Hi all, first post here but will probably end up spending more time here than is good for me. I've been tasked with helping putting together a flight sim for the local air cadet sqdn at which I'm a civilian instructor. I'm fairly pc literate, been building pcs for about 10 years now, but pcs specifically for the use of flight sims is virgin territory for me.the system the powers that be have in mind is at least a 3 screen setup using the resolutions in the title. I'll be using the following hadware with these:Intel I5 sandybridge, overclocked to around 4.2ghz - 4.5ghzAsus P8Z68V2 x 4gb DDR3 memory (not decided on brand yet)850w - 1000w psu (good quality for stable 12v rails)1t/b internal harddrivehuge case, plenty of fans (probably coolermaster CM690)Saitek yolk, throttles and rudder pedalsWin 7 (64 bit, it'll run some other flight games as well)and lastly, an nvidia graphics card.I was initiallly thinking of going ATI 6950 Xfire, BUT, having seen that virtually no-one here would recommend ATI, I've decided that Nvidia is the way to go, which leaves the question, which one?Would a GTX 570 / 580 have enough grunt to power all three screens to for acceptable smoothness (I get the impression that framerate is not as important as "smoothness), run with at least X4/ X8 AA with the ingame graphical settings set reasonably high (or so it at least looks nice), would one of these cards 570/ 580 be able to run three screens smoothly or would I be looking at some form of Sli?They might even decide to have a forth screen for the instrument panel, so could this be run from a secondary card, say 9800gt, or am I expecting too much?Sorry about the long post but I needed to try and get as much relevant info across as possible.What do people here think/ advise?

You have the same resolution as me. How were you proposing to drive the three monitors with one card? I dont think that the resolution is available with TH2GO so you have to use two nVidia cards in SLi (or maybe a GTX590) as far as I know. Personally I use 2xGTX580 with no problem.

You have the same resolution as me. How were you proposing to drive the three monitors with one card? I dont think that the resolution is available with TH2GO so you have to use two nVidia cards in SLi (or maybe a GTX590) as far as I know. Personally I use 2xGTX580 with no problem.

This is what I was asking as I'm only familiar with ATI cards, not Nvidia (I haven't owned one for years). Do you think there would enough graghical power with 2 x 570 in Sli? I reckon 2 x GTX 580 might be pushing the envelope financially as it were.

HiI couldnt say whether performance would be adequate but a few 560's and 580' are listed here: https://docs.google....=CMSSocoI#gid=0Maybe there is enough info to get an idea.

I've been trying to make the decision on exactly the same type setup....The one factor which keeps luring me towards ATI Eyefinity is that I only need one GPU vs Nvidia SLI (just not real keen on shelling out several hundred dollars more for a duplicate GTX). The one factor that keeps me from pulling the trigger though, is all this chatter about the tradeoff in performance/quality going from Nvidia to ATI.I've not yet seen nor heard from enough reliable sources which convinces me as to whether there is an actual sacrifice to be made and whether it's large enough to even notice. Don't get me wrong, I love my 560ti and would be really happy if it offered something similar to Eyefinity (and T2go hasn't made me a believer either considering I'd rather just get another 560ti). It would keep me with Nvidia in a heartbeat because it's proven to be a real performer! Until then, I'm pondering all options, since the true goal is good quality three screen immersion :)Either way, please let us know what decision you make...it might prove very helpful. Thanks in advance and good luck ;)Cheers,

I can't advise re cards- other than to say that I have been happy for many years with 2 GeForce FX5200 (AGP & PCI) cards powering triple monitors on my ancient AMD 1.8 GHz system.However I can advise you to persue the idea- once you have flown with triple views there is no turning back.Re performance: you need to ensure that the outer views- LFwd & RFwd are adjusted a few degrees to compensate for the width of the bezels separating the monitors. This is done in Panel Cfg for FS9 and I believe in Camera for FSX.The result is similar to the views you see in a car- side windows views always separated from windshield view by a narrow slice of scenery behind the posts that is never seen by the driver. The brain then sees the whole as a "single" very wide image.I set up FS with a single monitor/view, adjusting settings to get 30-50 FPS. Opening a second view causes a drop of about 30% and a third view increases that to 50% or 15-25 FPS.Sounds bad until you study the QUALITY of the triple wide pic- It is just as good at 15 as at 30 FPS! How can I say that? Just suddenly delete the outer views while in stable flight- FPS jumps back up but there is no detectable change in image quality in the remaining middle view!But to achieve this you MUST accurately adjust the outer view angles so there is really only a single very wide pic.It works because only one view can be updating at any moment (there is only only ONE CPU !) - the other two views are static- hence 2/3 of the whole scene is always stopped or perfectly smooth!!Search the AVSIM forums for "multi monitors"- lots written about this two or three years ago.ARPS- You will likely be surprised at how your approaches & landings improve when you have a field of view that approximates normal human vision!