@drehwurm
hi, sorry for sharing bad english. I m new to using vvvv with a machine with SLI setup, I only had a glimpse of using vvvv with graphic cards like GTX 700 and above, let alone for two at once.
I only read some “reviews” about new laptops with SLI or crossfire setup, and there has been some criticism about the dual graphic cards having mirco stutters on external displays, or delays in framerate esp below 30.
Right now my new computer has some driver issues with either ram or the graphic card and I am not quite there to configure everything and run my patches on a new setup with a machine that has much higher performance in terms of CPU,GPU,RAM and so on.
funny thing I have noticed though, having some experience using external devices that are not only displays, is that with windows how well executed the drives can become a bottleneck issue - take a firewire IO audio interface. It has been reported that on apple the same device runs a little better because of the asio driver written for windows, for example.
and I imagine that with time the drivers will also evolve with SLI or crossfire, although in the audio world as far as I know it is not always the case, because I think many companies move on with their development to new products unless the users take initiative.
thats one thing, but then the drivers (maybe a wrong word?) WITHIN VVVV that communicates with the external devices themselves also needs to be fit, as I would imagine. for example, with my audio interface I get I lot of noise in the FFT node, especially in the higher frequencies. It might be my mixer but I dont hear it with my monitor speakers, unless my mixer is sending pre- eq signals that is somehow doing an exaggerated hi pass filter. which I dont kind of doubt… because it intentionally sends pre-fader, pre-eq signals as default.
without losing the scope here, I am just trying to make a little note about how to improve the experience of using vvvv, esp for working with external displays and audio interfaces. I had experience with vvvv renderers in a projection from beamers just refuse to go full screen, when it goes full screen on my laptop, for example.
I guess Its a very general topic for anyone are interested in designing ones own setup, experimenting with their own combination of devices (virtual and physical in areas of audio signals to geomtry, vice versa, motion or multi touch input to external displays or PAs.) and get reliable, ready-to-show performance out of it that runs realtime. I love the liveness of vvvv but sometimes the debugging part or swimming in the forum for answers does get slow, making me watch a video clip of autodesk softimage or something haha.
but about 9 months into using vvvv, I find the vvvv community a great community of people who are dedicated and resourceful and I am grateful to have found the community to discuss issues that not only alleviate technical problems, but also showcase and shape a direction for developing applications of this wonderful invention. I am not good with textual coding, but my premise has been that I first needed to touch some boundaries of what vvvv is capable of. and indeed it is a large pool :).
rounding up - thunderbolt/DisplayPort and vvvv = for external monitor recording, which would could be a convinient, reliable way to record live gigs without taxing cpu while having enough external displays. there are many modern laptops with high spec graphic cards without analogue video outs at this point.
- maybe thunderbolt/ display port goes out to multiple displays while HDMI goes to DV in (1394a), i know some really portable sony handycams take DV in besides s video (which I think maybe is more expensive to buy converter for, or also more quality loss in the process). I havent tried how to set up HDMI for live recording and thunderbolt for live performance external displys. so I should try this and report my experience.
one clear advantage of using thunderbolt for multiscreens is that there are also thunderbolt docks that give firewire connections and a bunch of other audio/ visual connectivity. some might also have rca ins or jacks, which could be an easy way to take live audio signals in, unless the machine does have audio jack in, and only if VVVV sees the thunderbolt docks as an audio interface.
although even with high spec laptops, I guess thunderbolt docks wont really give performance bandwitdh for more USB devices (multiple kinects, HD cam, midi controllers and so on), as I learn because that seems to have more to do with the expresscard bus, CPU and the chipset, but it still is probably faster than having a usb3.0. dock as it is.
on the other hand, usually less converters or hubs or daisy chaining is better for quick response, in general with external devices audio and video alike…
thats a long post! a late night, taking a break from fixing driver problems with windows…
