Vega's *Heavyweight* display and computer; edition 2012

[Callsign_Vega]

i was out of town for 2 weeks and when i got back i saw you list the FW900 monitors. when i googled it i did not expect to see CRTs, but i must say that is the way to go when you have the fresnal lenses since you get the best of both worlds.

epic idea!

Ya, that is why I am excited about this new build. It combines the epic-ness of CRT's for gaming with a large immersive image at almost 55" view-able at 10-mega pixels with virtually zero seem between images.

[Utnorris]

I agree CRT's are awesome, way better than LCD's. Only to issues with them, the size of the screen and the size of the actual monitor and then the cost, so I guess that's three. Anyway, not sure how a fresnal lens works, but obviously you do. Can't wait till you get it setup.

[avddreamr]

Vega: This is awesome, I remember playing around with a fresnel lens when I made a DIY pj using a 14" laptop screen... I hope you get better IQ than I did.
I am sure you will. Amazing, awe inspiring setup as always.

[hello im sean]

No, it did not run 24/7. It chilled down the water real fast (15,000 BTU window unit). The total volume of liquid was ~7 gallons. I had modified the on-board window A/C circuitry to keep a constant -.5 C liquid temperature and the compressor only had to kick on every 5-10 minutes or so for 1 minute run times.

im sorry but could you elaborate on how you modified the circuit? im curious. thanks!

[Levesque]

Vega.

If you start playing with CRTs, and you're serious about PQ, you should really invest in a good calorimeter like the i1 Pro, and a good software like Calman to calibrate your displays. I don't know where you live, but there is alot of ISF formations all around the US. You should really go learn there. I'm an ISF calibator, and always calibrate my displays and projectors myself now before using them or writing a review for the AV magazine I'm working with. It's making a world of difference. The before and after is sometimes unbelievable.

Particularly CRTs projectors and displays. Those are particularly always fugly before a calibration.

[Callsign_Vega]

Vega: This is awesome, I remember playing around with a fresnel lens when I made a DIY pj using a 14" laptop screen... I hope you get better IQ than I did.
I am sure you will. Amazing, awe inspiring setup as always.

That sounds interesting. So far with the Fresnel lenses, during proof of concept testing they did really well. The picture quality is pretty good and led to going full speed ahead on this project.

im sorry but could you elaborate on how you modified the circuit? im curious. thanks!

Every circuit will be a little different. I just tested the stock range resistance of the thermo-couple and modified it with a resistor to cycle in the lower temperature range that I wanted. This allowed me to use the stock A/C unit controls to set my temp and it works really well!

Vega.

If you start playing with CRTs, and you're serious about PQ, you should really invest in a good calorimeter like the i1 Pro, and a good software like Calman to calibrate your displays. I don't know where you live, but there is alot of ISF formations all around the US. You should really go learn there. I'm an ISF calibator, and always calibrate my displays and projectors myself now before using them or writing a review for the AV magazine I'm working with. It's making a world of difference. The before and after is sometimes unbelievable.

Particularly CRTs projectors and displays. Those are particularly always fugly before a calibration.

I had the three FW900's professionally calibrated be a ex-Sony tech that refurbishes these babies. They have a great picture and I use a color calibrator locally to fine tune the picture. Although, If I am not mistaken .icc profiles don't transfer over into D3D games. I don't do any color sensitive photo work or anything so it's not super critical for desktop use. Here is a link to the guy (Vito) that saves, restores, and calibrates the FW900s:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SONY-GDM-FW9...ht_1946wt_1004


On another note, it's surely been interesting to get nVidia Surround working with the three FW900's. nVidia cards/drivers really want to see the EDID signal from the monitors in order to do Surround properly or the setup will fail. That has been a super challenge using BNC-5 cables! I am working through custom adapters at the moment trying to get the R-G-B-H-V signal to pass with no signal degradation and to pass the EDID info at the same time. It's been interesting.

[Callsign_Vega]

I've got the fans all wired up and mounted. I had to switch from an under-mount setup that I had before as it put the fan's electric motor too close to the electron guns and it introduced a very faint wobble to the picture. So now they are mounted a good 2.5 inches further and the picture is crystal clear.





Testing the setup with the Skyrim AFK camera spin that is very good for testing for motion problems (blur/ghosting/stuttering etc).


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v...tu.be&vq=hd720


The motion, clarity and picture quality is far higher than my previous LCD setups. This is going to make for epic gaming! At 4320x2304 @ 80Hz, it has become very apparent that I need some upgraded video cards. Especially trying to keep a minimum of 80 FPS under all circumstances pushing 10-megapixel's. Every single game I ran required more than 2GB of memory, so it looks like I will have to hold off on the vanilla 2GB GTX 680's and get 4GB FTX 680's for 4-way SLI. Almost positive I will be pairing a 3770K up with Gigabyte's Sniper 3 Z77 motherboard that has confirmed 4-way SLI support.





