# Is Triple monitor gaming worth it?



## DeadlyTitan (Jul 12, 2019)

How would the 1080ti (MSI GTX 1080 ti Gaming X Trio) perform with a triple 27" 1440p monitor setup? The resolution would be 7680 x 1440

I wont be playing any competitive games in that setup, it'll be mostly older games like

Skyrim Legenday Edition (Heavily Modded)
Metro redux
NFS MW 2012
NFS Rivals,
Mass effect 1, 2, 3
The Bureau - XCOM Declassified
XCom EU With Long War Mod
State Of Decay 1, 2
The Amazing Spider Man 1, 2
Spider Man Shattered Dimensions
Spider Man Web Of Shadows
Borderlands 1, 2
Crysis 1, 2, 3
Dead Space 1, 2, 3
Wolfenstein - The New Order
Darksiders 1, 2 (3 maybe idk)
Dawn of War Dark Crusade and Soulstorm
Dungeon Siege 1, 2
Bulletstorm
Deadpool
Divine Divinity and its series
Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning
Lichdom Battlemage
Shadowrun Dragon Fall, Hong kong
Singularity
The Sims 4
Torchlight 1, 2
Warhammer 40.000 - Space Marine
YAIBA - Ninja Gaiden Z
Dragon Ball - Xenoverse 1, 2
Dragon Age 1, 2, 3
Dragon's Dogma - Dark Arisen
Dying Light
Enemy Territory Quake Wars
Fallout 3
Gears Of War 1
Ghost Recon - Future Soldier
Halo 1, 2
Left 4 Dead 1, 2
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1, 2
X-Men Legends 2 -
Metal Gear Solid V - The Phantom Pain
NieR - Automata
Pillars of Eternity
Rocket League
Silver Fall
Sniper Elite 1, 2, 3
Sins Of A Solar Empire - Rebellion (With Mods)
Space Hulk Death Wing
Zoo Tycoon 2
Burnout Paradise
Prototype

Well sorry for the long list of games but you get the gist of things, am sure i've missed a lot more games that i'd like to play but yea these are the kinda games i'd want to play on my triple monitor setup.

I currently have

1x 24" 1080p @ 60hz monitor
1x 27" 1440p GSync @ 165 hz monitor

I use the Gsync one when playing competitive games like

Planetside 2
Paladins
Renegade X
Mech Warriors Living Legends

and i will keep using it as my main monitor for all competitive gaming, its just i'd switch to the triple monitor setup when playing games that needs immersion as I really dont care about the FPS in such games as long as they are above 30 FPS (i prefer eye candy in these games), i just want to know how the card will perform and if its even worth it, please  do note that, I've never played on a triple monitor or even a dual monitor setup so i have zero experience but i do have a 55" 4k Samsung TV that i play my games on from the couch when i want more relaxed gaming.  Thank you


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## blued (Jul 12, 2019)

Just get a 21:9 wide-screen (3440x1440p). Much less hassle, no pillars or separation of image and much easier to run than 3 x1440p.


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## DeadlyTitan (Jul 12, 2019)

blued said:


> Just get a 21:9 wide-screen (3440x1440p). Much less hassle, no pillars or separation of image and much easier to run than 3 x1440p.



I love the curvature provided by triple monitors, covering my entire LOS, at least most of my LOS. I did tried 21:9 before buying my main monitor and although it had a curve, it didn't really fill my entire LOS. or atleast not immersion enough for me, also I've heard that not many games (especially older ones) really support 21:9, 32:9 aspect ratio so i kinda backed away from them during my initial purchase.


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## EarthDog (Jul 12, 2019)

1080ti will choke at that res.


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## neatfeatguy (Jul 12, 2019)

I like gaming across my 3 monitors. 5760x1080 (bezel correction it's actually 6000x1080).

I do fine on games that run well on that resolution with my 980Ti and i5-4670k. I tend to mess with settings to keep everything I enjoy on high (such as view distance and as much detail option as I can) and some options on medium or maybe even low (such as AA/AF, shadows) that I don't really care about. I run most games 40-60fps and I enjoy it.

