3 screens is my dream.

[Jovial Mobius]

Hey all,
I wanted to see if I could McGyver a racing rig for as close to zero as possible. It ain't gonna be zero, but it will have a couple in the number. My main concern is the PC. Can I get the internals right. The GPU is a Quadro 5000 fast fast for CAD and such but not for gaming. It's in a Lenovo D30 Thinkstation E5 2680 0. 32 core 16 thread 64 G ram. 2 Trb storage used by my cousin to produce animation for all sorts of stuff. Movies, ads, etc. He upgraded and gave it to me. It would seem to be a PITA converting it to a gaming PC. There is not much in the form of good info on the subject floating on the web. I am going to try and get it done anyway. I think I found a couple cards that can get around 100 or more fps at 1080p little less at 4k. The benchmark tests showed the GTX4090 and the RTX3060Ti getting 100% pass on Forza 5 at 100+- fps at 1080p, 90+ at 1440 with no tears , artifacts, during the tests. We shall see. RPC3 is installed, getting closer. Welcome to the puzzle factory. I'm digging the challenge. Well that's it right now. If anyone has any input, suggestions, advice, direction I am open for it. Many minds is better than a single one.
Later
JovialMobius

 

[Daz555]

Does this PC have standard internals or is it a load or proprietary crap that is difficult to upgrade?

If it is more on the standard side of things and the PSU has the available power connectors needed for a modern GPU then it might be relatively easy. If not your first port of call might be a new PSU.

For a new PSU I will refer you back to my first sentence.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

Does this PC have standard internals or is it a load or proprietary crap that is difficult to upgrade?

If it is more on the standard side of things and the PSU has the available power connectors needed for a modern GPU then it might be relatively easy. If not your first port of call might be a new PSU.

For a new PSU I will refer you back to my first sentence.

Hey Daz.,
Thanks for replying back.
Everything is pretty standard, I have a 1200watt power supply . The two cards I found need less even at top draw. i think where the snag might be is when I swap out the Quadro 5000 out for a different card. I am hoping that it will recognize it. I invited the specs of the D30 : CPU, RAM, etc. It then listed cards compatible , 10 or so. I ran all of them through a benchmark program to see which had the highest score in regards to ability and quality. Only 2 the 4090 and the 3060Ti scored 100 and a couple others were in high 90s. The top 2 could render at 100+ fps all the way up to 1440. My set up will be 1080p. It's looking for them and the price now. I have a friend that knows a lot more about building game PCs ( 50+) and rig set ups. I just hope it all works out. I will be watching and learning from him. I will call him now and run the 2 cards by him to see what he says. Will update.
JovialMobius

 

[Daz555]

Cool.

I would add that the 4090 and 3060Ti are utterly MILES apart from each other in terms of performance so I can't quite fathom a use case where one might be in a position to have to carefully pick between one and the other.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

Cool.

I would add that the 4090 and 3060Ti are utterly MILES apart from each other in terms of performance so I can't quite fathom a use case where one might be in a position to have to carefully pick between one and the other.

I got an RX 580 popped it right in and I'm up and running . No issues as of now. My CPU accepted it. Running more tests . I paid 95.00 for the 580. My resident computer builder genius recommended it and said the price was good. My 3 stands arrived so I have to do some rearranging to make room.

 

[daan]

I got an RX 580 popped it right in and I'm up and running . No issues as of now. My CPU accepted it. Running more tests . I paid 95.00 for the 580. My resident computer builder genius recommended it and said the price was good. My 3 stands arrived so I have to do some rearranging to make room.

The RX580 is fine for one monitor at 1080p. It's the graphics card I've got for my one monitor setup, but I don't think it could power 3 monitors with an acceptable framerate.

EDIT: Yup.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

Dude, no way.
That's not a good sign. What was the reason? In your words not the vid. I think I have more than enough RAM 65Gs plus the extra 32 cores added on by my cousin who used it for his animation business. That's going to suck if it can't handle it.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

Going to find out if it can do 3 screens. If not I'll box it and post it for sale. Any suggestions on what I should get. ?

 

[Daz555]

The RX 580 was an AMD top tier card 6 years ago but it was at a time when AMD were utterly miles behind nVidia in performance. nVidia's top card from the year before (GTX 1080) absolutely smoked it. RX580 is a low end card by today's standards.

Get a modern GPU if you want to play modern games. Remember that triple 1080p is 6.2 megapixels which is really not too far behind 4K (UHD) gaming at 8.3 megapixels so for triple screens you are looking at a mid to mid-high end GPU - certainly if playing modern games.

