[Dr Evil]

Originally Posted by Jedi2016

That's strange... HDMI can only carry 1080p HDCP content (i.e. Blu-ray movies) at 24p, that's part of the specification. But 1080p video game content shouldn't be held to that restriction, it should play at whatever your monitor's refresh rate is. I ran HDMI over my old GTX465 at 1080p60 without a problem, and I can run it now over DVI.

Have you tried playing a game anyway, even with it "limited" to only 24fps? You might find that games will run at 60fps regardless.

Are you using 3D Vision?

I think that with the HDMI output it only allowed me to use 3DTV Play, but now with DVI it enabled the 3D Vision.
I thought that HDMI 1.4 would work just like the dual link DVI. I know HDMI 1.3 does not, for 1.3 the bandwith reguirement is too much I think.

[Jedi2016]

Originally Posted by ERP

There isn't enough bandwidth over HDMI for 1080P@120HZ which is what the 3D vision signal is.
And I don't think there is a 1080P@30Hz 3D mode in the current HDMI required resolutions.

So... DVI actually has higher bandwidth than HDMI? I thought they were identical?

HDMI can absolutely carry 1080p60, I've done it. That's 60Hz, interleaved (with the interleaving done in the card, not the monitor). As far as the monitor's concerned, there's no difference between that and a regular 1080p60 feed. And I know plenty of people can play 1080p120 on high-end systems, they've never mentioned if they're using HDMI or not.

1080p60 in 3D is going to be more limited by your graphics card than by the cable you're using. I've only got a few games that can run at 60fps in 3D (on a GTX680), and in some of them I have to turn a couple options down to get it that way.

[ERP]

Originally Posted by Jedi2016

So... DVI actually has higher bandwidth than HDMI? I thought they were identical?

HDMI can absolutely carry 1080p60, I've done it. That's 60Hz, interleaved (with the interleaving done in the card, not the monitor). As far as the monitor's concerned, there's no difference between that and a regular 1080p60 feed. And I know plenty of people can play 1080p120 on high-end systems, they've never mentioned if they're using HDMI or not.

1080p60 in 3D is going to be more limited by your graphics card than by the cable you're using. I've only got a few games that can run at 60fps in 3D (on a GTX680), and in some of them I have to turn a couple options down to get it that way.

1080P60 in 3D is actually 1080P120Hz the way NVidia implements it.
The way it's done over HDMI is both frames are packet together, doubling the bandwidth per frame.
Yes you can happily do 1080P@60Hz over HDMI, just not in 3D.

Dual link DVI has 2 channels of data instead of one, the HDMI spec only has 1. But the critical part of that's Dual link, standard DVI cabling has exactly the same limitation as HDMI.

FWIW strictly speaking the HDMI cabling is sufficient to run 1080P60HZ in 3D but the chips in the devices themselves run at to low a clock rate to decode/encode such a signal.

[pjbliverpool]

Yup you definitely need dual link for 1080p / 60fps / 3D. I tried with my "old" DVI cable originally and was limited to 720p for 60fps. Dual link resolved all that.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by Jedi2016

1080p60 in 3D is going to be more limited by your graphics card than by the cable you're using. I've only got a few games that can run at 60fps in 3D (on a GTX680), and in some of them I have to turn a couple options down to get it that way.

Yep absolutely. Anyone that says the power of high end PC's is wasted has never used 3d vision! And if they say 3d vision itself is a waste of that power, then they definitely haven't used 3d vision

[Davros]

you need to use 3D vision with nv surround next

[Dr Evil]

Well I played Crysis 2 for about two hours. Runs butter smooth with everything maxed in 3D, so my second GPU was put to good use . I was fairly impressed with the 3d effect, there is little bit of cross talk, but not too bad. I need a better chair to make sitting in front of the monitor more comfortable though. Can't wait to try some other games out.

[ERP]

Originally Posted by Dr Evil

Well I played Crysis 2 for about two hours. Runs butter smooth with everything maxed in 3D, so my second GPU was put to good use . I was fairly impressed with the 3d effect, there is little bit of cross talk, but not too bad. I need a better chair to make sitting in front of the monitor more comfortable though. Can't wait to try some other games out.

I consider Crysis 2 to have bad 3D FWIW.
It uses reprojection from the Z buffer, and as a result has to me horrible artifacts. Though it is the reason the framerate is so good.
To reduce the artifacts they massively reduced the amount of depth disparity in the scene.

[Dr Evil]

Originally Posted by ERP

I consider Crysis 2 to have bad 3D FWIW.
It uses reprojection from the Z buffer, and as a result has to me horrible artifacts. Though it is the reason the framerate is so good.
To reduce the artifacts they massively reduced the amount of depth disparity in the scene.

Which games in your opinion has the best 3D implementation?

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by ERP

There isn't enough bandwidth over HDMI for 1080P@120HZ which is what the 3D vision signal is.
And I don't think there is a 1080P@30Hz 3D mode in the current HDMI required resolutions.

