Hello everyone,In the never ending quest to get better visuals in heavy weather, I'm again looking to swap out my 6970 for a pair of GTX 560ti or 570's.My problem is the lack of understanding of how Surround works within FSX. I'm getting conflicting information from different places. It's my understanding that a Surround setup is looked at by the system as a single video card and you would then be able to apply different resoultions accordingly. I have a triple monitor setup, 3 x 1280 x 1024, so with my 6970 in Eyefinity I'm able to choose 3840 x 1024, one widescreen view. Would this not be possible with Nvidia Surround? Also, I don't understand how the memory is allocated. Does the system or FSX when looking at the Surround setup see 2 cards at 1gb of memory or 1 card at 2gb of memory. I guess the question is, how does FSX handle the 2 cards.My main goal is to improve visuals in heavy weather, thus allowing me to increase AA without the framerate going to single digits. With the 6970 if AA is 4x and I have water at anything on the high side it brings the card to it's knees in heavy cloud. Put AA at 2x with water on high, the frame rate is ok but it looks like crap. If your running a surround setup any comments on your actual resolution, AA , display settings and performance would be appreciated.ThanksGlen

No edit button??Anyways, read a bunch more and it seems that Surround works just fine in FSX.Newegg has the Zotac regular clocked 560ti on for $222 with a $30 rebate. Tempted to bite the bullet. I have to sort out this AA - 2x High water issue in heavy weather, takes the fun out of flying.Glen

No edit button??Anyways, read a bunch more and it seems that Surround works just fine in FSX.Newegg has the Zotac regular clocked 560ti on for $222 with a $30 rebate. Tempted to bite the bullet. I have to sort out this AA - 2x High water issue in heavy weather, takes the fun out of flying.Glen

Well, first of all, what monitors do you have? Your monitors' highest resolution has alot to do in achieving highest wide screen resolution in surround mode.Right now, I am running it in windowed mode as it gives me highest resolution with bezel mangement.My setup is:21.5", 24", 22" (from left to right)i7 920 @4.0GzSSD for FSX8G RamWith surround, my FPS is roughly 25 to 35, in a PMDG 747 with most setting maxed.I haven't really played with any AA settings, but I will and let you know the results.Oh yeah, go with the 570 if you can.....Thanks,Avistudent

Hi AviStudent,All specs are in my sig, monitors are 19" 1280 x 1024. Ya, should probably look at more than the 560ti, the price is right though if it doesn't work out.Glen

I am running Nvidia surround at 5040 x 1050I see a 30% drop in frames going from 1 to 3 screens, I run everything fullscreen with NickN's visual settings (8xs AA)Windows only sees 1 big monitor and sees 1.5 GB of VRAM. which is the Vram of each card.THe more Vram on each card you can get the better as I find myself running out when I have alot of simultaneous addons. But FSX usually idles around 800mb - 1gb Vram usage.

My problem is the lack of understanding of how Surround works within FSX. I'm getting conflicting information from different places. It's my understanding that a Surround setup is looked at by the system as a single video card and you would then be able to apply different resoultions accordingly....

That is correct. The application, in this case FSX, doesn't have a clue that it's really using Surround mode. It doesn't even know that the system is using SLI since it's the operating system (driver), not the application, that utilize it. In the context of Surround mode you can therefore safely ignore all the "don't use two cards, FSX does not support SLI" comments that are constantly repeated here.FSX works very well in Surround mode. Bezel management works just like with Eyefinity, i.e. it creates additional custom resolutions available to the application.

Thanks for the added input,

Windows only sees 1 big monitor and sees 1.5 GB of VRAM. which is the Vram of each card.

This is something I still don't understand PingPong. Windows only seeing one large monitor I get, same as Eyefininty when you make a "group", taking in my case 3 monitors and making them one. What I don't get is the ram, why does it only see one card, what happens to the ram on the second, third, card. Or did I misunderstand what you were saying? Is each cards ram not available to the system, thus available to FSX?

The application, in this case FSX, doesn't have a clue that it's really using Surround mode.

I don't know why the application would. It's the system (driver) that "joins" the cards into one and presents it to all applications(?). That's why I still don't understand about the ram, unless I'm still getting it wrong. If I buy (2) GTX 560ti's for example that come with 1gb of ram each, would the system not present that as (1) video card with 2gb of ram available to use in FSX??Perhaps FSX does not benefit as much from SLI or CF like other applications because it's not GPU bound? I guess what I'm trying to achieve is better visuals in heavy weather with the same (speed) performance, it that makes sense. It's been years since I used an Nvidia card so I have nothing to compare visually, I only rely on what is said here. So if I can get similar or even slightly better performance, with much better IQ, then it may be better to do Surround. Glen

Why not go for the ASUS MARS II?Fastest kid on the block...Cheers,- jahman.

I am not a computer guru, but the way I understand it is thusthe most common type of SLI is AFR alternate frame rendering meaning one card draws a frame, then the next card draws a frame so that the first card can ready the next frame it is going to draw. So at any given time only one card is actually drawing whats on screen and therefore you only have one card's Vram as your total Vram at any one time. But the net result is an improvement in video performance.According to Wikipedia:Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR): One graphics processing unit (GPU) computes all the odd video frames, the other renders the even frames. (i.e. time division)@Jahman, me and Alainneedle were talking about that card, and I had some questions, I really don't see the advantage of it over two 580s in SLI. It costs the same as two cards anyway which kind of defeats the purpose(to me).