New Machine Set up for FSX

[shelpster66]

Greetings everyone!!

Been looking around the forum and like seeing folks of like minds doing exactly what I like to do.....good stuff.
Just built a machine not that long ago that I wanted to serve as a gaming machine....what's funny is it's now more powerful than my server. But that serves its own purpose and has nothing to do with the new set up.
I want to build up a small flight sim to run FSX with and this is what I came up with....

Specs-
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
ASUS M4A88T-M AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 Desktop Memory
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Video Card (not OC'd)
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (not OC'd)
CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX 650W Power Supply

Using a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro Joystick at the moment.......Saitek will probably be getting quite a bit of my cash soon..

Now the only problem that I am having at this point is the video card. The machine itself has plenty of power.....I do, however, have 3 monitors that cannot be spanned due to hardware/software of the GeForce card not allowing it. So, I guess I'm in the market for a new video card from AMD that has eyefinity. From what I have read, this is the software that can span the screen from a single grouping of monitors as long as it isn't run in full screen mode.....do I have that right? which sucks, because the card I have runs just about anything I want it to.

I look forward to any responses and will continue reading to see what I can do to make the project a success.

MS

[Dawid Szczeblewski]

Hi Shelpster
Its strange that Nvidia software does not allow you to do that..
Aren't there two DVI's and two HDMI ports at the back of your card?? Depending on variant you may also have 2x DVI and one mini HDMI.
If you are going to buy a new card I would quote Aaron and go for the GTX 570, I have three of these for my 3 visual clients plus i7 2700k each and so far it takes anything FSX can throw at it.. it stutters terribly once I use Wideview but thats another story I am trying to solve.
For FSX I would strongly advice Nvidia cards as they handle anti aliasing and rain/snow etc better. At least that was the case between ATI 6950 and GTX 570, I tried both

Eyefinity is just the AMD equivalent of Nvidia surround, and is a part of the driver/software bundle that comes with the card. It doesnt matter if its fullscreen or not, both Nvidia surround and AMD eyefinity allow the desktops to be extended, so any modern card from both vendors should manage at least 3 monitors, I am pretty sure yours can do that too
Hope this helps somewhat.

[shelpster66]

Thanks Dawid,
I think I am going to keep the invidia card. The other one I tried wasn't really any better than the Nvidia. I'm going to return it and just stay with what I have and try to make it work. It does have 2 DVI, 1 HDMI, and a video port. I will work with it again to see if I can get it to do the surround. Thanks again for the reply.

[Neil Hewitt]

I don't think you'll get NVidia Surround working with a single-GPU card in the 5xx range. IIRC, only the GeForce 680 upwards supports Surround for 3 monitors on a single GPU. Anything below that, you need a second GPU to enable the third monitor, no matter how many outputs you have on the card. So either a dual-GPU card (like the GTXs) or two cards in SLI are required. You'll either have to buy another matching NVidia card (ideally another 550 TI) or step up to a GTX. However, since your MB has only a single PCIe x16 slot, you'd have to ditch that as well to go SLI. So if you insist on sticking with NVidia, a GTX probably makes the most sense, unless you really want to splash the cash on a 680.

[Dawid Szczeblewski]

Thats correct Neil, I wrongly assumed that Nvidia will be the same as ATI with multi monitor setup. Agree that 680 would be the best choice here.
I was able to have 3 monitors on all of my my ATI cards, only downside was the HDMI sound wouldnt work with 3 monitors.