Personally, I would not go below RTX 3070 levels of performance for 1080p triples. But as you have the 580 already you may as well test it first before you sell it on.

 

[sesselpupser]

@Jovial Mobius apart from FH5 you haven't mentioned which games/Sims you want to play. The card you have will most likely run old sims on triples, like Race 07, rFactor etc. - I used to play those on 3x1080p monitors on a GTX 680 back in 2011. If you want to do it cheap, I suggest lowering your expectations and standards, keep the hardware you have and try lower end software instead. If you're anything like me you'll be so impressed with it you'll work out how to upgrade the hardware to keep up with newer games one way or another a little later on.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

@Jovial Mobius apart from FH5 you haven't mentioned which games/Sims you want to play. The card you have will most likely run old sims on triples, like Race 07, rFactor etc. - I used to play those on 3x1080p monitors on a GTX 680 back in 2011. If you want to do it cheap, I suggest lowering your expectations and standards, keep the hardware you have and try lower end software instead. If you're anything like me you'll be so impressed with it you'll work out how to upgrade the hardware to keep up with newer games one way or another a little later on. My wheel is a

I have PS3 games that I really enjoy like Burnout Paradise, NFS hot pursuit, carbon, The run, undercover, GT 5, GT 6 anniversary, Dirt 3, and GTA San Andreas. I have a bunch of call of duty titles also. I'm mostly into the driving Sims now. I have downloaded RPC3 ,set up an account, bought an LG hw14ns16 burner needed to do what needs to be done, and scaled back on the screens to 2 55" LG qled TV's. My PC is a Lenovo D30, E5 2680, 64g ram, 2 Tb storage ,rx 580 (for now) . I'll run the screens out of the monitor ports to the dedicated HDMI ports on the TV's with 6' change overs , I have Google fiber using 15' Ethernet cat 8. What else might I have overlooked? One more thing, the process of dumping my titles to the emulator is a bit confusing, I have watched a lot, really a lot, of vids on it . I concerned I could screw up bigly. Any advice to make it more clear?
Thanks to all of you for helping me attain multiple screens. My wheel is a Logitech GT force. I really like it, it's good enough for my needs.

 

[sesselpupser]

I have PS3 games that I really enjoy like Burnout Paradise, NFS hot pursuit, carbon, The run, undercover, GT 5, GT 6 anniversary, Dirt 3, and GTA San Andreas. I have a bunch of call of duty titles also. I'm mostly into the driving Sims now. I have downloaded RPC3 ,set up an account, bought an LG hw14ns16 burner needed to do what needs to be done, and scaled back on the screens to 2 55" LG qled TV's. My PC is a Lenovo D30, E5 2680, 64g ram, 2 Tb storage ,rx 580 (for now) . I'll run the screens out of the monitor ports to the dedicated HDMI ports on the TV's with 6' change overs , I have Google fiber using 15' Ethernet cat 8. What else might I have overlooked? One more thing, the process of dumping my titles to the emulator is a bit confusing, I have watched a lot, really a lot, of vids on it . I concerned I could screw up bigly. Any advice to make it more clear?
Thanks to all of you for helping me attain multiple screens. My wheel is a Logitech GT force. I really like it, it's good enough for my needs.

Well, you aren't going to be able to play emulated games on triple monitors unless there's some sort of mod or hack I'm not aware of, if you want to play GT5 or 6 on triple monitors you could get a PS3 and copy of the game per screen though. Emulation isn't quite what you think when it comes to performance, it's tempting to assume that if one PS3 game runs perfectly then they all will but that's not the case, look at RPCS3's compatibility database and you'll see some very demanding games running well and some lightweight ones not even loading correctly. Generally speaking the more popular games that were never available on other platforms get the most attention from the people who make the emulators run smoothly and emulators from decades before the PS3 are still in active development today so they're always improving.

The two things most relevant to your ability to run a game on triples are your CPU and graphics card, your RAM, storage and internet are of little relevance - if they're enough to run the game on one screen, they're enough to run it on three, but as you're drawing more of the game (since you can see more) and drawing three times the pixels, the bits of your PC where the performance is measured in FLOPS (as in, the CPU and GPU) and the VRAM are what matter most.

