AMD Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition: One Card, Six Screens

Three Monitors (5760x1080): One/Two Cards

Here’s the thing about gaming across six displays: unless the game you’re playing doesn’t center its action in the middle of the desktop surface, it’s outright distracting to cope with 1.5” of bezel right where you’d expect the barrel of your rifle to be. DiRT 2 is perhaps the only exception in our benchmark suite to this tendency toward centralization.

At least until Samsung’s thin-bezel LCDs emerge, hopefully restoring the suspension of disbelief you get when playing through your favorite title, it’s frankly more realistic to play across three screens in one display group while leaving the other three independent or in a second display group (AMD’s Catalyst driver facilitates multiple display groups).

Two display groups makes the most sense for gaming.

Thus, we also ran benchmarks with three monitors at 5760x1080. In almost every case, you see a single Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 handling that resolution without a problem. CrossFire doesn’t buy as much additional performance, but it’s still able to serve up impressive boosts in Bad Company 2 and Far Cry 2, especially.

The scaling here is a little less pronounced than the six-display results presented a page ago, but we’re still seeing increases where they matter most.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • phantomtrooper
    I would hate playing with that much black area between screens. I will stick with my 1080p monitor thank you.
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    :O They got two of those cards!! Lucky punks.
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    Glad they compared the 1GB and 2GB cards in a 3x1 setup. Glad I got my 5870 instead of waiting for a 2GB card :D. Even so, I want some thin bezel monitors before I hook up three of them. The bezel on my HP LCD is just to think so I'm not keen on buying another two.
    Reply
  • duk3
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125322&cm_re=5870-_-14-125-322-_-Product
    Immediate availability? Yes.
    Even in stock! (When linked :P )
    Reply
  • magicbullet
    wow......i feel so poor.
    Reply
  • Should have just made the 5970 the eyefinity edition
    Reply
  • ltcommander_data
    So I guess Apple's miniDP connector is quite useful after-all and is now seeing adoption outside of Macs.

    It's too bad you didn't test GTA IV like you used to do. I believe GTA IV at max settings exceeds 1GB of VRAM usage so perhaps 2GB graphics cards may be of some use assuming the game isn't still CPU limited despite 12 threads with the Core i7 980X. At the very least, I'm guessing Liberty City at 6048x2276 would be amazing.
    Reply
  • mtyermom
    This begs the question: how long until we have zero-bezel displays?
    Reply
  • oldscotch
    Obviously, the best solution is a 3x3 grid of displays to make sure your centre focus is not interfered with.

    Lesse, that'd be 5760 x 3240.
    No sweat ;)
    Reply
  • So, I guess if you already have a 1GB 5870 and 3x1 Eyefinity setup, the only advantage of the 2GB version is being able to pile on the AA/AF effects and still have a playable frame rate.
    Reply