We've been fortunate enough to spend
a bit of time with an
Eyefinity setup before, but up until now, it's been somewhat of a hassle to get a fully functional six-screen setup into a consumer's home. Today, AMD is taking the legwork out of the equation with the introduction of the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition, a standalone GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and innate support for pushing a half-dozen panels at once. Outside of that, it's essentially the same card that
we saw last September, and based on the cadre of reviews that we rounded up, the doubled memory bank doesn't do much to boost frame rates. What it
does do, however, is enable six-screen gaming. Unfortunately (though understandably), this type of gaming scenario is only meant for a select segment of users, and many critics found the novelty wearing off exceptionally quick. In fact, it wasn't long before
NeoSeeker became fed up with the bezels ruining the experience, and just about everyone agreed that you needed to sit a good half-mile away to really enjoy it. Either way, we'd encourage you to hit up
Hot Hardware's collection of videos before biting the bullet, buying up an extra five LCDs and then regretting it for the rest of your Earthly life.
Read - Hot Hardware
Read - AnandTech
Read - NeoSeeker
Read - Rage3D
Read - PC Perspective
Read - TweakTown
Read - FiringSquad
Read - Tom's Hardware
Read - ExtremeTech
Read - Hexus
posted March 31st 2010 10:36AM
Three displays per eye. Does not compute.
@Nitesh
And I'll just say right now, DO NOT reply to my comment just so that you can be seen on the first page. Only losers do that.
@Nitesh I'm only replying to fill your inbox
@From My Cube
One more email from me.
@From My Cube
I hate you a little.
@Nitesh This looks like a one pager, so no worry there besides some sarcasm, but I'll be the one to actually reply. You're comment does a slightly odd thing, while it would average to 3 displays, really you are looking at 1.5 displays stacked 2 high (yes of course 1.5 X 2=3), if I interpret what you say correctly at least.
Is 2 x 2 appealing to you? This is somewhat rhetorical as, I just don't see it being that one eye is looking at one monitor while the other is looking at the other, my eyes don't work that way (at least not sitting as close as I do to my computer, which is addressed in the article). I either get the whole picture, or the part I am focusing on. Perhaps I am not imaging this correctly in my head, or just have a comprehension fail on your post.
@Nitesh
how's that email inbox doing?
@Nitesh : I have a large 52 inch Samsung HDTV and single gtx 295. I just pretend my TV is 3 monitors with 0 bezel in-between. I call it SavingMyMoneyFinity3DVision. ;) ...and I can still see you trying to flank me bitch!
@One Love yeah but your resolution wouldn't be as high. Although not sure if it really matters.
@Nitesh - Hey there Nitesh!
@Nitesh Hm... Actually it does :-D One is Red, the other is Green the third one is Blue! RGB! One screen per color. Sign me up if they pull it off....
@MRCUR
Hi! Marry me?
Hi, Nitesh,
this may come to you as a surprise, but I am an honorable business man with a genuine, lucrative, proposal.
My name is Patrick Chan and I have deposit a $ half-gazillion US Dollars that I need transferred, but I don't know who to trust! You are my only hope for retreiving the money and as a reward, I'll offer you 20% of the sum, TWENTY FU*KING PERCENT, MOTHER FU*KER!
Please, reply immediately with your full name, address, credit card number, PayPal password and the size of your wife's bra.
All the best,
Patrick Chan.
@loocas +1 I lol'd
@Nitesh - Buy me one of these first. Preferably an XFX model and we'll talk about it. :)
@Nitesh
Smoke Weed ERRRRRRRRRRDAY
@Nitesh no it's 6 for everyone who cares what you're doing
Not sure why ATI felt there was a market for this, but... it's your company, not mine.
@paul34 For FPS titles, we found it basically worthless. And that is a LARGE portion of the market for PC gamers...
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=889&type=expert&pid=13
@Vigile 6 monitors I can imagine but for 3 monitors seems like a sweet spot with a potential market. But then this is nothing that NVs can't do now is it?