Generally speaking, triple monitors are very hit and miss, some games know what to do with them but A LOT don't have a clue, and unfortunately for you, your graphics card is from before the era of ultrawide monitors that incentivised game developers to make games that can run on an arbitrary aspect ratio (but even then, lots still don't and yet others have limits) so performance in such games is going to be not great. As such I think if you go back in time and find racing sims from and before the year your card was made, you'll probably get good performance. Do you have a Steam account? I'd start there - don't start dumping games if your expectation is to be up and playing them on your PC with three monitors and a racing wheel, I would recommend starting with something easier just so you can get on with the business of actually having fun first, then you can try to tackle that stuff later. Learn to walk before you run, you know?

Also, I can tell you from experience that very few games know what to do with a racing wheel either. I actually tried the PC version of Burnout Paradise on my old triple monitor setup with a racing wheel (I think I had my G27 by then but it could've been on my old Driving Force Pro) and it was beyond awful...

I learned pretty much everything I know now about Windows computers from those days of tinkering, there's a lot to learn but generally a lot of people have tried and succeeded to do what you're trying to do so you'll find tons of info on Google and forums like this. Best of luck, it's a lot of fun but you do have to be something of a masochist. When you've got it running you can then think about TrackIR, FreeTrack or maybe even VR! Then you can get a better wheel, maybe modify the rig a little to accommodate a flight stick... and button boxes... Yeah, there's a reason I put my DIY rig in the bin, it got a bit silly.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

Thanks for the reply. I have RPC3 and Steam downloaded. I am going over the dumping process for both sites. Probably going to start with the oldest PS3 driver sim I have to see how it comes together. My CPU E5 2680 should more that capable. 64G RAM. I like the chase to see if I can get it up and running well enough to enjoy. I have gotten recommendations for a GPU.
Rtx3060ti , rtx3070, to name a few. I don't have the experience or knowledge decide. All the information on my PC is in the tread. I could use help to make my decision. I think that part needs sorted first before anything else.
Let's say my budget for a straight used GPU to be 200USD. More or less. Any input is good. Thanks all, y'all have been awesome. I don't fear failure, I fear not trying . With failure comes knowledge.

 

[Daz555]

Thanks for the reply. I have RPC3 and Steam downloaded. I am going over the dumping process for both sites. Probably going to start with the oldest PS3 driver sim I have to see how it comes together. My CPU E5 2680 should more that capable. 64G RAM. I like the chase to see if I can get it up and running well enough to enjoy. I have gotten recommendations for a GPU.
Rtx3060ti , rtx3070, to name a few. I don't have the experience or knowledge decide. All the information on my PC is in the tread. I could use help to make my decision. I think that part needs sorted first before anything else.
Let's say my budget for a straight used GPU to be 200USD. More or less. Any input is good. Thanks all, y'all have been awesome. I don't fear failure, I fear not trying . With failure comes knowledge.

For $200 used you are looking at cards like in the GTX 1080, RTX 2070 sort of range.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

For $200 used you are looking at cards like in the GTX 1080, RTX 2070 sort of range.

Which would be your favorite knowing my computer specs?

 

[Daz555]

Which would be your favorite knowing my computer specs?

Get the highest end GPU you can afford. It's as simple as that really. There is a nice table on this page: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

 

[Jovial Mobius]

I have not been defeated. Ahhhhh
I got the rx580 to run 2 55" LG qleds and a 47" Vizio LED. It does 53 fps at looks and plays really good . Took a little longer than expected.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

Daz I have been beating myself up trying to get games to do trips. I have nfs Most Wanted rockng. Dirt 3 and Dirt Rally is a stretch the one monitor to 3. I guess I am a masochist. I did gain a whole bunch of new knowledge, so not all bad. To be honest, I think the 55s are a bit overkill. I'm really liking the size of the 47, it's more than enough. But , it is cool as hell being surrounded, totally immersed in the experience. I did get Burnout Paradise Remastered, awesome on 1 or 2 screens. Crappy stacked with crap on three. I am dealing with no detection of monitors on a regular basis. It's a PIT ass to get it right again, not hard, just aggravating . Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience with me .. I had to find out about it on my own. It was a fascinating ride and I enjoyed learning about how it all works. No body knows it all, but I know more than I did previously. The emulator thing, my security suite is blocking certain packets in the downloads, so screw it. I can't figure it out. I am tired, talk to you soon.

 

[Jovial Mobius]

Update. I hit dirt Rally rocking. 89 fps. All settings on high, no sync. NFS payback the wheel configuration is all jacked up. I think I'm going to have to cut and paste my controller file info, whatever it's called into the game program. I got the 55s and 47 working.