Eyefinity

[ncc74656]

I plan to buy either 2 5870's or a 5970 for my next system build. I currently have a few screens and would like to use eyefinity on them. I have seen demos of 6 screens together but from what i read the cards only support 3 each, so does anyone know how to throw 6 on them or when ati will support this for consumers. second my main screen is a 46" 120Hz samsung and my side screens vary in brand and range from 20-24" I was thinking of putting 4 22" stacked 2 on either side of my 46 to make the tops and bottoms align to the tv panel. has anyone done eyefinity with differnet sized monitors? or with screens that support different resoultions? say i have 4 22's that are 1440X900 but my center is 1920X1080... im not sure what issues this would cause... anyone have any thoughts? If i can get 5 screens in eyefinity i plan to remove the panels of my 22's from there casing and align them flush with the LCD panel in my samsung so it makes a seemless picture.

 

[Kari]

that is not going to work.... any of it.

For 6 screens you would need the 5870 Eyefinity Six edition, that hasn't been released yet. The newest 9.12 hotfix drivers enabled eyefinity for crossfire setups, but I dont know whether it supports 6 screens (3 on both cards) or just 3 on the 'master' card. You should check it out nevertheless... I haven't bothered to dig in too deep in it...

The resolutions should also match between the screens, so your setup would look all funky, when the main TV uses 1440*900 as well and then there would be more pixels on the sides on the stacks. Basically it would be a 2by3 setup with one of the middle screens missing, not sure if that is going to work either.

Nice try

 

[ncc74656]

i wounder if it would work if i used all 1920X1080 screens, with 4 22 and my 46 in the middle.. :-/ im not sure how eyefinity spaces the screens out ro how the resolution would divide it self...

 

[jay2tall]

Ok, this is the scoop on "Eyefinity". Eyefinity is just a marketing name for ATI's multi display support. The 5xxx series cards support up to 3 displays each.. There will be a 6 display port 5870 coming out at some point as well. When using 2 displays per card you can use any combination of (2)DVI and (1) HDMI. HOWEVER, for 3 displays you MUST use the display port, otherwise you are limited to 2 displays per card. You can use an active Display port to DVI converter, however, I am not sure how well this works and you have to make sure the adapter is an active converter, not passive or adapter. It must be an active converter. These run about $100+. So with that said, you can run (2) 5870's and have 6 displays, but 2 of them must use display port.

Next, you can have each display set to whatever resolution you want and move them all over if you like. You can create monitor groups which means several display create one LARGE desktop or several large desktops. There is alot of flexibility with this.

ANOTHER catch is if you want to use Eyefinity for gaming or to create one big GIANT display, ALL display must run at the SAME resolution. Basically when a display is in a "group" every monitor in that group must run the same resolution. Here is a link that might help you understand this a little better.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity.aspx
The PDF on this page is also helpful: http://www.amd.com/us/Documents/ATI_Eyefinity_Technology_Brief.pdf

 

[ncc74656]

ok, so i should pick up 2 more 46" so i can run a single group. then use my 22's and a second group above...

 

[jay2tall]

WOW. I have never heard someone say "ok so I should just go pick up 2 more 46 inch displays". Haha. I mean I guess you can... if you want... but you still need to ensure that on is display port, which I don't think TV's even have.

Let me ask you this. What are you trying to accomplish with this setup? Gaming? Also, you said you are planning to buy, which leads me to think you are fantasizing about this a little bit. Are you REALLY intending to create this setup?

 

[jay2tall]

Actually I must correct myself. If you read the PDF document above you can use a passive adapter for DP to DVI as long as it is single link.

"
If only one or two DVI/HDMI monitors are attached through a DisplayPort connector, then only simple
passive adapters are required. With a passive adapter the GPU outputs the display signal required for
the monitor with no conversion occurring within the adapter itself."

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

First, at this time the Xfire + Eyefiinty drivers are still immature, it works, but only on some games, look at someof the HD5970 reviews like Anand's to see their experiences with game compatability with Xfire and Eyefinity. This means you can run all 6 monitors as 1 panel (the major added feature of eyefinity) without that then you run as multiple monitors under windows and can support as many outputs as you want including USB outputs, but it's not the same and each one is a seperate incident for windows and not a wide FOV and so the games support that differently (easy on most flight simulators which already did it for years, hard or even impossible on an FPS never intended for such a setup). Most people though are looking for the surround view single view that would require Xfire to work in conjunction with Eyefinity.

Ok, this is the scoop on "Eyefinity". Eyefinity is just a marketing name for ATI's multi display support. The 5xxx series cards support up to 3 displays each.. There will be a 6 display port 5870 coming out at some point as well.

It's more than just multi-monitor support, it's beyond just spanning, just like it was for Matrox, also the 6 port HD5870 is available for workstation orders to business.

