GTX 780 Testing II: nVidia Surround / Samsung SyncMaster S22B350T and AOC E2250SWDN testing

Well, 2 monitors arrived yesterday. And I bought as a self funded birthday present for myself. I did have some money on hand so I bought one from VR-Zone and another from BlingQ, a refutable seller of EBay that sell refurbished items. And Great: Both Samsung S22B350T and the AOC E2250SWDN monitors are working as it should, especially the Samsung one.Throughout the day in church I was holding on to the screen before and after mass and a Birthday Tea with one of the choir founders. Then I came back home and the AOC Monitor had already arrived that night.

Now all these are 21.5 Inch Monitors. And my Setup was this.

So with those I setup my nVidia Surround like this. And setting those up is actually quite straightforward. Just had to prop a few books for the AOC E2250SWDN on the right because of its shorter height. Breaking out and installing the monitors took about 10-15 minutes and some tinkering with settings about 3-5 minutes. Now most games will require you to start with 1920 x 1080 resolution then enforce it in game to apply the surround. Subsequent launches will force 5760 x 1080 correctly.

Current Desk Layout. Notice some of my Music Theory Books supporting the AOC Monitor

And a general refresher, here's a look at the interior of my Computer:

Core i7 2600K OC at 4.5 GHz
Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3 RAM
(2 x 4GB Black, 2 x 4GB Blue)
Zotac nVidia Geforce GTX 780 AMP! Edition 
Asus P8P67M-Pro Motherboard
Corsair H70 Push/Pull
Fractal Design Define R3 with Fan Control Hub.
Corsair HX1000
128GB OCZ Vertex 4
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB
Seagate Momentus 500GB

As for Port selection on my Zotac GTX 780 AMP! Edition Video card; that's how I use my inputs:

Top: D-Sub to DVI  - AOC E2250SWDN from Ebay - BlingQ
Right: HDMI - Samsung SyncMaster S22B350T from jw339jw of VR-Zone
Bottom: DVI-I - Philips 222 EL 2 from KnightRaven of VR/Hardware-Zone

Now funnily enough,  D-Sub / VGA to DVI Adapter works with no issues whatsoever in nVidia Surround. I was initially abit scared that it won't work because all I had was 1 DVI cable in hand. Whereas I have a tonne of VGA cables. So yup, one VGA, one DVI and one HDMI which is my main screen. Now here are some of the games I give a quick spin just to test it out and to see how much a single GTX 780 can handle the full 5760 x 1080 resolution (6.2208 Megapixels across all 3 screens, 68 3/4% more pixels than 2560 X 1440). More games are on the way.

Hellgate: London

Old Game, Stretched UI, not a great title to try Surround although it's supported.

Path of Exile (Open Beta)

One of my key favorites. Runs no problem, Stretched EXP bar but not a major distraction.

140+ fps estimated on 5760 x 1080 fully maxed out settings.

Battlefield 4 running on Singapore Map

Natively supports Triple Monitors without any bloated UI. Just about playable on Maxed settings, but lowering Motion Blur and MSAA a bit will make BF4 frame rate substantially more fluent without affecting quality that much either. BF3 should have an easy time running.

Torchlight II: No problem with Surround and Eyefinity.

No bloated UI which is great.

Diablo III Public Test Realm - I still need an access to Reaper of Souls BETA ugh... shit!
Fullscreen Windowed at 5760 x 1080. FRAPS at about 130 on average.

Crysis 3: Now this is one of those games where ideally to enjoy would need SLI 780s / 780 TIs to crank the settings out. You may want to turn your settings down to High like I did. At maximum, game wasn't really playable. Even at not max details, heck even minimum quality at least in native resolutions, the game still looks beautiful, as I wrote on my top 5 games of 2013. A second GTX 780 will help things out but I don't have the money to buy another one. So One GTX 780 will have to do, for now.

More Crysis 3 shots

 More Crysis 3 Shots

More Crysis 3 Shots

StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm - A great game to test your CPU limits when in surround, especially in later missions. You need a certain hack to play this resolution though. And game cinematics and your leviathan screens between missions rather than the Video Cinematics will be less than ideal because those will be bloated. It's best to have the game running at 5760 x 2160 rather than 1080p. In 5760 x 1080, a single GTX 780 will still get tanked at times even though it's perfectly playable at maximum settings.

Another SC2 HOTS Shot: Lab Rats Mission, close up shot.

Screenshot: Metro Last Light.
5760 x 1080: Played with SSAA off, Motion Blur Off, AF at x4, the rest is at max.

Another StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Shot. 2nd Mission of Campaign.