Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 – The Nitty Gritty

Nvidia surround is a technology that until now has had its limitations. In the past if a user wanted to run a multi screen setup, a single GPU card would only allow for a dual screen connection and to enable the ability to add a third screen into the mix either required a dual GPU card such as the GTX 590 or more commonly a second single GPU card. This had an effect on the overall cost of the setup and consequently a number of users stuck to the dual screen setups as the cost was to great to justify. All is now changed, with the GTX 680 we now see support for upto 4 screens off a single card.

This support now allows for the end user to play a game across 3 screens with Nvidia surround and have a fourth screen displaying additional content such as IM/chat windows, system monitors such as HWMonitor and now the likes of EVGA’s PrecisionX overclocking utility for on the fly overclocking without the need to quit and restart games.

Along with the new support for four displays, we find a new and improved desktop management suite. Unlike Eyefinity technology where, once enabled, users find their taskbar extending across the bottom of all three screens and applications when maximised doing the same, the Nvidia software keeps the taskbar to the middle screen and maximising applications only fills the screen that they are active on. This eliminates the need to switch the surround mode on and off when the user wishes to play a game in surround mode.

Another common problem that gamers find is that with bezel compensation enabled and setup, parts of games are naturally hidden from view and get cut off. bezel peak is set to a hot key and when pressed, unhide the ‘hidden’ parts of the game and bring them to view. Pressing the hotkey then re-enables the bezel compensation.

As we all know, when you’re playing game with multiple displays, your focus is primarily on the central display, and the surround feature will naturally cause a performance loss in game. What Nvidia have done is to set a larger proportion of the GPU acceleration to the central screen to bring this all back into balance to offer a balance between acceleration performance overall whilst enjoying the resolution of three displays.

Lastly another small feature that we see with the new software is the freedom to create custom display resolutions for use in games and applications.