Is 3D Vision worth the performance hit?

[hirantha]

tell you the truth i had a 280 before i bought this 480.. and playing in 3D with 280 wasn't that fun because of the low fps.. but with single 480 i get smooth game play. that card is made for 3d game play.

[Bah!]

Well, I just bit the bullet and bought a 3D Vision kit and Asus VG236H monitor which will be here tomorrow. From all reports it seems to be a nice monitor and for the price for the set ($500) I can't complain.

[Bah!]

After messing around with it yesterday and this morning, it's totally worth it. I wasn't a fan of wearing glasses either, but they are lightweight and feel like wearing a pair of sun glasses.

All my games still run nice and smooth, they're just in 3D now, and the 3D is impressive as hell. There are a few games that don't like it so much, but overall I'd say there is a whole lot more positive about 3D than negative.

With the price of the 3D monitors coming down, if they could shave a bit off of the price of the glasses, I think a lot more people would be willing to give it a shot. If this bundle hadn't come out I wouldn't have tried it yet either, and I wouldn't know what I was missing.

[onmikesline]

its so funny how people say 2D screen lol. like 3D made everything turn in to 2D in normal monitors. i tried the 3d gaming and it was really silly. kinda remind me of that old Virtual Boy thing when i was a kid. this will die down vary fast. History is repeating its self with "3D". if anything just wait till they make it so you dont need glasses. like what nintendo ds is doing

[josiahsuarez]

I see some people like 3D (even with the glasses) and some people say not for me or not yet. so apparently it's subjective. I would say try it first and see if you like it. only you can decide if it's good "for you"

I have enjoyed playing around with anaglyph movies downloaded from torrents with cheap disposable glasses. but personally I wouldn't invest more than a few bucks in it (although admittedly the effect with 3D Vision is better than the sci-fi cheese I get)

[Bah!]

Love it or hate it, I don't think it's a fad. People can say this has happened before and died out, but it really hasn't. I can't ever remember a time when the entire entertainment industry had a push for 3D like it does now. I mean it's not just Nvidia and desktops, there are laptops now, tons of televisions, all the console manufacturers, 3D Blu Ray players, etc. Hell, ESPN already has an entire 3D channel.

This is nothing like what's happened in the past, and I don't see it going away any time soon.

[Muppet]

Originally Posted by Bah!

After messing around with it yesterday and this morning, it's totally worth it. I wasn't a fan of wearing glasses either, but they are lightweight and feel like wearing a pair of sun glasses.

All my games still run nice and smooth, they're just in 3D now, and the 3D is impressive as hell. There are a few games that don't like it so much, but overall I'd say there is a whole lot more positive about 3D than negative.

With the price of the 3D monitors coming down, if they could shave a bit off of the price of the glasses, I think a lot more people would be willing to give it a shot. If this bundle hadn't come out I wouldn't have tried it yet either, and I wouldn't know what I was missing.

I am a huge fan of Nvidia's 3D solution for gaming. I had a chance to check out the 3 Monitor surround 3D Vision on the weekend. It was using 3 of the Asus 23" like you have. I must say I was very impressed. I like the look of the Asus, I might grab one for myself.

[SirPauly]

Originally Posted by Bah!

After messing around with it yesterday and this morning, it's totally worth it. I wasn't a fan of wearing glasses either, but they are lightweight and feel like wearing a pair of sun glasses.

All my games still run nice and smooth, they're just in 3D now, and the 3D is impressive as hell. There are a few games that don't like it so much, but overall I'd say there is a whole lot more positive about 3D than negative.

With the price of the 3D monitors coming down, if they could shave a bit off of the price of the glasses, I think a lot more people would be willing to give it a shot. If this bundle hadn't come out I wouldn't have tried it yet either, and I wouldn't know what I was missing.

It's different and welcomed for me. The glasses are light weight and like sun glasses and sometimes forget I have them on. You hear some views like bulky - like this huge thing weighing on ya, hehe!

[snowmanwithahat]

I may be wrong but won't the performance hit be atleast a reduction by 50%?

You're rendering each frame twice.... once for each eye. Twice the work, exactly half the performance, best-case.... not counting driver overhead

[wheeljack12]

put it this way, I am doing the 3d vision surround with tri-sli (just upgraded today) gtx 480 and 3 acer gd235hz monitors. If I had the space I would have waited for the asus 27' 3d monitor and went with 3 of them. I love the depth that 3d vision gives especially when you spread it across 3 monitors. And for those wanting tri-sli 3d vision surround, you attach a monitor to one dvi port per card. So, in that fashion it seems, you are evenly spreading the work of the gpus for 3d vision surround. But before this I was doing 2 way sli gtx 480 and 3d vision surround and wouldn't go with less than 2 gpu's to do it. I would say the same for basic 3d vision gaming on one monitor. And for some games you have to factor in physx processing too along with 3d vision. For just cause 2 (in 3d vision surround on this) and bfbc2 (i played this on one monitor), I had to turn down settings and rez to get 3d vision gaming playable on 2 way sli gtx 480. So is it worth it, yes. For feeling like you are more part of a game for sacrificing some game settings, the loss of rez and effects weigh out very nicely. And it seems that nvidia is the trend setter on 3d since 3d vision was out to market before 3d consoles, tv's, set top movie players, and 3d theatre for example fell in line. And the game support is very impressive. Next time you are in nvidia control panel, go to the stereoscopic 3d area and check out the supported games. They go years back and very recent with the list. The only thing I don't like is when you download the recent 3d vision full cd download or just the drivers in the sense they don't tell you what has been added to the list of games like when you d/l just geforce drivers and you are told what has been improved for example.

[Bah!]

Originally Posted by snowmanwithahat

I may be wrong but won't the performance hit be atleast a reduction by 50%?

You're rendering each frame twice.... once for each eye. Twice the work, exactly half the performance, best-case.... not counting driver overhead

Actually I think 50% is the worst case scenario, usually the hit is less than that. Add to that the fact that you don't need to use as much AA in 3D as normal and that alleviates some of the hit as well.

There is no doubt that there is a hit, but for me it was nothing to worry about. Two 480's pushing a single 3D screen is the sweet spot as far as I can tell. Of course, if you are trying to run Metro 2033 all maxed out on a single 480 you will run into problems, but for the majority of gamers and the majority of games a single 480 should be just fine.