Some games work perfect for all menus and actual game play.
Some games have issues with in-game images (splash screens, load screens) or even videos/cut scenes not playing correctly, but actual game play is fine.
Some games will have issues with start menus/HUDs/in-game menus, but actual game play will be fine.
You'll just have to test each game out and see how things work.

Grim Dawn - I enjoy on my wide screen resolution.
Here's pic of the game at the start menu as it's stretched across all three monitors:





Here you see the loading screen, it's zoomed in (also, any cut-scenes are also zoomed in):




Here's how the actual game looks - no issues:




Out of your list, games I've played without much of an issue at this resolution are:

Borderlands 1, 2 (start menus are zoomed, takes a bit getting used to. everything else in game works great)
Skyrim (I didn't play much, but I think most things worked fine)
Divine Divinity: Original Sin (worked great)
Dying Light (was awesome playing at 5760x1080 - played through the game 5 or 6 times on various difficulties)
Pillars of Eternity (worked great)
Lichdom Battlemage (played it, don't recall if it was across 5760x1080 or just 1920x1080)
Sniper Elite v2, 3 and 4 (all played well, I don't recall any issues)

Any game that I don't utilize for whatever reason, I either play 1920x1080 full screen and the middle monitor is active, the other two go black or I do a windowed resolution of something such as 1680x1050 and play on the center screen while I have the other monitor(s) doing other things (website up, movie streaming, etc).

If you're okay with, at times, having to turn down settings a bit here and there to keep a high fps, I'd certainly say go for it.

I first thought the bezels would cause me issues, but when I'm gaming I rarely notice that they're there. The only game I do have issues with it is in Grim Dawn, when I'm hovering my mouse over items to compare stats, the bezels do get in the way. But I put up with it because I love the wide resolution.

My vote - go for it. Just be willing to accept you'll need to adjust settings on some games, you won't be able to run them maxed out and that some games just won't play well with it.


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## Mitchie23 (Jul 12, 2019)

It's not worth the price for most people, but everything is worth it if it's your preference.

If you're playing mostly race games, I think it would be a good idea.
It's quite a lot, but if you're doing some productive stuff aside from gaming, it's also a great way to multitask!

If you prefer realistic gaming experience, try triple monitor. Just make sure to upgrade your pc graphics and memory.


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## Toothless (Jul 12, 2019)

I went from 5760x1080 to 3440x1440 with my current specs and honestly, just get the single ultrawide.

1. Performance is so much better.
2. MUCH better game support/driver support.(Less issues)
3. Cleaner looking. (IMHO)



EarthDog said:


> 1080ti will choke at that res.


I ran BF1 damn near maxed with the triple-1080p and it was fine. I think anything Cryengine was what caused issues.


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## EarthDog (Jul 12, 2019)

Toothless said:


> I ran BF1 damn near maxed with the triple-1080p and it was fine. I think anything Cryengine was what caused issues.


7680x1440 is nearly double the pixels to push over 5760x1080, note. And almost 33% more than 4k. 

He may be ok in older titles but that GPU will struggle


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## ne6togadno (Jul 12, 2019)

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edit:
5120x1440 is ~7.37M pixels
4k is ~ 8.29M pixles
7680x1440 is ~11.05M pixels
so taking 4k performance of 1080ti as base @5120x1440 should be about 10-15% faster and @7680x1440 should be about 30-40% slower (calculated very roughly)


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## jesdals (Jul 12, 2019)

I am a fan - but its easy with AMD Eyefinity



But with all the eyecandy it takes its pull


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## Komshija (Jul 12, 2019)

To each his/her own. Personally, I dislike more than one monitor per PC, even more because the bezels (very visible and annoying screen separations, no matter if they are 1 cm or 0,1 cm) look beyond ridiculous. If you are really into these ultra wide monitors, look for a single monitor with 21:9 display ratio. GTX 1080 Ti will run such setup without any issues. 

