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AMD's DX11 Radeons Can Drive Six 30 Displays
J. Dzhugashvili writes "Whereas most current graphics cards can only drive a pair of displays, AMD has put some special sauce in its next-generation DirectX 11 GPUs to enable support for a whopping six monitors. There's no catch about supported resolutions, either. At an event yesterday, AMD demonstrated a single next-gen Radeon driving six 30" Dell monitors, each with a resolution of 2560x1600, hooked up via DisplayPort. Total resolution: 7680x3200 (or 24.6 megapixels). AMD's drivers present this setup as a single monitor to Windows, so in theory, games don't need to be updated to support it. AMD showed off Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, World of Warcraft, and DiRT 2 running at playable frame rates on the six displays."
I'll bet I can't get more than two of them into my machine, which means I'm still stuck with a maximum of 12 monitors. Dammit.
AMD has put some special sauce in its next-generation DirectX 11 GPUs to enable support for a whopping six monitors.
Special Sauce for a Whopper, eh? I must have missed the merger announcement between AMD and Burger King.
Eyefinity is enabled through a combination of hardware and software being developed by AMD. On the hardware front, AMD's upcoming Radeons will sport between 3 and 6 display outputs of various types, DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, etc. And those outputs will be managed by software currently dubbed SLS, or Single Large Surface. Using the SLS tool, users are able to configure a group of monitors to work with Eyefinity and essentially act as a single, large display.
http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Eyefinity-MultiDisplay-Technology-In-Action/
7680 x 3200 - that ought to increase your field of view just a tad!
This guy already had this set up for a while, it's pretty cool (now 12 screens):
http://www.stefandidak.com/office/
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Wrong direction. You need NINE displays.
Actually, seriously, it seems like it would be more useful to have a standard 30" display centered in your FOV, and a projected 90" display surrounding it at lower resolution. You still get the peripheral cues, but you're not wasting resolution (and expense) on parts of the display where you can't perceive it. The math and logic is fairly simple, but I've never heard of a card that supports it. (There were some esoteric simulators many years ago that did this, but it never caught on in the wider market.)
Two words: Peripheral Vision.
damn!!! i hope this isn't just fud.
I don't think that word means what you think it does . . .
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
But will there be decent Linux drivers, or will they be a second thought as usual?
Correct, and traders will hate this. We tried the Matrox TripleHead2Go a couple of years ago and it stretched the screen across...wait for it...THREE monitors. I never heard so much bitching about how hitting the maximize button made an app take up all three screens. Fortunately Matrox had anticipated this and provided a setting in the drivers to provide the desired functionality. I hope AMD is as insightful.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Most games in multimon scenarios really need odd number of displays; 5 is better than 6 in this case (and you just know some people will say this is unusable, because of monitor bezel in the center)
Somehow I doubt it supports exactly 6 monitors.
Though on the other hand I went to buy a bomb shelter from this vet with one arm, and he told me that it'd withstand a 40 megaton blast... no more... no less.
The enemies of Democracy are
nVidia: Our new DirectX 11 GPUs are able to support six monitors simultaneously.
ATI: Well, the Jerk Store called, and they're running out of you.
When your computer is possessed by Satan, you point at the screen and say:
"Look at that bezel bub!"
....and 6 shall be the monitors of thine fragging... no more, no less.
Pfft. 14 inches? I'm using lynx on a 5" green-screen. It was good enough for my grand-dad, it's good enough for me.
5 whole inches? Man, I'm piping this to a punch card printer. After years of listening to the hammering I can "read" it like morse code. It just sounds like music to me. A page like this takes up to four hours, but it's worth it, I can assure you.
How hard would it be to make frameless or very-minimally-framed monitors designed for stacking together like this? Or at least a set of monitors with the bulk of the framing only on particular edges?
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
"I really hate having to have one hand on the "stick", and the other trying to set "flight controls" and hit the keys to "look around" when I'm "landing."
Best code-words for masturbation to porn ever.
All programmers know the correct way is to have the punctuation outside of the quote marks, otherwise you're modifying the string literal that the quote marks enclose. And I don't care whether the rules say it's meant to be like that or not, if I'm quoting a piece of text which didn't have that punctuation in it then it feels dirty to move the punctuation inside the quotes.
Will be a driver available for Linux?
Affordable, graphics on six 30-inch monitors, or playable framerates. Choose 2.
Can't wait to build a new computer in 2 years when prices go down and my computer becomes obsolete.
Such is the life of graphics whores.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are happy to play with our HD4350s and GF 6200s, and upgrading only once every five years or so, to the next bargain-bin card, whose R&D was paid by all of you :)
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Like any current mid to high end home theater projector, but with several inch wide lines running through the picture.
So, here is the question. If you have 3 screens, why on earth are you maximizing?! Seriously, because I dream of nothing more than to have to turn my head a full 90 degrees in order to read a full line of text.
Because Windows users always maximize their apps. Nobody knows why.
I never understood either why people using my computer (24" @ 1920x1600) always feel the need to maximize every single window which I almost never do except for a few graphical apps like digiKam or BibblePro.
I'm sure they'd do the same across 3 or 6 screens. Probably in Windows the maximize button stops working if you don't use it often enough.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Maybe it's because they want to make better use of their screen real estate? Why do people prefer larger computer monitors and TVs? Because you see can see more and see better. I mean, do you also complain that your TV is maximized instead of displaying bits and pieces of other channels next to the program you're currently watching?
Most operating systems today are capable of multitasking, but most users are not. So if you're only using a single application, and you bought a 24" monitor, then why not use that space? If you're watching a movie, you can see a bigger picture. If you're surfing the web, typing a paper, writing code, or working on a spread sheet, you can see more content at once and scroll less.
Most people don't go out and buy a 24" monitor so that they can see more of their desktop background. The better question might be, why not maximize the application you're currently using? Most OSes have a windows manager or task switcher that allows quick and easy switching between programs. Windows even has a desktop shortcut in the quick launch bar for easy access to the desktop. There's really no advantage to not having your windows maximized and fully utilizing your screen real estate. It's also easier to focus on your work when there's nothing else cluttering the screen.
Many programs, such as IDEs or graphics applications like Photoshop or Illustrator, have a Workspace manager. That's because the developers realize that your screen setup and window layout are vital to user productivity and efficiency. With complex applications as these, you often have tons of widgets, toolbars, info panels, etc. that can take up significant display area. So it makes sense to use your screen real estate as efficiently as possible. It doesn't make sense to clutter your monitor with windows that have nothing to do with your current workflow.
On a 1280x1024 display, I usually don't have space to display all the tool panels and windows I need to work efficiently. On my current 1920x1600 display, I have just enough when the Application is maximized. Sure, I can get by on less screen area. But that usually means constantly opening & collapsing tool panels and a lot of scrolling back and forth. A bigger workspace also means I see my drawings in more detail; I can see more code at a time; and I can more easily & accurately navigate long web pages. Additionally, working with an application maximized allows you to better memorize the location of various panels and toolbars since they're always in the same position. Just as switching between different model keyboards leads to slower typing and more typos, a non-maximized window that's a different size and in a different position every time is similarly less efficient.
Don't get too jumpy about this. Think about it logically. What's the point in having 6 if it acts like one in Windows? You can't fullscreen an ap like a TV Tuner viewer or media player or game on just one monitor. Just get like an 80 inch LCD for cheaper and then you can actually play a game, which you really can't do with plastic frame gaps between each of the 6 monitors. I can't stand having my crosshair halved across two displays whose LCDs are like 4 inches apart and you get that issue with 2,4,and 6 displays. It'd really be 9 or 1 as your only real options.
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