Tomorrow the Fresnel lens frame build begins.

[Manicdan]

quick question. what resolution can you run for maximum FPS by the monitors? around 240fps is when the human eye cannot tell the difference between the game and real life, and i wanted to see if you can test that yourself and how crazy it might feel? (even if the resolution has to be dropped severely)

[Callsign_Vega]

quick question. what resolution can you run for maximum FPS by the monitors? around 240fps is when the human eye cannot tell the difference between the game and real life, and i wanted to see if you can test that yourself and how crazy it might feel? (even if the resolution has to be dropped severely)

The FW900 can do 640x480 or 800x600 I believe at 160Hz. I tried it and 160Hz is virtually life-like smooth. You must remember though that 160Hz on a CRT would feel way faster than a 160Hz LCD if they ever made such a thing. 60-70Hz on a CRT has better motion than a 120Hz LCD.

On another note:

During Fresnel lens fitting I found that my estimations were off a bit. With the magnification I want and seem-less borders, I need to get the monitors over an inch closer to each other. This build just got a lot more difficult! I've already removed the FW900's swivel mounts but it looks like I will have to remove the entire base supporting structure. Whether I have to remove the picture tube from the chassis to accomplish that is still up in the air.

Par for the course. Usually the difficult projects are the only ones worth doing in the first place!

My initial testing results in BF3 are phenomenal.

[Manicdan]

^absolutely, tougher is always the better way

i really want a 3x portrait setup, but right now nothing exists for 120fps and IPS and super thin bezel. before you showed me fresnel displays i thought it was hopeless and now im scared ill try and follow you (but smaller and cheaper)

[Callsign_Vega]

Start with this:




And about 13 hours of work end up with this:




Complete lower platform on all FW900's removed, internal wires re-routed and modified, brackets cut, OSD control modules and power switches relocated and mounted on the top. It is impossible to get the FW900's any closer, the metal CRT casings are physically touching one another.




I went from a 4.4 inch gap between each lit image to a 2.75 inch gap. That is a smaller gap than some multi-LCD setups! Now I think I can finally start working on the Fresnel mounts.

[Callsign_Vega]

One more shot of the mod's:

[Callsign_Vega]

View the video in 720P. Resolution 4320x2304, 80Hz of CRT smoothness. Initial placement testing of the lenses (not final position and bracketing). If you sit just right in your normal viewing position, both bezel gaps can get as low as 1-2mm in width. Now if you do move your head a lot the gaps will change a bit.

Side benefits are a larger image than three displays without the lenses. Also a slight "depth" effect is added to the image which I quite like. With the lenses magnification and sitting at the designed eye-point, the display setup is around 50 inches running at 10-megapixel and 80Hz. It is hard for a camera to capture some of what I am describing accurately. Camera hand is also not too steady!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v...tu.be&vq=hd720

[Callsign_Vega]

Playing around a little more in Skyrim. Besides the awesome resolution and unparalleled CRT motion, the lenses add a little depth effect and it feels like I could craw through the lenses and into the Skyrim world. The camera does not do it justice!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v...tu.be&vq=hd720

[TyphooN]

I currently have a single GDM-FW900 and have calibrated it myself pretty well using Sony WinDAS. I have always wondered what these would be like in eyefinity/nvidia surround and I must stay that it is stunning. I noticed that you are using Nvidia and I must say: using certain resolutions with Nvidia seems much easier than on AMD, especially with the BNC cable. Maybe one day I will have to try to imitate your setup .. Out of curiosity, where did you get the "fresnel lense" that you used?

[Callsign_Vega]

I currently have a single GDM-FW900 and have calibrated it myself pretty well using Sony WinDAS. I have always wondered what these would be like in eyefinity/nvidia surround and I must stay that it is stunning. I noticed that you are using Nvidia and I must say: using certain resolutions with Nvidia seems much easier than on AMD, especially with the BNC cable. Maybe one day I will have to try to imitate your setup .. Out of curiosity, where did you get the "fresnel lense" that you used?

Fresnel's from Amazon from all places. $110 each.

4x EVGA GTX 680's inbound.

[Manicdan]

grats
thats like 4x as many 680s as i bought
good thing cause your running atleast 4x the resolution as i am.

[Callsign_Vega]

Two of my 4 GTX 680's came in. Hopefully they run my 3x FW900's without a hitch.




