Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 — Gaming On Six Panels

MojoKid writes "AMD's 6-output Radeon has been seen in action at a number of events, but today the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is being officially launched. HotHardware paired the card up with six 22" Dell LCD panels in a 3x2 configuration — with a max resolution of 5760x2160 — and ran it through a number of popular titles including Dirt 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Crysis. For specialized, high-end graphics cards like this, the market potential may be relatively small. If, however, the idea of multi-monitor gaming is appealing to you and you've got the means to score one of these cards (along with multiple displays), you won't be disappointed." Reader Vigile adds a different analysis of the card's six-monitor gaming: "PC Perspective found FPS games were basically unplayable because of the bezel through the middle of their vision while RTS and racing games like StarCraft 2 and DiRT 2 were spectacular."

Comments

Hmmm

[Stooshie]

It's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other as far as I'm concerned!

Re:Hmmm

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Its 6 of one and half a dozen of the other only on crossfire capable motherboards.

The great unwashed, with their single PCIe 16x slot, have to settle for "6 of one or half a dozen of the other"....

6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[dingen]

Is the increased resolution of 6 screens really that much of an improvement over one large Full HD television, that the fact there are lines running right through your vision is acceptable? I really doubt that.

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[santax]

Well the next step is off course to remove the casing from the screens. At least, that would be my mod numero uno. But I can image this setup (more screens, setup as a 180 degree panorama) being more 'realistic' and immersive(?) than one flat screen.

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[bbqsrc]

Most TVs can only handle resolutions of up to 1920x1080, as they're made for HD video, so there is a slight advantage to the multiple monitor layout. However, the frames between the monitors would drive me insane.

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[91degrees]

6 HD projectors should work for you. I wonder if the drivers have functionality to allow overlap.

This sort of setup is very much a niche market for gaming, but pretty useful for commercial flight simulators or display walls.

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[nacturation]

Do the frames between windows of a car also drive you insane? Likewise when you wear glasses?

Those are all on the periphery of your vision. Would you wear glasses that had an opaque cross on the lens centered directly over your iris?

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[KillzoneNET]

Looking at the videos, I can confidently say that yes, it'd be better to get a large TV.

One thing to point out with those videos and the review is that the FOV is like a typical monitor. He goes on to mention how great it is, but its really just him sitting 3 feet in front of a 66" display. Anyone will say the same thing playing a game on a typical 40-50" display running at a much lower 1080p resolution.

The key to playing in such an array is to get immersion in games. You're much better off making a configuration of 1x3 displays so that you get a very high FOV and not just a glorified big screen TV. Hell you can save yourself more than $1200 in monitors (assuming you go for 22" each at $250 each) by getting a nice HD projector and a screen (or wall). It eliminates the heat and power consumption and not to mention there are no gaps. Sit up close and there you go, a fake 2x3 Eyefinity.

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[Ironhandx]

I've had this done with 3 monitors for a couple of months now. Its actually pretty easy to do and I got the bezel down to about 1/8th of an inch which is barely noticeable at all. They were Lenovo 22" monitors to begin with and only had a little more than 1/2" of bezel between two monitors regardless. Sadly I actually LIKED the bezel for separating things I was working on multiple desktops with, I noticed this after the mod was done of course.

YMMV.

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[srussia]

However, the frames between the monitors would drive me insane.

That's okay, I only play Tie figher sims anyway.

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[VolciMaster]

and with projector prices coming so far down, I don't see why they wouldn't be preferable now :)

Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV?

[tom17]

I agree.

I also like this... "racing in Dirt 2 on a 3x2 Eyefinity configuration is a totally different experience than playing on a single, smaller screen" - Indeed, but I also think that probably, "racing in Dirt 2 on a 3x2 Eyefinity configuration is just like playing on a single, similar sized screen, except with annoying frames"
Surely a projector would be just as good/better?

One area that I think this kind of setup would be very great is where the 'peripheral' screens were displaying 'peripheral' view-ports so that when you look to the side, you have a 'to the side' camera angle rather than just the widened forward view. For a racing game say, then you could glance to the side for your mirrors and for people coming up beside you (but not level yet) - just like real driving!
I really thought this was what EyeFiniti would be when I first heard of it but was quite disappointed that it was just an expanded screen. I guess it may even be possible to do it without specialist game support, assuming that the 3d world is pretty much rendered fully on-card. If the card has the whole 3d world in its memory for any frame then surely it can generate a new viewport (I'm not up on the internals of modern graphics hardware, is this even viable?)

Oh well.
Tom...

Been running Eyefinity, my thoughts...

[kcbnac]

I am currently running with an Eyefinity setup - Radeon HD5770, with 3 20" displays at 1600x1200 each. (Traded up from a HD4850, brought down the idle temp and fan noise, and gained Eyefinity capability) So I'm running at 4800x1200, when it is set up as a "single panel." I've got the left and right monitors set up at a slight angle.

