3D Vision Surround: NVIDIA’s Eyefinity
During our meeting with NVIDIA, they were also showing off 3D Vision Surround, which was announced at the start of CES at their press conference. 3D Vision Surround is not inherently a GF100 technology, but since it’s being timed for release along-side GF100 cards, we’re going to take a moment to discuss it.
If you’ve seen Matrox’s TripleHead2Go or AMD’s Eyefinity in action, then you know what 3D Vision Surround is. It’s NVIDIA’s implementation of the single large surface concept so that games (and anything else for that matter) can span multiple monitors. With it, gamers can get a more immersive view by being able to surround themselves with monitors so that the game world is projected from more than just a single point in front of them.
NVIDIA tells us that they’ve been sitting on this technology for quite some time but never saw a market for it. With the release of TripleHead2Go and Eyefinity it became apparent to them that this was no longer the case, and they unboxed the technology. Whether this is true or a sudden reaction to Eyefinity is immaterial at the moment, as it’s coming regardless.
This triple-display technology will have two names. When it’s used on its own, NVIDIA is calling it NVIDIA Surround. When it’s used in conjunction with 3D Vision, it’s called 3D Vision Surround. Obviously NVIDIA would like you to use it with 3D Vision to get the full effect (and to require a more powerful GPU) but 3D Vision is by no means required to use it. It is however the key differentiator from AMD, at least until AMD’s own 3D efforts get off the ground.
Regardless of to what degree this is a sudden reaction from NVIDIA over Eyefinity, ultimately this is something that was added late in to the design process. Unlike AMD who designed the Evergreen family around it from the start, NVIDA did not, and as a result they did not give a GF100 the ability to drive more than 2 displays at once. The shipping GF100 cards will have the traditional 2 monitor limit, meaning that gamers will need 2 GF100 cards in SLI to drive 3+ monitors, with the second card needed to provide the 3rd and 4th display outputs. We expect that the next NVIDIA design will include the ability to drive 3+ monitors from a single GPU, as for the moment this limitation precludes any ability to do Surround for cheap.
GTX 280 with 2 display outputs: GF100 won't be any different
As for some good news, as we stated earlier this is not a technology inherent to the GF100. NVIDIA can do it entirely in software and as a result will be backporting this technology to the GT200 (GTX 200 series). The drivers that get released for the GF100 will allow GTX 200 cards to do Surround in the same manner: with 2 cards, you can run a single large surface across 3+ displays. We’ve seen this in action and it works, as NVIDIA was demoing a pair of GTX 285s running in NVIDIA Surround mode in their CES booth.
The big question of course is going to be what this does for performance on both the GF100 and GT200, along with compatibility. That’s something that we’re going to have to wait on the actual hardware for.
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x86 64 - Sunday, January 31, 2010 - link
If we don't know these basic things then we don't know much.1. Die size
2. What cards will be made from the GF100
3. Clock speeds
4. Power usage (we only know that it’s more than GT200)
5. Pricing
6. Performance
Seems a pretty comprehensive list of important info to me.
nyran125 - Saturday, January 30, 2010 - link
You guys that buy a brand new graphics card every single year are crazy . im still running an 8800 GTS 512mb with no issues in any games whatso ever DX10, was a waste of money and everyones time. Im going to upgrade to the highest end of the GF100;s but thats from a 8800 GTS512mb so the upgrade is significant. Bit form a heigh end ati card to GF 100 ?!?!?!? what was the friggin point in even getting a 200 series card.!?!?!!?1/. Games are only just catching up to the 9000 series now.Olen Ahkcre - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
I'll wait till they (TSMC) start using 28nm (from planned 40nm) fabrication process on Fermi... drop in size, power consumption and price and rise is clock speed will probably make it worth the wait.It'll be a nice addition to the GTX 295 I currently have. (Yeah, going SLI and PhysX).
Zingam - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
Big deal... Until the next generation of Consoles - no games would take any advantage of these new techs. So? Why bother?zblackrider - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
Why am I flooded with memories of the 20th Anniversary Macintosh?Zool - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
Tesselation is quite resource hog on shaders. If u increase polygons by tenfold (quite easy even with basic levels of tesselation factor) the dissplacement map shaders needs to calculate tenfold more normals which ends in the much more detailed dissplacement of course. The main advatage of tesselation is that it dont need space in video memmory and also read(write ?) bandwith is on chip but it actualy acts as you would increase the polygons in game. Lightning, shadows and other geometry based efects should act as on high polygon models too i think (at least in uniengine heaven u have shadows after tesselation where before u didnt had a single shadow).Only the last stage of tesselator the domain shader produces actual vertices. The real question would be how much does this single(?) domain shader in radeons keep up with the 16 polymorph engines(each with its own tesselation engines) in gt300.
Thats 1(?) domain shader for 32 stream procesors in gt300(and much closer) against 1(?) for 320 5D units in radeon.
If u have too much shader programs that need the new vertices cordinations the radeon could end up being realy botlenecked.
Just my toughs.
Zool - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
Of course ati-s tesselation engine and nvidias tesselation engine can be completly different fixed units. Ati-s tesselation engine is surely more robust than a single tesselation engine in nvidias 16 polymorph engines as its designed for the entire shaders.nubie - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
They have been sitting on the technology since before the release of SLi.In fact SLi didn't have even 2-monitor support until recently, when it should have had 4-monitor support all along.
nVidia clearly didn't want to expend the resources on making the software for it until it was forced, as it now is by AMD heavily advertising their version.
If you look at some of their professional offerings with 4-monitor output it is clear that they have the technology, I am just glad they have acknowledged that it is a desire-able feature.
I certainly hope the mainstream cards get 3-monitor output, it will be nice to drive 3 displays. 3 Projectors is an excellent application, not only for high-def movies filmed in wider than 16:9 formats, but games as well. With projectors you don't get the monitor bezel in the way.
Enthusiast multi-monitor gaming goes back to the Quake II days, glad to see that the mainstream has finally caught up (I am sure the geeks have been pushing for it from inside the companies.)
wwwcd - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
Maybe I'll live to see if Nvidia still wins AMD / Ati, a proposal which is as leadership price / performance, or even as productivity, regardless of price!:)AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
They should make a GT10000, in which the entire 300mm wafer is 1 die. 300B transistors. Unfortunately you have to mount the final thing to the outside of your case, and it runs off a 240V line.