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One thing that should please gamers with lots of the same model of monitors is an Eyefinity configuration called 5x1, which means five monitors all lined up in a single row.
Rather than have them laid out in their normal 16:9 or 16:10 widescreen modes, the set up that we saw had the LCDs in portrait mode. This effectively gave the effect of both a wide peripheral view, as well as something with a bit more vertical coverage. (We also figure that having five monitors in landscape mode would give a far too extreme field-of-view.)
As you can see here, there's bezel compensation enabled in the driver
Having the 5x1 setup with portrait monitors would also prove to be a more cost effective way of getting big, widescreen gaming without having to spring for an Eyefinity 3 setup composed of 30-inch LCDs that cost north of the four-digit range.
The setup we saw was running off the dual-Cayman Antilles Radeon HD 6990 card, which pumped pixels to the five displays quite smoothly in the demos we got to see of Dirt 3 and Dragon Age 2. (We'll clarify the total resolution with AMD and update this article.)
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Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
One dead pixel in a display drives me crazy i couldn't imagine staring at 8 huge 3/4 inch black lines for hours on end. I really don't understand this implementation of multiple screens. Even with the cinimassive displays the lines are unacceptable.
I've been running a three monitor setup for a few months now and most of the time I don't even notice the bezels while playing games. The center screen is my focus and the other two are more like "peripheral vision". You still have to turn in-game focus to the center screen to shoot, right? Don't know how I got along without three monitors before. YMMV. Outside of games, multiple monitors is a no-brainer for productivity and multitasking.