Most games work fine with it, some that aren't designed to scale to such a ratio I have to keep at a single monitor's resolution - but when it detects something running fullscreen, at say, 1600x1200 (each monitor's native display) it just mirrors it across all three.

Some games like RTSes have a GUI interface at the bottom - some just move the corners (unit details, commands) and leave plenty of space in between - others 'stretch' - so games will have to be patched or designed with this in mind, to fully work. (If it doesn't, at least it degrades relatively gracefully)

Some games don't scale at all - and when they go above a certain resolution, just stretch in general, or zoom their interfaces based on the aspect ratio it can generate. These ones I have to keep at a lower resolution.

So far all of the Source engine games from Valve work great - I haven't tried Counter-Strike: Source, but everything newer works fine, giving me peripheral vision. I just hope Valve updates these to allow the HUD to be movable - only downside to them that I've encountered yet.

Fallout 3 works with it, with some tweaking - had to edit the configuration file to move the HUD interface options, and fix the PipBoy 3000 interface - it zoomed too close to see the top and bottom.

So as we discover more games that do or don't work - let the developers know, hopefully they'll update their games to support the aspect ratio. At a minimum at least it degrades gracefully if it can't use the extra monitors - and by making it available on all of the 5xxx series cards, it will become a standard. Hopefully nVidia is able to implement a similar feature so that it isn't a manufacturer-centric feature that some developers won't support since it isn't 100% usable...

Re:Been running Eyefinity, my thoughts...

[AHuxley]

Really need some list like http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/Essential_Games_List
to add some extra "scale" info.

5 could be also a decent number...

[sznupi]

...with screens rotated 90 degrees.

Re:Obligatory question...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The fancy ATI-specific screen melding tech? Probably not, at least for another few revisions of ATI's proprietary driver.

Having 6 heads out of a single PCIe 16x slot? Probably so.

Frankly, I'm not the gamer that I used to be, so I don't really care about the driver features that allow you to force multi-monitor functions on games that are ordinarily single monitor. I'm interested in the fact that 6-headed graphics cards are now within the realm of gamer enthusiasts(ie. ~$500, stocked by normal retailers, drivers downloadable without support agreements, and so forth) rather than super-pricey financial workstation integrators and custom display wall types. I can only assume that Matrox has been praying fervently for the demise of the entire ATI driver team in a messy accident; because it is only ATI's somewhat uneven reputation in regards to software that is keeping them relevant now that this thing is in the wild.

Not just for gamers

[Stenchwarrior]

In addition to the 6 screen setup acting at one unit, the screens will, I assume, be able to act independently of one another for 6 separate screens, or possibly even 2 or 4 combined with 4 or 2 staying independent, respectively. This would allow for imaging-types of applications (MRI's, Digital X-Rays, CAD) be displayed on a large surface while having a few separate screens for applications that do not require visuals - all on the same machine. I can totally see this being used is hospitals and graphics design studios where large resolution is crucial, while allowing lower resolution apps open at the same time to prevent alt-tabbing between and thus increasing efficiency.

Re:2.72 TFLOPS

[Hurricane78]

FORTRAN doesn’t run. It limps. At best. ^^

Eyefinity Portrait Mode

[mandark1967]

I currently use an Eyefinity setup in Portrait Mode with a Dell 2408FWP and 2 Dell U2410s.

Here's my trippy background http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/1050/echo.jpg (it's rather large at 3600x1920)

The setup is pretty awesome in my opinion and is pretty easily driven by my single 5870.

I do, from time to time, run into an issue where the card hits its framebuffer from being limited to 1GB or RAM so I believe I will upgrade for the sole purpose of getting that additional 1GB of RAM. I also believe the E6 cards probably come with some minor revisions to their architecture and BIOS that may allow them to be overclocked a little better than the original batch of 1GB cards that were released on Launch Day (When I got mine)

I do understand the laws of supply & demand may cause some to raise prices somewhat, but I am hoping that the new cards are not offered at some outrageous price.

Quadroplex setup

[sanosuke001]

At work, we have dual 4K projectors behind a 32:9, 15 foot wide piece of glass on our main visualization display (we do 3D visualization software) and we run a system with two Quadroplex boxes (two quadro 5800's each I believe) and nVidia's drivers are a long way from actually working correctly for us. We see a lot of tearing when in mosaic mode and multiple opengl contexts can't run concurrently (it only allows half resolution height when doing so) and makes the system very unstable. Seeing that this card doesn't require clock sync and works with six screens seamlessly, it looks like a viable alternative to us. Considering that two cards could run our 7680x2160 screen (our 4K projectors are four 1080p screens each) it might be advantageous for us to upgrade had we not just bought the new quadroplexes (nVidia told us to update our quadroplexes as our old ones didn't support the mosaic mode correctly; unfortunately, the new ones don't seem to either...)

I see these cards more useful to those with setups like ours; projectors that can display without borders and for high-quality visualizations.

Overheard at nVidia:

[nrozema]

Fuck everything, we're doing seven panels.