Is eyefinity worth it?

[deathrune]

Hello, you know when you have your eye on something, research it for hours on end but realize it might not even be what it looks like?

Well, I've been checking amd eyefinity out and it seams pretty cool. I only have a hd 6970 reference and a 21.5" monitor. Though I could afford getting another 2 monitors or 1 of the same that I have now and 1 120hz monitor in the middle of the eyefinity.

Though is it a game changing expierence, the games I play the most are source engine based shooters like garrys mod and tf2. Other fps games, a few rts games like league of legends. The high resolution would be nice for day to day tasks as well. But I'm mainly interested if it actualy makes gaming more fun. And can the radeon 6970 handle that high resolution?

Thanks for reading.

 

[ricardois]

of course it will make games more fun, it gives you a lot of immersivity to the game, also on shooter games it helps a lot just looking to the side monitors instead of keeping moving the mouse around so much.

alone it will handle it, but on more demanding games you will need to lower a lot of quality settings specially antialiasing. but on Source Engine games i think it will work fine.

 

[wolfram23]

I tried it and didn't like it. I kind of felt like it was mostly for a "cool" factor, and helps a bit with immersion too. But for actual usefulness it wasn't that great, sure you can see a little more but the side monitors also have very stretched images.

Basically the performance hit and cost just wasn't anywhere near justified for the experience I had.

 

[larkspur]

I run a single 6970 2gb @4800x1200 and and can confirm ricardois is correct. Yes it can handle anything but with reduced settings. WoW runs on ultra, FPSs mostly on medium, SW:ToR medium, etc... Frame rates dropping below 60 bother me so I keep settings down to keep the frames up.

If I were you I'd pickup a couple more monitors (they are so relatively cheap nowadays) and do it. Obviously make sure you understand the requirements with the DP port and all that. Also, remember eyefinity isn't supported in Win XP. And remember that you can always just set a game to run on one monitor, so you won't be really losing anything, especially when you get used to the extra desktop space.

 

[deathrune]

hmm thanks for your replies, I guess I will possibly get them another time, out of an ssd, water cooling or eyefinity...

 

[djscribbles]

Keep in mind there 120Hz monitor isn't going to be doing anything special in an eyefinity array. If you decide to disable eyefinity in favor of single monitor, then the 120Hz will actually do something.

If you want to go for the Coupe de Grace in over the top display tech, upgrade your middle monitor to a 120hz display with 3d (s23a950d for example)

Also, don't underestimate how awesome it is to have a second monitor for generic purposes (I use an old 19" display for this), I can look up guides and keep them on screen while I game, or keep an eye on ventrilo and IM stuff, or play another game in the case of turn based/slow games.

 

[deathrune]

Keep in mind there 120Hz monitor isn't going to be doing anything special in an eyefinity array. If you decide to disable eyefinity in favor of single monitor, then the 120Hz will actually do something.

If you want to go for the Coupe de Grace in over the top display tech, upgrade your middle monitor to a 120hz display with 3d (s23a950d for example)

Also, don't underestimate how awesome it is to have a second monitor for generic purposes (I use an old 19" display for this), I can look up guides and keep them on screen while I game, or keep an eye on ventrilo and IM stuff, or play another game in the case of turn based/slow games.

I already use an old monitor, dedicated for youtube 24/7
Well multi refresh rates work if you have it on extra desktops but not in eyefinity? I thought the 120 hz monitor would work but I'm guessing they scale down to the lowest hz.

I heard 3d wasn't that good for team red and I actually don't like 3d, it's kind of gimmicky, monitor is way out of my price range. But i want eyefinity so I could see more things and people in competitive fps games.

Bearing in mind the size I have now is 21.5" 1080p

2 x Samsung S22A300H 21.5 " 2ms

1 xBenQ XL2410T 24" LED 3D 120Hz TFT
in the middle

Or would that setup look ugly

 

[djscribbles]

Yeah, multiple refresh rates do work if you only run one game per monitor. Running a single game across multiple monitors would limit the game to 60hz (I guess maybe not if you disable vsync though, then it'll run at whatever framerate you GPU pumps stuff out at).

I run 3d for team red and so far I'm quite happy (though I play games several months after launch, they don't have very good day 1 support usually).