When using 2 displays per card you can use any combination of (2)DVI and (1) HDMI. HOWEVER, for 3 displays you MUST use the display port, otherwise you are limited to 2 displays per card. You can use an active Display port to DVI converter, however, I am not sure how well this works and you have to make sure the adapter is an active converter, not passive or adapter. It must be an active converter. These run about $100+. So with that said, you can run (2) 5870's and have 6 displays, but 2 of them must use display port...

The PDF on this page is also helpful: http://www.amd.com/us/Documents/ATI_Eyefinity_Technology_Brief.pdf

Only if the resolution is higher than 1920x1200, read page 8 of that Brief above, it specifically speaks to the single link option with passive adapters. Since the resolutions he's talking about are 1920x1080 and lower, he should be fine with passive adapters.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Ah, you updated before I finished posting. Oh well, double the posting, double the fun.

 

[jay2tall]

^Yeah that is interesting to know because I may venture down that path. I don't have the room for 3 displays though :-(

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah I hope that some of the laptops will add support (like DVI+HDMI+DP [and then use DP cloning for the laptop panel so you could do triple monitor out the back without added hardware and more people would be fine with the panel being the same as one of the others]).

Last Xmas after discussing with Pauldh a bunch of us at work who were bored with the reduced workload during the holidays setup a TripleHead2Go setup in a corner with 3 projectors (amassed for the various unused boardrooms), and it was AWESOME! This is how we configured it based on my discussions and suggestions for Paul's potential setup;

PS, there's a screen cutting in front of the empty corner to make 3 screens using the screen and the side walls as natural screens (off-white but good enough).

With the edges blending at the corner it was pretty seemless and at 3 x 1280x1024 it was VERY sweet, and it actually ran well of of one of the guys' 17" XPS SLI'ed GF9800M (can't remember GT or GTS/GTX) laptops, no match for mine with the relatively weak HD2600.

We left it in place for 3 days and did NO work, even on of the directors cam in to play for a few hours.

I didn't think until afterwards that I should've taken some pics.

 

[jay2tall]

WOW! I think I would have pooped if I saw that.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah it was alot of fun. I'm back in the office for a day at the end of the year (either 30th or 31st depending on what I decide) and I think I might get that up and running again, but I need the added power for more modern games, I think I could only do Doom3, F1 and Serious Sam from the games I have, and Morrowind (but it's not fun for many, we played morrowind to see the wide 'scape effect, but one person playing is kinda boring if it's not you, even FartCry was too 'slow' for quick play where a 'turn' is too long. We mainly played Serious Sam 2 an F1 on high levels.

 

[ncc74656]

im working on peicing together my new build, the MB i am debating on is not out yet so that throws alot of things into the air as far as what i can do and how i will run it... the TV's i can get for 600 each so thats not a big issue (46" sony 120Hz, older model though). at present i have 4 160GB SSD X25 intel drives taht i just got the other day, I have a 12 port mini sas 2GB cache 8X pci-e card and i have a thermal take case in the mail that, depending on how much space the front rad curently has will determin what rad i will be putting into it. ive got my CPU but this still leaves the video, ram, mb, screens to play with.. and im torn between 2 5870's at around 350 a peice or 1 5980 at 550 ish...

 

[ncc74656]

as far as what i will be doing with the setup.. i presently run 9 monitors of varying sizes, ive always used at least 3 displays since around 2002. I do alot of gaming and have always played FPS's and WoW of course, in recent years ive started to do alot of webdesign and audio/video work, CS4/primere type stuff. im not really sure what eyefinity would give me if anything performance wise but it sure as hell will give me bragging rights . so while i do intend to max out my system and use it to its full potential im not certain i would have any notable benefit to using eyefinity over just a mismatch array of screens...

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

It's a little late for a reply, but it is the Holidays, so not surprising but hope it's helpful.

Eyefinity will only add better support for surround gaming, it will not add much for editing or multi-monitor work (other than improved multi-mon support above the standard, which you could've done with 3rd party apps in the past better), unless you plan on editing with a bezel break in the middle of the frame there's not much to add to a standard setup for any of the more mundane things you want to do with the setup, only really for gaming.

Where you might see benefit would be in monitor support, where DP and HDMI would give you higher bit-depth support for colour accuracy, but with going to older TVs it may have a, 12,18,20 bit sub engine, etc. it's really likely still displaying just 8 bits per colour channel anyways.

Anywhoo, good luck with the build hopefully the MoBo arrives soon-ish for you.

 

[ncc74656]

thanks for the repily, i suppose its more of a 'gotta have that new tech first' thing... lol, but i had thought of taking the panels out of all my screens and aligning them flush then building a custom frame/mount for them. just to make the displays mesh seemlessly rather thain have a black bar between all of them. but honestly i dont know if its worth it... the more i read about it the less i really think id use it, i like having SEPERATE desktops, i dont think any multi tasker would really like to combine them. but anyway, my MB should be released some time this january (or so ive been reading) then ill be checkin benches and decide over the trinity or fuzion.