3D vision requires a dual link DVI cable and it's borderline enough that some of those don't work even when they aren't particularly long. Theoretically you can also use it over display port with an active adapter, since none of the certified monitors I'm aware of have DP connectors.

Weird because 1080p at 60hz seems to work for me over single HDMI with 3D Vision. Afaik dual DVI is probably only necessary for the 120hz mode. Can't check now though as PC is in the shop for repairs.

[Jedi2016]

Originally Posted by Dr Evil

Which games in your opinion has the best 3D implementation?

Three words: Just Cause 2.

The scale of the island is jaw-dropping in 3D (especially with 3D cranked up high, I have mine set at 95%). Climb to the top of the casino and look down, it really looks like it's as tall as it is.

Then jump off.

The Batman games are also quite good. Trine is amazing. Skyrim's pretty incredible too with some mods and the Helix 3D fix (the game has some issues out of the box). Pretty much any game listed as "3D Vision Ready" is good, especially third-person games. I can kick back with a controller at a more comfortable viewing distance than I can with FPS.

That's one downside of a passive display; my seating position this close to the monitor is somewhat limited when using 3D, and FPS just doesn't work quite as well. Active 3D wouldn't have that problem.

[Davros]

Also burnout paradise

[Jedi2016]

Originally Posted by Davros

Also burnout paradise

On the subject, what other racing games work really well with 3D? Going through the list in the 3D Vision settings, most racing games in general don't seem to work very well.

[Sinistar]

Originally Posted by Arwin

Weird because 1080p at 60hz seems to work for me over single HDMI with 3D Vision. Afaik dual DVI is probably only necessary for the 120hz mode. Can't check now though as PC is in the shop for repairs.

Passive 3d is only using one 1080p frame, be it interlaced, side by side, or top/bottom, no bandwidth problem. active 3d uses 2 1080p frames packed into one frame hence the bandwidth issue.

[Jedi2016]

But, 3D Vision aside, doesn't HDMI support 1080p120 in normal 2D gameplay?

[Sinistar]

HDMI 1.4b does support 1080P @ 120, but I have yet to see a monitor or tv that does.
Most monitors have a listing towards the back of the manual listing what frequencies are supported for HDMI.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by Dr Evil

Well I played Crysis 2 for about two hours. Runs butter smooth with everything maxed in 3D, so my second GPU was put to good use . I was fairly impressed with the 3d effect, there is little bit of cross talk, but not too bad. I need a better chair to make sitting in front of the monitor more comfortable though. Can't wait to try some other games out.

Yeah Crysis 2 looks good but as ERP says, it's not the best implementation, I actually thought it looked similar in 3d vision to how it looked in 3dtv play but that's going from memory and not a side by side comparison.

Incidentally, cross talk can usually be eliminated completely by adjusting the convergence settings. This is something I only learned recently after I wrote my last post about the cross talk being a problem.

In fact the 3d effect can be changed entirely using the convergence settings and different games come with different levels and thus effects set as default. For example Skyrim and Battlefield 3 have quite a bit of cross talk in bright areas but the 3d effect gives you a sense of scale, i.e what you're looking at on screen seems much bigger than it would if you were looking at the screen in 2d. I really get the impression of playing on a cinema sized screen with Skyrim from about 2 feet away from the 27" screen.

However by changing the convergence settings, (basically making the ghost shadows align with the main image) you can 1) eliminate the ghosting completely and 2) Greatly enhance the sense of 3d. For example GTA4 comes with this level of convergence set as default and while you don't get the same sense of scale as in say Skryim, the 3d is utterly insane (you need to turn shadows off in the game to make it work though). The effect is IMO very similar to having a real 3d remote control car and a full blown mini city to drive it around in. It really does feel like your driving a physical model car around a physical model city, crazy!

The disadvantages of this though are first - you lose that sense of scale which in some games can be more valuable than the intense 3d IMO (e.g. Skyrim) and more importantly, some games won't work very well with the convergence set like this, I think it comes down to whether the viewpoint in the game changes significantly. So for example if you get perfect convergence from one viewpoint (in skyrim 3rd person) it will then totally screw up the 3d from another view point (Skyrim 1st person) and thus I've found this only tends to work in games that don't have a lot of variation in the viewpoints.

It's also worth noting that even the 'lesser' 3d convergence settings that games like Skyrim and BF3 default to are still well beyond the 3d effect of 3dtv play.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by Dr Evil

Which games in your opinion has the best 3D implementation?

As Jedi said, Just Cause 2 is excellent, Skyrim is also very good. The 3D effect in Farcry 2 is outstanding, even better than JC2 IMO. Also as I said in the post above GTA4 looks amazing with shadows turned off.

A few others I've played which work well: BF3, Tombraider Underworld, Assassins Creed Revelations, Mafia 2, Street Fighter 4 and Unreal Tournament 3 (with world detail turned down).

[Davros]

Originally Posted by Jedi2016

On the subject, what other racing games work really well with 3D? Going through the list in the 3D Vision settings, most racing games in general don't seem to work very well.

Gtr 2, and probably other games that use the gmotor2 engine rfactor and gt legends
also nfs shift, grid and the codemasters f1 games