Is there anyone here who has both, or has tried both whom can give me an educated opinion?
I currently have a ATI 512Mb X1950pro AGP card but will soon be upgrading to a 1 gig 8800GT PCIe. I will need to buy my new stuff in stages unless someone want's to trade for an Infocus X1... Didn't think so. I would likd to get the monitor first to play with while I save up for the video card. Is there a solution that would allow me to use a Zalman (if that proves to be the better choice) with my ATI card?
Thanks in advanced for your help.
John

The Zalman Trimon is only supported with Nvidia cards at the moment. The iz3D monitor supports both ATI and Nvidia. I don't have either monitor, so I cannot give a clear opinion on which is better. But from what I have heard, neither blows the other away. Both have pros and cons. So I would advise reading the Zalman vs iz3D topics carefully and seeing what will be the best solution for you (depending on the hardware you are planning on building, games you want to play, etc.).

Also, don't buy a 1GB 8800GT card, its not worth it. The 256-bit memory interface on those cards cannot take advantage of the extra 512MB of memory. You will be paying extra for basically nothing (in many cases the 1GB cards will be bottlenecked and prove slower than their 512MB brothers). If you have $200 to spend on a video card, you have two solid options. The 4850 from ATI and the 9800 GTX from Nvidia. Both are great cards but you should choose all the hardware first because there are things to keep in mind (like the 4850 not working with Zalman, etc.).

Have you read the MTBS hardware guide? It won't say one or the other, but it may help you out. It's on the front news page.

Regards.
Neil

Thank you Neil. I had E-mailed Zalman a few weeks ago asking if the horizontal resolution was cut in half. I have yet to receive a response. I did note that a couple of people have mentioned the darkening of one eye's image on the iZ3D but that a gamma adjustment will mostly correct this. I've been hoping there would be an acceptable HMD solution by now but that doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.

Thank you Cybereality, My reasoning for getting the 1 Gig is that I like to play Microsoft Flight Simulator X. This game requires a good deal of graphics memory. I've seen several Flight sim forum reviews comparing the 512 Mb and the 1 Gig at higher reolutions and nearly maxed in-game settings. The 1 Gig gives significantly higher frame rates. I will take a look at the two cards you suggested. Do you own either of these cards?

John

Almost forgot. I'm upgrading my gaming rig to Vista and was planning on getting the 64 bit version. Again for MSFS-X. Are the stereo drivers compatible with a 64 bit OS?

The iZ3D drivers are for sure. Some of our members have reported success with the NVIDIA drivers, but it's unofficial and unsupported.

It's not the horizontal resolution that gets cut on the Zalman, it's the vertical resolution.

Regards,
Neil

Doon1: I don't play FSX, but I've been thinking about picking it up just for messing around. I mostly play FPS and none of them seem to see any gains from those unofficial 1GB cards. Theres only one card on the market that can fully handle the 1GB of memory and thats the GTX 280 (due to its 512-bit memory interface). That card is $650 and not widely compatible w/ stereo-3d at the moment, so I do *NOT* recommend the GTX 280. But that is the official 1GB card from Nvidia, those other cards are just 3rd party add-ons AFAIK and aren't optimized for that amount of memory. In some particular games there may be benefits, but for the most part they are just a waste of money so you can say you have a 1GB video card. I'm running an 8800gts 512MB which is a nice card to get, and slightly better than the GT you were looking at. I can run most games maxed at 720p and even Crysis plays good on High with a few tweaks. But the 9800GTX is even better than that and cheaper. Look at these benchmarks:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvi ... 800-4.html

Like I said before, I've never played FSX before and maybe it has some optimizations I don't know about. But from what I know the 9800 GTX will give you better overall performance all games considered.

In my eyes its all about the software, otherwise its like having a car with no petrol. There is no questions that the IZ3D , Zalman and visors are able to give you 3D its just are you going to be able to play your games on it. The likly answer being with all of these is yes and no. Ie like bying petrol from the blackmarket you never know it gonna work until you try.

I have the Zalman and am very happy with the moniotr, but not so happy with being limited with only playing a few games. IE im getting very board of COD4, zzzzzzzz

So it be great when the Software review from Niel is done as I think thi is what you should be looking at, not so much the hardware as they can all produce 3D.

PS if you have an questions about th Zalman then just let me know

PS. I had Vista 64bit and had to downgrade to 32bit for my Zalman to work , I dont know if things have changed, but you really dont want to be using 64bit Vista anyway in my view


Also E3 is coming up next month (i think) which may bring news about new products and software

Hi.

Now the 22" Zalman is very cheap, i can afford one.
But what's about ghosting? There isn't when you look it from the best position?
Even on high contrast picture?..

I make 3D-HD videos at 50i, so 60Hz is not a good news for me.
But in specs i read, it can support 75Hz, that would be better for my videos.
Can somebody test me, that really support it the Trimon?

thx,
Marton

Ghosting is very minimal on the Zalman and in most case you will not notice any ghosting at all (when in the proper viewing angle).


I am not sure about 75Hz, its not listed as an option in Vista. All I get is 60Hz or 59Hz. I tried setting a custom refresh and the monitor said it wasn't supported.

Thank you.

i found in the manual, that in 1024x768 it can do 75Hz, but there will be no 3D,
if not in native resolution.

Any info when will be the 24" full hd model available?

thx

Nope, no info on the 24" model at all.

I studied both for quite some time before I finally decided on the Zalman Trimon 22". The Zalman won hands down because it uses standard Nvidia Stereo Drivers that work for playing online. After hearing about the IZ3D having issues with Steam and PunkBuster when trying to play online, the IZ3D was no longer an option for me. I play several games online, and a driver that would get me kicked out of online games just won't fly. It's useless to even promote a product that has this major flaw in my opinion.

So I've had the Zalman 3D for about a week now, and I absolutely love it. No issues with online play, and the 3D effect is excellent once a game is set up correctly. I'll post a full review up shortly that includes all the games I've tried it with, and the results for each game.