Is regular 16:9 monitor worth such upgrade for gaming? In my opinion absolutely not. But if you want picture with better clarity, more defined colors and sharper image, it is definitely worth replacing outdated "gaming" TN or VA monitors with good IPS or PLS ones.


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Jul 12, 2019)

Im on the same boat as the others saying get a single ultrawide. However, that being said, I do have issues when I want to stream because OBS and the like doesnt support 3440x1440 so you basically have to zoom your game to compensate for the black bars which bugs the hell out of me. 

So if you want to stream, I would get a 1080p or a 4k monitor and use the other monitors for twitch chat.


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## DeadlyTitan (Jul 12, 2019)

neatfeatguy said:


> I like gaming across my 3 monitors. 5760x1080 (bezel correction it's actually 6000x1080).
> 
> I do fine on games that run well on that resolution with my 980Ti and i5-4670k. I tend to mess with settings to keep everything I enjoy on high (such as view distance and as much detail option as I can) and some options on medium or maybe even low (such as AA/AF, shadows) that I don't really care about. I run most games 40-60fps and I enjoy it.
> 
> ...





Mitchie23 said:


> It's not worth the price for most people, but everything is worth it if it's your preference.
> 
> If you're playing mostly race games, I think it would be a good idea.
> It's quite a lot, but if you're doing some productive stuff aside from gaming, it's also a great way to multitask!
> ...




Whoa yes Grim Dawn, how did i forget that one. it looks so cool.

I've always imagined playing games like Spider Man and Survival Horror games like State Of Decay, Dying Light, Dead Space and scenery games like Heavily modded skyrim, witcher and other RPG's would look sooo cool in triple monitor setup, but i was not sure if the 1080 ti is capable of pushing the pixels.  I am okay with turning down some settings to get desired fps but then again when i am playing in this mode, i'd be happy if i can get anything above 30 fps. Bezels would be no problem for me hopefully cause my current main monitor has very thin bezels (less than 1 cm) and am going to make sure the other monitors i am going to buy also have thin bezels.




Komshija said:


> To each his/her own. Personally, I dislike more than one monitor per PC, even more because the bezels (very visible and annoying screen separations, no matter if they are 1 cm or 0,1 cm) look beyond ridiculous. If you are really into these ultra wide monitors, look for a single monitor with 21:9 display ratio. GTX 1080 Ti will run such setup without any issues.
> 
> Is regular 16:9 monitor worth such upgrade for gaming? In my opinion absolutely not. But if you want picture with better clarity, more defined colors and sharper image, it is definitely worth replacing outdated "gaming" TN or VA monitors with good IPS or PLS ones.



My current main monitor is a 27" 1440p Gsync IPS display @ 165 hz and i absolutely love it, i'll be replacing my auxiliary monitors which are basic 24" 1080p @ 60hz to 27" 1440p ones to match my main monitor, ofc they wont be high refresh rate GScync ones, just normal 27" 1440p IPS displays to compliment my main monitor.

I've already mentioned that i do not use this setup when playing competitively, i'll be just using my main monitor for that. 


jesdals said:


> I am a fan - but its easy with AMD Eyefinity
> View attachment 126701
> But with all the eyecandy it takes its pull



Looks so good.


ne6togadno said:


> 49 inch CRG9 Dual QHD Curved QLED Gaming Monitor Monitors - LC49RG90SSNXZA | Samsung US
> 
> 
> Discover the latest features and innovations available in the 49 inches CRG9 Dual QHD Curved QLED Gaming Monitor. Find the perfect Monitors for you!
> ...



So just multiply GTX 1080 Ti 4K benchmarks with 0.6 just to be sure, thnx for the tip, that really helps.

I wonder since 5760×1080 (3x 1080p) is like 75% of 4k, i wonder how many more fps would we get compared to 4k benchmarks.


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## vega22 (Jul 12, 2019)

I have tried triple screen a few times. Personally I found uberwide to be a waste but running them portrait was great.