@paul34
you have apaprently never been in teh financial world where traders will command upwards of 6 monitors no problem.
some guys at the office have ten screens goin all the time.
this is done with multiple machines but given the computign power available nowadays you could conceivabley consoladate multiple PCs into one awesome workstation.
@paul34 I suggest you look up Matrox and learn how and why they're still in business after they've been squeezed out of the consumer market by then ATI and nvidia.
So, even if there was no gaming market for this (which is wrong), theres still that professional market.
@paul34 There are places that use screens made up of several panels that have zero bezel. Kinda common to see them in bars. I could actually see the Eyefinity technology being used on those types of screens for advertising purposes. Though it is a Radeon and is meant for gaming, it seems like it may be used even more on the business end.
I like those Samsung "Thin bezel" displays -- but imho the bezels are STILL too thick. Can't they just make like .5 mm bezels? Or is that not possible?
1. Install eyefinity
2. Find large wall
3. Connect 6 projectors
4....
5. Profit!!!
@Emyr
Yay! +1
@Emyr
So I guess pretty soon we'll start seeing some 'budget' Imax theaters popping up? ; )
@Emyr
may be hard to find a wall!
@Emyr
hurry for no bezel!!
@Antiapple What do you live in? I have plenty of walls
@TheOneAndOnlyJH Yeah, home theater is so 2009, now we need home IMAX theater.
price?
@Antiapple $479
@Antiapple
and another 20 bucks to that if you're buying from newegg.
3 displays makes works IMO, at least you have your center display with extra and can actually SEE where you shoot or drive or etc
@SeveringGecko
Wow I can't type today
sure is /g/ in here
@Zeth Ethereal
No it isn't.
You don't see any woodscrews, fermi, 1.7, or anything like that do you?
@Gamecheater
eh I said just to see who from /g/ was here lol
In order to enjoy a multimonitor gaming experience (assuming your monitors have some bezel) you really must have an ODD number of monitors! Otherwise your crosshair, character, or whatever is going to be split between two (or in this case four) screens which is really hard to wrap your brain around.
The best setup in my opinion is 3 monitors in normal landscape mode... or with these new cards that can support UP to six monitors, get 5 and rotate them into portrait mode. That way you get plenty of vertical pixels and the bezels dont get in the way as much since your crosshair is only on one screen, the middle one.
@Freakintoddles
I saw a few multi-monitor displays at PAX East, and the 6 monitors seemed to work fine for the guy playing a FPS. I played DiRT 2 on 3 monitors, and I agree that the centered car would be very hard to drive on an odd numbered series of monitors, but i don't know about FPSs.
@deleted
whoops, I meant hard to drive on an even number series.
@deleted I also was at PAX East (3day BYOC WOOHOO!) and played on the 6 monitor setup that ATI had there... I did not like it at all.
the folks at hot hardware looks like they needed a separate circuit breaker to power that setup
@TjK
That was leftover from when they reviewed the GTX 480
@TjK
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/1957/gpuo.png
@Freakintoddles
The bezels really kill the experience. Otherwise I could see this making sense. Not only are they a pain for gaming, it would interfere with watching movies as well.
A couple of nice, thin bezel monitors can rack up in price quite quickly as well. (Likely over a thousand bucks.) I'd much rather buy one nice large 1080p HDTV and mount that on my wall to supplement my everyday monitor. Then I can play games and watch movies while sitting a few feet away, but still have the regular monitor to do work and type emails at my desk. Problem solved, simple and maybe cheaper too! (Depends on how big of a TV you want.)
I know people will say you can buy bargain monitors for this or buy up some cheap used ones but for the best multi-monitor experience, you really want all the same model.
@TheOneAndOnlyJH - ATI just added the ability to offset the images by a certain number of pixels to compensate for the bezels in their latest driver release (10.3). I know this isn't a real solution, but it's better than nothing.
would it be possible to run two eyefinity 3x1 displays from two (un-crossfired) video cards? say a 5850 for gaming on the bottom three and a 5450 for "productivity" on the top three?
So there's no point to getting one of these over a standard 5870 if I'm only going to use one display?
Assuming that's the case, anyone have a recommendation on the best 5870 card to get?