When Nvidia was in the Kotaku offices the other day showing off, well, something we can’t quite talk about yet, they noticed we didn’t have a dedicated gaming PC. (All of Kotaku‘s gaming rigs are in the homes of our writers, including mine.) So they had Falcon Northwest cook up a nice little rig — Intel i7 2600K (overclocked), 4GB RAM and a couple of GTX580 cards with a 1.5GB of onboard RAM in SLI.
Oh, and they threw in three 1080p 3D monitors from Asus.
Ostensibly we’re supposed to be testing 3D Vision performance in Battlefield 3, but since the beta doesn’t support 3D vision yet, we’ve been using the rig for other games. Like RAGE (which doesn’t support 3D Vision either! Argh!).
While the Battlefield 3 beta is a little too hardware-intense for native 1:1 pixel performance on all three monitors, RAGE is doing juuuusst fine on this beastly rig, even at 2x anti-aliasing. And I haven’t even installed the latest Nvidia drivers, so I’m hoping to squeeze out a little more juice before I’m done tinkering.
I know some of y’all think I have a grudge against PC gaming. I totally don’t, even though I think PC gaming is going to change a lot and soon.
Whatever you think, though, I’m not ashamed at all to say that when PC gaming works right — and “right” is pretty relative, as even though this machine came from Falcon with Windows 7 installed and configured I still had to do some tweaking to get everything running right — it really does make a person feel like they’re sitting right on the cusp of what gaming experiences are possible.
Plus PC gaming hardware gives you something that console gaming rarely offers: the chance to really brag.
Timothy
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 9:41 AMExcept you’re doing it wrong by having the screens angled, the game renders the scene expecting a flat screen, so make it flat to ensure an optimal viewing experience.
moloko
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 9:46 AMIt’s Falcon Northwest so it would be an overpriced gaming PC.
villainsoft
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 9:54 AMI run RAGE using a 2xSLI GTX580 on 3x 40″ monitors and it runs ok. Bit of eye strain though.
You are right about the rendering angles of the peripheral screens being off. Drivers need to compensate for the physical angle difference, but currently do not.
Michael
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 9:55 AMExcept I can run the BF3 @ 5760×1080 and that’s on 2x 295 GTX’s… how are you unable to do it on those cards?
Fail.
But yes, triple monitor gaming is for the pros, AND those of us with expendable income :D
Khuntza
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 7:40 PMI agree, Im running the BF3 beta on 5040×1050 (3×22″)on a single HD5850, settings on high without any issues..
NotFrank
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 11:27 AM4GB RAM <— W T F fail, they sell video cards with nearly that much bloody ram …
Also how did the above posters miss that.
Prashy
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 1:40 PMThere are video cards on sale, which have that amount of ram. Such as the AMD 6990.
Alex effing Diamond
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 11:16 PMI met one of the heads of geforce a while back, and they were working on 24gb graphics cards for video rendering. Pretty amazing
Chazz
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 11:36 AM“I’m Playing RAGE At 5760×1080 Pixel Resolution”
So it’s being run in a setup the make it easier to notice the low-res textures and such?
pk
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 11:48 AM3x monitor gaming isn’t all that – its more gimmicky rather than anything (especially due to the bezel width breaking up continuity).
I’d much prefer gaming on a single 30 inch screen, preferably on a 120hz native refresh IPS low input lag monitor… not that they exist or I could afford one…
In any case, having used 30 inch screens at a previous workplace, I’d much prefer one 30 inch screen over any multiple of 22 inch screens.
Also, 16:10 (e.g. 1920×1200)is superior to 16:9 (1920×1080), and it’s sad to see 16:9 taking precedence in PC hardware, since most PC activities are vertically designed (documents, web pages, coding)…
Kid
Friday, October 7, 2011 at 3:10 AMBut movies and games dont benefit from the extra vertical space, which is what matters to many people.
Also when reading documents/webpages most people scroll so what they’re looking at is at eye height. They don’t read a page top to bottom then scroll down a complete screen length.
So really benifits are minimal and hardly noticed if at all to most.
pk
Saturday, October 8, 2011 at 1:05 AMexcept most people sitting at a PC aren’t exclusively watching movies most of the time (which are the primary media that push 16:9).
Going by your logic, a 800×100 screen would not be any more inconvenient than a 800×600 screen simply because “people can scroll”.
The reason for having more vertical real estate is not to completely avoid scrolling, but it often reduces the frequency for needing it, especially since a lot of PC-oriented activity is vertically oriented.
Aaron
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:34 PMseems to be a distinct lack of negative Rage articles on Kotaku versus the rest of the internet, where the general consensus is overwhelming dissapointment. Nothing to do with the banner ads and top of page faux article ads though I’m sure ;-)
Wesley Franc
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 7:34 PM“the general consensus is overwhelming dissapointment”
Really? I’ve read generally positive reviews, and personally, I’m loving it.
There are some issues with the default settings on PC (the built in optimisation algorithm is a bit biased towards framerate over image quality), but with some config tweaks idTech 5 is amazing … big shame they are not licensing their engines anymore.
Invest 15 minutes reading how the RAGE configuration works, and you’ll see a stunning game.
Aaron
Friday, October 7, 2011 at 1:05 PMJoystiq and Arts Technica reviews, plus a lot of non gaming media reviews, have been pretty damning of the games, quest system, static world, and derivative structure.
What positive reviews have you read?
Dylan ashton
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 2:55 PMLike face. Can’t wait to play it on 5760*1080. Enjoy your single monitors peasants
Chazef
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 7:52 PMHAHAHAHAHAH, enjoy yourself!