Using SoftTH with vvvv

As windows 7 allows no span mode one has to use ATI Eyefinity, Matrox Triplehead2go or other hardware solutions to get a single renderer spanned over multiple screens. But also gamers have this problem. One of them has developed a software solution which renders a texture with the desired output size and lets you assign areas of this texture to different screens.

the idea is a modified d3d9.dll which you have to place beside vvvv.exe. on first startup you get a config file to adjust the settings.

you can download an alpha version here: SoftTH win7 alpha

my quick tryout didn’t really work, but i used a very large texture for two full HD screens. maybe you have more luck.

just post your experience here, maybe we find a good setting for vvvv or we find out it doesn’t work at all…

Just another data point: tried it with beta26, Win7 x64, dual-head on GTX570 - no joy. Access violation when trying to drag renderer window onto second monitor. Attempting to make the renderer go full screen results in only a grey square showing on upper left of the primary display. Oh well.

hi!
A cording to this

RGB32 - 32bit RGB-8888 mode
RGB16 - 16bit RGB-565 mode
RGB16D - 16bit RGB-565 mode with dithering for smoother appearance

you have to set R5G6B5 on renderer but i can’t select 5440x1200 or 3840 by 1080 after i change format from XRGB

but after some messing with this dll (e.g. failed counter-strike test)
i founded that in 590’s prop, drv 270.61


but barely can imagine missed it before…
have 3 th2go’s here need only 9 screens for a tester

Hey antokhio.

You don’t need 9 screens to test your 3 TH2Gs - they work without displays plugged it. You can swap a single display around the ports to test if they are outputting. I’ve extensively tested this with both the analogue and digital versions. So please test away but… I reported on this blog post one-fullscreenrenderer-12x1280x720-at-50-hz about using Surround 2D with a 590. Worked well when using 3 displays from it and also worked with 2 GFX cards, 1 as primary and then a 3 span from the 590. Major problems when it came to using 3 x 3TH2Gs on it though. Just couldn’t get it to work and I really tried everything - was very frustrating. I think surround 2D just does’t support resolutions large enough for spanning 3 TH2Gs :(

I was doing this 5 months ago and NV drivers have been updated since but I no longer have the 590 to try testing again. I only brought it to test 3 x 3TH2Gs and returned upon failure and went for the 580 3GB cards with windows XP to get a span of 2 x 3H2Gs. You def can’t get a span across all the ports of the 590 in XP because windows sees it as 2 GPUs.

@tonfilm - Be great to get a solution to this. I currently have no systems with win7 cos of this very reason :( So annoying as Win7 so much better than XP. Got Win7 on my laptop but yeah no where else. Have to try and get it from somewhere…hmmmmm