I'm thinking about doing a triple monitor setup not only for FSX but gaming in general. Not sure if my current setup is powerful enough to handle this. I currently have a 750watt power supply and a GTX 680 FTW 4GB card, and an i7-3770k OC to 4.5Ghz running on a 30" Apple Cinema DIsplay at 2560x1600. 

 

Which setup for FSX do you guys think would be better?

 

And for other games wouldn't I need a SLI setup such as Battlefield 3/4, etc? I like to play all my games on ultra or the most extreme settings possible. So I'm not sure how demanding 5760*1080 is vs 2560x1600.

how demanding 5760*1080 is vs 2560x1600.

1.5 time more : 6 220 800 vs 4 096 000 pixels to move around

Comparing the number of pixels and getting a magic number is a very bad way to meassure the performance difference.

The number of pixels has very little to do with it, there are so many more variables invovled.

Especially in FSX, the entire programming is so old and bad that the basic things like aerodynamics, wind calculation, sound, ATC, AI a/c, general programming logics and so on will eat most of the performance. The actual graphics and pixel drawing is just a tiny tiny part (although after all these years people still seem to keep the hope up that the next driver version or the next nvidia inspector will somehow solve all problems...).

 

Silly example: Start a fligh in FSX and note the FPS, create 4 views each being 1/4 of the screen, making the sum of them show exactly what your single view showed. When FSX is paused, you will see no difference. Unpause and you will se a 400% or worse performance degradation.

Number of pixels? The same!

 

Silly example yes. But so is comparing the number of pixels thinking it actually means something. Your GTX 680 is built to manage huge resolutions. On such hardware when FSX is configured correctly, you will basically se NO performance difference between e.g. 1920x1080 and 5760x1080. So to answer the original question, it's pretty much a matter of taste which kind of screen setup  you prefer.

I thought the more pixels you have the more processing power the cpu and gpu needs?

I'm completely hooked on my Sony Bravia 40" HDTV for FSX, but I'd be even happier if I could get a resolution to complement the size. Anyone know of any TV/Monitor in the 40" range offering 2560 X 1440 or 2560x1600?

Each pixel on a monitor, has to be computed by the CPU for every frame.

Adding more views on the same monitor does not increase the number of pixels to be computed. Hence no FPS impact.

But going to triple monitors means  the CPU now has to compute three times as many pixels!!!!!

Unless your CPU has unlimited capacity, triple monitors / triple views will negatively impact the ability to maintain a specific frame rate.

 But there are some neat optical considerations that make a lower frame rate very acceptable when displaying carefully integrated multiple views! 

january

January, we have had this argumentation so many times now. I'm happy that you're happy with your setup, but I feel sorry for the guys who come here and ask about going triple screen and you give them such misleading advices that seem to be based on hardware basics from the 80's, and your theory about the "optical considerations" about the CPU only being able to update one screen at the time and therefor you can run with 15 FPS and still get a smooth flight etc.
 

"Adding more views on the same monitor does not increase the number of pixels to be computed. Hence no FPS impact."

 

Seriously? I'm glad you gave this example because we can all verify your theory in about one minute.
Start any flight and take note of your FPS. Add another 49 new VC views or so (Views,New view,VC) on top of each other on the same screen so that only the one on top will show. Same number of pixels. FPS? I would guess around 0.5. Actually after a few added views your machine would probably so slow that you will get the point and give up. Anyone can try this and see how it matches your theory about "same number of pixels = same FPS".

"triple monitors / triple views will negatively impact the ability to maintain a specific frame rate"

It will have some impact, but without going into details of why the CPU ahas very little to do with the numbe of pixels (I tried to explain this for you many times before), how do you explain that when I use a single screen (1920x1080) I get around 50 FPS. Switching to five screens on the same computer (3 screens in surround mode plus 2 auxiliary screens for panels) I get around 45 FPS in the exact same flight? This is a marginal difference but with your theory I should get around 10 FPS.

I've built multiple screen setups for several years, including SoftTH, Triplehad2go, Eyefinity, Surround mode using two GTX 580 cards in SLI and now using a single GTX 780. The FPS difference between using a single screen and using three screens in all these setups have been marginal.

All you guys using Surround mode or Eyefinity, are you really flying around with 10-15 FPS? I doubt it.
Yes FSX is an ancient software and it will not utilize modern hardware in an optimal way, but there is absolute no reason to count the number of pixels and be affraid of going multiple screens .

Two final notes:
1) The number of pixels is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to performance in a game engine. There is so much more going on behind the scenes and this work is the heavy part in FSX. (On modern games with an optimized game engine core, the balance is very much shifted though.)
2) It can take an enormous amount of computing power (relatively speaking) to generate a pixel that is later dicarded and newer shown. The example above with the 50 views is an extreme example of this - we're asking FSX to basically run 50 simulations at a time but we choose to ignore 49 of them. The CPU has absolutely no idea that this is going on. This will happen to a certain extent all the time during a normal single screen flight as well.

The point is, you can not just say that if X pixels give you a certain FPS, then Y pixels would give you another particular FPS. It's more complicated than that. Fortunately, since many people have been using multiple screens in FSX for years now, there are a lot real FPS numbers to compare. Real world numbers that actually mean something instead of making up your own theory that makes you go "Don't do it!".

I'm completely hooked on my Sony Bravia 40" HDTV for FSX, but I'd be even happier if I could get a resolution to complement the size. Anyone know of any TV/Monitor in the 40" range offering 2560 X 1440 or 2560x1600?

Sorry guys - wasn't trying to be off - topic... I posted this to the wrong thread. (Got confused as to where I was using the mobile version of the site)