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## neatfeatguy (Jul 12, 2019)

vega22 said:


> I have tried triple screen a few times. Personally I found uberwide to be a waste but running them portrait was great.



I've been curious about trying my three screens in portrait, but I'm far too lazy to switch them around and remount them to give it a go. Perhaps it'll be something I try whenever I have to move my desk when the wife decides to finally pull the trigger on new flooring.

Ultrawide can takes some getting used to it for some people. In all honesty, if you're susceptible to motion sickness at all, it can feel very awkward (like how some people can't read a book when sitting in a moving car) or outright keep you from wanting to use that resolution.

It can also create an almost fisheye type visual effect on the far left and far right of your field of view, things become stretched out some and feel like it's zoomed in a bit. I'm not at home to take an actual picture of how 7 Days to Die looks across my monitors (actual pic, not an in-game screenshot), that I've been playing, but it's a good example of what I'm explaining. Here is an image I found online that kind of conveys what I'm trying to describe:





The center appears to look correct, but the further out you go to the left or right, the more the image starts to elongate and appear zoomed in. In 7DTD, I'll notice a zombie on my left or right monitor and it looks like it's nearly on top of my location, but when I turn and get the zombie in my straight line of sight it's realistically a good 30-40 meters out and not the 10-15 meters it appeared to be.

Not all games are as bad as how I see it in 7DTD, but you should expect to have it to some degree in a lot of games.


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## spectatorx (Jul 12, 2019)

If you will decide to go with it you will have two new friends: sli/crossfire and pcgamingwiki.

First for performance to handle such high resolution, second one to help you to configure games to run at such resolution and aspect ratio.

On your list of games i see for example prototype, this game is a mess even on standard setups, with such unusual configs as triple screen it will be even more mess. Bulletstorm is another crap from technical side of things (set 2px lower resolution to improve performance a lot, lol). I think another tech crap on that list is deadpool. Gears of war as heavily console title it has poor port on pc and is optimized for 16:9 resolutions.

So if you decide to go for it you have to embrace configs editing and be aware effects will not always be any good and far from satisfying.


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## EarthDog (Jul 12, 2019)

spectatorx said:


> frienemys: sli/crossfire


FTFY 

I fyou don't have to, don't. It is not worth the hassle.


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## spectatorx (Jul 12, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> FTFY
> 
> If you don't have to, don't. It is not worth the hassle.


Ye, multigpus have always been hit or miss and a lot of hassle. Personally i've never owned crossfire but i've read enough about both: crossfire and sli to not recommend them. Anyway at this kind of resolution there is no other option, single gpu can't handle such task, even with some elder games.


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## neatfeatguy (Jul 12, 2019)

spectatorx said:


> If you will decide to go with it you will have two new friends: sli/crossfire and pcgamingwiki.
> 
> First for performance to handle such high resolution, second one to help you to configure games to run at such resolution and aspect ratio.
> 
> ...


There shouldn't be a reason to go with SLI - unless the OP really feels the need. Some games will run surprisingly well with a single card and out of all the SLI configurations I've ran over the years, I've experienced very few issues. However, with SLI/Crossfire support in DX12 it requires coding directly into the game and not on the driver side from Nvidia or AMD, so overall multi-GPU support for such things is becoming less and less on newer games. I wouldn't really recommend any SLI/Crossfire since the 10xx series came out simply because of this reason.

I run my 980Ti for 5760x1080. I don't max out many games, but have a good mix of high/medium settings at this resolution. If he's got a 1080Ti, according to TPU's review on the 1080Ti FE, it gives almost twice the performance over a stock 980Ti on 4k. A single card should be able to run older games at the 7680x1440 resolution on a mix of medium/high settings and still pull 30-60fps, depending on settings and the game.

As for some games not supporting widescreen properly, or at all, you maybe able to make use of this program.



			Flawless Widescreen - Gaming the way it should be!
		


