Multi-Monitor: GeForce GTX 590 Vs. Radeon HD 6990 At 5760x1080

Another set of requests from the Radeon HD 6990 review asked us to set aside the single-display configurations for a moment and spend some time testing multi-monitor setups. That might actually become something we do regularly, given the high price of 30” displays compared to smaller 1920x1080 screens. So long as the contenders are all triple-screen-capable, of course…

Without anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering applied, the GeForce GTX 590 scores a narrow victory in Metro 2033 at 5760x1080. However, my postulations about available graphics memory seem to be coming true here. Even more so than at 2560x1600, 1.5 GB per card is just not enough to facilitate this resolution at aggressive settings, resulting in a veritable slide show from Nvidia’s newest card. And it’s not that the 6990 is playable. But its 2 GB per GPU is able to cope much better.

Nvidia’s card takes the lead without AA turned on in Lost Planet 2. Enabling it, though, exacts a performance penalty that gives AMD’s Radeon HD 6990 a victory.

The same thing happens in Aliens Vs. Predator. Nvidia finishes on top in the easier workload, but gives up ground under the stress of anti-aliasing.

Bad Company 2 throws us for a loop, seemingly reversing the trend observed in the three preceding charts. Here, it looks like AMD is on top without AA, and then the GTX 590 kicks into gear with 8xAA/16xAF enabled.

This is what BF: BC 2 should look like

This is how the game looks on the GTX 590 with AA/AF enabled at 5760x1080

The scores are attributable to a bug in Nvidia’s driver, though. Without AA/AF, the 590 renders the scene correctly. With the eye candy turned on…well, see for yourself.

Nvidia takes first place in Just Cause 2 with and without AA/AF enabled.