wait for GTX 685
For general gaming on modern engines (BF3, iRacing, Dirt3 etc): HD7970

One Other option you have is SLI your current card with either another 460 or I've heard it will SLI witn the 560Ti/448 like mine, but my personal experience is SLI and crossfire is hit or miss on whether particular games benefit from it or it causes problems.

Your mileage will vary that is just my own personal opninion.

When choosing a stock higher clocked card for Eyefinity, the 7970 beats the 680 (stock OC) in this review in all games tested including Skyrim, except WoW (11fps diff) and Mass Effect 3 (2fps diff).