Whoever created this little program, I've made use of it in the past for a couple of games on the list of games it supports and it got the games working correctly on 5760x1080. I'm not sure if it would be something to use for 7680x1440. I don't think the software has been updated for a while, but what little searching I did find folks say they get it to work with Windows 10.

I used flawlesswidescreen on these games:

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Mass Effect games
Dishonored
FarCry 3 is listed on their supported games, but I never used it for FarCry 3. I don't recall having any issues playing 5760x1080 on FarCry 3, other than the fact when I first played the game on 5760x1080 I had GTX 570s in SLI and I was severally hindered with the 1.25GB VRAM. I moved to my 980Ti and I've been doing just fine with her on the 5760x1080 gaming.

The original Gears of War on PC - that was a hot mess that ran poorly with multi-core CPUs (at least with AMD, that's what I had when I played the game last) and didn't do nice with SLI (had 8800 GTS 512MB in SLI at the time). I had to do a good bit of tweaking in the .ini file to get the game to run a lot better. I think I saved the directions on what changes were needed, probably copied to a CD/DVD with other game patches/updates for old physical copies of games that I still own.....not to mention you need the patch that fixes the expired certificate, otherwise the game won't launch (or you have to change the date/time on your PC to a time before January 28th, 2009 - if memory serves me right).

Anyway, flawlesswidescreen might be something to look into for some of the games you're wanting to play, if you go the route of 3 monitors. But, I can't say the program will work with Windows 10, I've only used it on Windows 7.

*Here's a link to my 980Ti benchmark against my 570s in SLI here on TPU*:








						GTX 570 SLI vs GTX 980Ti
					

*Edited in Sniper Elite GTX 980Ti results*  I finally made the jump. While the GTX 570s in SLI could still run most games around max on 1080p, they struggled to run at 5760x1080 for some games I've played over the past couple years. I opted to go with Zotac since I've had good luck with their...




					www.techpowerup.com
				




I ran a comparison between the two setups at the same resolution & settings I found games to be playable on the 570s in SLI. I guess I just wanted to include this to give reference on a few games that run exceptionally well on a 980Ti at 5760x1080 with specific settings.


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## Grog6 (Jul 12, 2019)

I do triple monitor eyefinity in driving games; cars have the same disruptions as the bezels from the A pillars, so it's no prob.

FPS games, the bezel loss bothers me, although you'd think it would be the same.


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## vega22 (Jul 12, 2019)

@neatfeatguy 

Driving and flight Sims are really where the uberwide comes into its own for me. But with how cheap you can pick up be headsets like the pimax....it is hard for me to say trip screens is the better choice.

But for me all other types of use, be it gaming or productivity, portrait is teh sex. In game you don't get the blur on the edges nor do you find yourself constantly looking from side to side like your cursor is a tennis ball back and forth around the court.

You get lots of real estate all with in easy viewing space you know. That is why I think it's the chicken dinner.


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## DeadlyTitan (Jul 14, 2019)

I've tried some of the above games with nvida DRS 4.0 to see what frames i'd get in that res and i'd say am not really impressed while usually hovering above 30 FPS in most games with max settings the games did felt sluggish. I dunno, i cant put my finger on it but the games felt slower and more sluggish and less responsive even though the frame rate was stable, maybe that's cause i am used to high fps usually and that further throws me into confusion, if i dont like the frame rate i am getting then is it even worth it? i dunno i just need some convincing. Maybe if i turn down some settings down i might get playable frame rate and smoother game idk.


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## advanced3 (Jul 15, 2019)

5760x1080 back in BF3 days with 660ti sli. 3 -120HZ Acer monitors... Remember Nvidia 3D...ya.
That Logitech trackball mouse too...


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## Kissamies (Jul 27, 2019)

Doom @ 5760x1080 with GTX 980, when there was lot of action, fps dropped to mid-30s, even with medium..











Can't try it now with R9 290 Crossfire since the oldest screen which I had, died. So running with two monitors atm.


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## jesdals (Jul 28, 2019)

My Ryzen 3800x setup did give a bit more FPS


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