NVIDIA GF100 (Fermi) Technology preview - NVIDIA 3D Surround gaming

New NVIDIA Technologies

Along with the new GPU also comes a new technology called NVIDIA 3D Surround -- which you likely read about from our CES reports.

3D Vision Surround allows you to play on three 3D displays simultaneously, and span your entire game across all three panels for a very immersive, rocking 3D environment. Of course, an idea carefully lent from ATI (Eyefinity) without the 3D Stereo part that is. Would ATI not have introduced Eyefinity, then NVIDIA would have never tried to integrate this technology.

By the way, you can also use this Surround technology in 2D mode too -- 3D Stereo is not a requirement.

While 3D Vision Surround will be officially launched with the GF100 GPUs later in Q1, there's good news for GeForce GTX 260, 275, 280, 285 and 295 owners. Much like ATI's Eyefinity, 3D Vision Surround will be supported on that series as well. 3D Vision Surround offers 3D Vision support spanned across three displays, effectively allowing you to run three 3D displays simultaneously.

The big downside: SLI will be a requirement as the cards can only cope with 2 DVI outputs. This rule even applies to the upcoming GF100 based graphics cards as well. So yes, two cards setup in SLI are a requirement and as such a little fruitless 'patch' to get 3-way multi-monitor support going properly as it's tremendously expensive to do. But granted, it really is a heck of a lot of fun though.

Batman Arkham Asylum in 3D Stereo with three monitors

NVIDIA will include software controls for bezel correction allowing you to compensate for monitor bezel gaps. So to recap, NVIDIA 3D Surround is a derivative, much like ATI Eyefinity, which will work as well, with three monitors, surround vision with the 3D goggles is not a requirement, an SLI setup with GT200 or GF100 cards however is. We look forward very much to test this feature.