It is amazing how small and light these cards are. The 7970 isn't that large of a card (quite a bit smaller than the 6990's), but for nVidia to get more performance than a 7970 out of such a small package is mighty impressive.

[Manicdan]

you were so excited i think your hands were shaking in that last photo^

[Callsign_Vega]

you were so excited i think your hands were shaking in that last photo^

lol, used no-flash so I didn't get any reflection and it keeps the shutter open a long time!

[Callsign_Vega]

Well, I found out that in nVidia's infinite wisdom they replaced the dual DVI-I slots found on GTX 580's with a single DVI-I and one DVI-D so each GTX 680 can only output to one analog monitor.

So I need a minimum of three 680's to run my setup which is normally fine, but I only have two 680's at the moment (two others inbound) but only a Z68 MB that can do two card SLI. So I have 680's and I basically cannot use them until Z77 comes out or I just use one monitor. I am tossing around the idea of getting a 3-way SLI capable Z68 from Amazon for temp use and just return it when the Gigabyte G1.Sniper 3 Z77 launches.

I had 3GB 580 benchmarks done and everything. Blasted! Right now 680's are making good paper weights. Maybe I will load up some games on my FW900's at 2560x1600 and crank everything to max and do some benchmarks/memory testing until I get the Surround monitor setup to 680's sorted.

[Callsign_Vega]

Got bored since my third 680 isn't in to run my 3x FW900 setup so I tested one FW900 at 2560x1600 with each applicable game having all settings maxed.





The most VRAM use I saw in BF3 was 1930 MB, Crysis 2 was 1971 MB, and the most in Skyrim was 2028 MB, all with no slow-downs with the 680's. The other games were well under 2GB usage.

I am not sure if the limit on the 8x/8x PCI-E 2.0 slots were hurting the 680's more than the 3GB 580's but the 680's in SLI only ended up an average of 24% faster than the 580's. A bit lower than I was expecting.

There was an anomaly that I reproduced having over 100% scaling in 680 SLI Skyrim. If you include that result, SLI scaling is a perfect 100%. If you exclude that result and go off the other four games, the SLI scaling is 90%. Still pretty darn good. As for the reason Skyrim was scaling so incredible in SLI, might be a driver issue with single card as in both instances the GPU's were at max utilization.

[n00b 0f l337]

Something seems off. SLI is MORE then 2x faster in some cases? That can't be right....
I know you noticed it, but I think thats a major issue somewhere, either in drivers, or in some background compliance.

I think for these tests always de-optimize any game. Change the game executive name to something else to avoid any linked optimizations, and make sure forced AA's and such are on. But faster or even close to perfect scaling is still something wrong as compared to the last how many generations? Either NVidia perfected SLI in one go and didn't advertise it heavily, or there's some hardware level acceleration going on.

[Callsign_Vega]

Something seems off. SLI is MORE then 2x faster in some cases? That can't be right....
I know you noticed it, but I think thats a major issue somewhere, either in drivers, or in some background compliance.

I think for these tests always de-optimize any game. Change the game executive name to something else to avoid any linked optimizations, and make sure forced AA's and such are on. But faster or even close to perfect scaling is still something wrong as compared to the last how many generations? Either NVidia perfected SLI in one go and didn't advertise it heavily, or there's some hardware level acceleration going on.

Not in some cases, in one case. Skyrim was already mentioned. If you remove Skyrim from the numbers, the scaling averages 90%, which is what I've seen with my past systems with SLI scaling.

These tests are exactly the same. Between turning off and on SLI in the nVidia control panel, all control panel and in-game settings are exactly the same and untouched.

[Callsign_Vega]

Hmm, I was thinking since I am at a decision point with a new motherboard, what would you guys do. This MB will be for my full-on 4-way GTX 680 setup.

Just go ahead and purchase a X79 board now like the Rampage IV Extreme, MSI Big Bang - Xpower II or ASRock Fatal1ty X79 that can do native PCI-E 3.0 at 16x/8x/8x/8x with a 3820/3930k/3960k? Or just get a temp Z68 MB to run 3-way GTX 680 and then purchase the Gigabyte Z77 Sniper 3 when it launches with a 3770k that with a PLX chip can do 8x/8x/8x/8x? I wonder if that PLX chip will lower performance compared to the native speeds of X79.

I am kinda weary about the SB-E chips even under chilled water barely being capable of 5GHz and then regret the purchase if IB launches and can do something like 5.5GHz under chilled water. Thoughts?

Or I could be really crazy and wait for the ASRock Extreme11 X79 that has two PLX chips for 16x/16x/16x/16x but that won't release for another couple months and not sure how much help that super bandwidth will be over native X79 PCI-E 3.0 speeds.