PowerColor HD5970 Eyefinity 12 makes six screens yesterday's news
By Donald Melanson 
posted April 30th 2010 3:43PM
posted April 30th 2010 3:43PM
Alright, so your six-screen Eyefinity rig may not be obsolete just yet, but it's definitely just been knocked down a few notches on the jaw drop-o-meter. What you're looking at above is a prototype of PowerColor's HD5970 Eyefinity 12, which -- you guessed it -- packs twelve Mini DisplayPorts, along with a full 4GB of DDR5 memory. Unfortunately, there's no images or video of an actual twelve-screen rig in action just yet -- PowerColor is saving that for Computex in June -- but you can check out a few more shots of the card itself after the break.
Insanity, I tell you insanity.
@arnavdesai
My favorite part is the crossfire connector...
/me tries to think of uses for a 24 monitor setup
Holy worthlessness Batman!
@Entropic Decay Great scott! . . that's a lot of Pr0n . .
@arnavdesai
they lost me at display port
@arnavdesai
Insane indeed, though from an FPS player's perspective, a 12-display set up isn't optimal either.
3x3 on the other hand seems like a good idea.
Or, if Eyefinity ever supports portrait mode, any 1x(2n+1) setup.
I have 4GB of RAM on my motherboard. Soon, my video card will have more RAM than the rest of my computer!
@arnavdesai
Yes, but does it play Doom?
@jasonbot Sry.. only Wolfenstein 3D
@arnavdesai
If I buy this, it would be purely for the 4GB of video memory... 12 screens is just insane.
Eyefinity is only good for 3 or 9 screens anyway, anything else and you end up with LCD monitor frames/bevels in the center of your view.
@arnavdesai
i agree. what's the point???
they need to make the card itself smaller, consumes less power, and powerful. it's just too easy to make a vid card humongous, consumes 1000w, and super powerful.
@aarond12
I believe Engadget meant to say 4GB of GDDR5, which is different than conventional RAM. Still though, it has more access memory than your whole system.
@arnavdesai : I wish W7 Media Center could display multiple channels on different screens at once.
@arnavdesai
Wait, I thought we hate Mini DisplayPort? I'm so confused....
@Entropic Decay Seeing the 5970 was already insane. But this one is pretty much beyond it. Impressions. http://j.mp/5970-by-ati-fastest
@arnavdesai
So, @engadgetshow, when're you giving away this baby?
I might hop on a flight to NYC.
@arnavdesai That thing is EUGE! Euge I tell you!!
@arnavdesai Alriiiiiiight, cuz twelve useless displayports are better than one.
Can has HDMI pleez?
@Entropic Decay I used to do security work in a power plant where they had to use 8 computers because they needed to monitor 16 screens of sensor readouts. This is aimed to those lines of work I'd think.
@manofchao5 You guys are such a bunch of tards. The first mention of Mini displayport and it's somehow an issue because it came from Apple and you think it's proprietary. You think they could fit 6 x HDMI ports on the card? You think they want to pay an HDMI license?
Mini-displayport is about half the width of an HDMI port and requires no license fee.
Oh no but you have to buy an Apple display. Shrieks. Do you bollocks, Dell sell displayport compatible displays so you buy 6 crappy $200 P2210 screens and 6 x mini-dp to dp cables (that's right, you don't have to pay Apple for these either).
So let's see how much money you've paid to Apple for this hated open standard. That's nothing for the GPU, nothing for the screens, nothing for the cables so that means nothing in total. Apple take nothing for allowing you to run 6 screens from a single card and it's cheaper because you aren't paying an HDMI license and what do they get from you? Nothing but complaints.
So to clear it up once and for all, Mini-displayport is a good thing and the sooner all manufacturers adopt it and drop the oversized ports the better because computers will start shipping with these as standard and PC laptops might even ship with two decent display outputs.
@vipz
couldnt you put the monitors in a certain way, like 3 monitors tall and 4 monitors wide, making that widescreen 16:10/16:9 now a 4:3 image :P
Dang. Just make a low profile version and its mine.
Awesome! Removable Mini display ports.
It's getting to stupid levels now... It's definitly not even for a consumer... Business and speciality users only
@Madmax333 Don't forget about CTU.
@Madmax333
Skynet could use this rig pretty well.
@Zac89
Skynet probably made this rig in the future and brought it back to stop John Connor etc...
@Madmax333 Indeed we have officially hit ludicrous display ports. Where would you even stand/mount 12 monitors? I doubt you can get one much smaller than 18-20" diagonal anymore. Put them in a 4x3 grid so that you could actually have a chance at looking at them all at once. Even going off rough WxH of 22"x18" per monitor, you are talking 88'x54" in that grid. 7'+ by 4.5' is some serious real estate.
@Madmax333 It's DEFINITELY for workstations.
@Madmax333
im sure this has alot of use for stock brokers.
a super cheap way to get 12 monitors up and running.
For some reason, I just can't get excited anymore when I see the word "prototype". Wonder why that is?
Oh well, back to the tired memes! Does it run Crysis?
@Cromagazine Not on 12 screens it doesn't...
This is going to look like a mess with 12 mDP->DVI dongles back there.
THIS IS SCARY PWNAGE!
It's as Bill Gates said, 3 monitors ought to be enough for anybody...wait
@Marshillboy
i thought it was 64 thousand monitors. a visionary that guy
If you arrange your 16*9 monitors in a 4*3 array, what kind of aspect ratio are you getting? 64*27?!?!?!?!?!?!
@Noswal
Its the same damn ratio its the resolution that increases jeez...
@Noswal no.. 16:9, sorry
@gargle oh.. wait. to put them in a 4:3 ratio im guessing you'd have to saw some of the edges off, and you'd get 4:3 ration since you put them in a 4:3 ratio.. what a trick question.
@Max Rebo
Give the guy a break, especially because you're wrong. The ratio is only stays the same as the displays if you add the same number of displays in each direction. He specifically said arranging the displays in a 4x3 grid, which means he's indeed correct that the new ratio would be 64:27.
@gargle
No, 64:27. It's a 16x9 shape multiplied by 4 horizontally and 3 vertically. You only retain the 16x9 shape if you add the same number of displays in each direction.
@John H The ratio would actually be cool, as it would be right in between 2.35:1 and 2.4 which is basically scope movie aspect ratio. Not sure how useful though as you would be doing some massive upscaling and would have to deal with the bezels...
@madgamer2000 for movie watching I mean (on the upscaling/bezels thing).
How about a 16x9 array of 4:3 displays...
@Michael Pollard 16X9, really! You know that is 16X9 displays or 144 displays.
I will come back with an answer as soon as I finish building a PC with 12 of these cards in ATI CrossFireX™. All I need is a custom motherboard and case as well as a 150,000W Power supply.
yo dawg, I heard you like monitors, so we...
and the video card with 12, TWELVE friggin DPs is the result
@IvanP91
We put a video card in your video card so you can watch while you watch
I've always wanted to get 2fps per screen...now I can.
.
@Jack that brings a whole new meaning to "Picture In Picture"