Hands-on: Radeon HD 6990 Running Eyefinity 5x1

By Marcus Yam
published

Today we paid a visit to AMD's offices in Markham, Ontario and we got an early look at a couple of new technologies.

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.)

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
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.
102 Comments Comment from the forums
  • waikano
    Get rid of the Bezels and I would be game.
    Reply
  • jerreece
    Holy crap...
    Reply
  • Burodsx
    Very nice, but won't be tempted to do this until a monitor is nothing but a screen.
    Reply
  • Nakal
    waikanoGet rid of the Bezels and I would be game.
    http://www.cinemassivedisplays.com/video-wall/

    :)
    Reply
  • geekapproved
    That's badazz, but not for me. They should make monitors with removable bezels for this.
    Reply
  • Xatos
    Cool, but that many screens is redundant, and being sideways like that puts too many breaks in the screen.
    Reply
  • kilo_17
    That's awesome
    Reply
  • steelyphil
    Hes using a 360 controller.....
    Reply
  • foogoo
    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.
    Reply
  • XZaapryca
    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.
    Reply