Anyone have multiple monitors? I ran into something this weekend and I’m curious if anyone else has. Apparently, my 2080ti has trouble running 3 monitors at 2160p with the 8kX. Had a heck of a time getting all three monitors to 4k at all, adding the headset just didn’t want to happen.
It occurred to me that running 3 4k monitors might require a little more out of a video card than I thought, which, on hindsight, doesn’t seem so surprising, but i thought I’d throw this out there and see what y’all had to say?
Took me almost 11 hours to get 1@1080, 2@2160 and the 8kX. nVidia loves turning ports off ‘arbitrarily’! I still have an hdmi port that will NOT turn on no matter what I do.
Officially, the RTX 2080 Ti framebuffer can accommodate just enough horizontal and vertical resolution for 8k (4x 4k monitors) resolution in total.
My own setup - two 1080p screens (actually 2048x1152 but usually in 1080p mode these days), one 4k screen, and the Pimax Vision 8kX headset - has always made wonder about how I am quite obviously getting away with breaking that spec. Somehow, it seems the VR headset doesn’t count toward that limit, perhaps because it is imposed in software to make people buy ‘professional’ cards for big wall displays and media industry video editing.
That said, I wouldn’t count on things like this working. A good part of why I have been hesitant to consider replacing my 1080p screens with 4k monitors is continuing to standardize on something that works with these use cases (and VNC into them).
I seriously wonder if the RTX 3000 series can handle the setup you are proposing @Strydr ! If you or anyone else manage to get a full 8k display and a Pimax Vision 8kX connected to an RTX 3000 series card, please let me know and highlight me too!
That’s what I had and I decided to take advantage of the absurdly low prices on tv’s and go all 4k. I have some software that I use that has a cow over the different resolutions. The main one is Winstep Xtreme but there are some other issues with other software as well.
From my weekend, I would say, emphatically: “Don’t!!” Not worth the trouble or the money.
I used to run those three monitors in nVidia surround (5760x1080, i think) but the nVidia control panel just crashes to desktop when I try now, ever since I upgraded from the 1080ti to the 2080ti. I miss it, it was a great way to play pancake games!
Ah, but I am actually sometimes at least slightly limited by this amount of ‘screen real estate’, especially when in VR. I fear it is only a matter of time before I have to abandon this conveniently diverse arrangement of monitors for an absolute maximum of resolution.
So the sooner this actually works, the less likely I am going to have to jump into this without any idea what the workarounds are.
I was thinking of running a headless hdmi plug for more VR real estate but now I’m thinking not, lol! You might be able to get away with it tho…
Where’s those dang 3090’s? By the time we can actually buy one nVidia will be on the 4 or 5000 series!
Well I am happy for this thread as I want to put a large TV on the wall in front of my simpit as I only use the monitor to be able to see the desk top to click on stuff like Discord or SRS stuff or to start DCS (or ED). The little monitor I have is a bit too small and was thinking a 1080 TV at about 60" or so would work well for that as most of the time my 8KX is on my head. I just do not want to take away any FPS!
I’m not an expert in this but I would say that if you stay with the 1080p, you should be fine. The 4k takes a bit more power.
(just to cover the basics, your computer couldn’t care less if your 1080p monitor is 18" or 80", it’s still pumping the same number of pixels (1920x1080) so there won’t be any performance difference.)
Having said that, I didn’t notice any difference in performance from adding that 4k, but the jury is still out. Meaning that I’m still monitoring things for any difference.
Desktop screen resolution does NOT have a statistically significant effect on performance except in very rare cases (ie. VDToolbox and that seems affect only me). I have extensively tested with FPSVR. Not even a 0.3ms difference, in the most demanding, or the least demanding, VR apps.
What may cause problems is a disabled monitor, physically connected, but disabled in the MSW OS. SteamVR historically did not like that, though these days, it seems not to matter.
So you’re saying that adding that 4k monitor should have no impact on the fps of my VR experiences?
Interesting! That would correspond with what I’m encountering but I have to say that I’m surprised!
Correct. Zero impact. None whatsoever. Makes no difference at all.
Makes perfect sense really. The frame buffer on the GPU output is a minuscule pile of silicon that is either fully utilized, or not. Just two or three sets of memory cells for each pixel that might get output on the largest supported screen. All the real number crunching happens on all those cores, which are really more like ~2000x ordinary CPU cores than anything else, busy drawing 3D lines and mapping textures to them (THAT part is expensive, not outputting to the monitor).
On top of that, the frame buffers get flipped while the GPU is busy rendering the next frame already. Zero impact on frame rendering rate at all.
More realistically, modern GPUs have a lot of resources in these areas even beyond all that which are only ‘allowed’ to be used on some cards and not others (meaning we can’t get everything we want on a single device solely because it is locked out).
basically what @mirage335 said… also, you can reduce mirror resolution in PE to verify this for yourself. Btw, im running a 4K plus a UWHD (256x1440) in parallel to my 8KX on a 1080Ti
I also have a 2080ti with a 32:9 5120x144 and two 1080p screens. It will only let me run the 32:9 and one 1080p monitor + my 5k+ otherwise windows bluescreens when I start the Headset.
Does refresh rate matter? Because my 32:9 is 240hz and HDR and the 1080p monitors are 144hz.
Cannot make all three monitors work with the 5K no matter what.
You should be able to change the refresh rate/resolution for that other panel in Windows. Set it for something more normal and see if it works then. Picture would look like crap on the monitor but it would answer your question. -note that I’ve never even seen a monitor like that so I’m just assuming that you can change things like a normal one.
