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AMD Multi-Display Tech Has Problems, Potential
EconolineCrush writes "While AMD's Eyefinity multi-display gaming tech is undeniably impressive at first glance, digging deeper reveals key limitations. Some games work well, others not at all, and many are simply better suited to specific screen configurations. A three-way setup looks to be ideal from a compatibility perspective, and given current LCD prices, it's really not all that expensive. But would you take that over a single high-resolution display or a giant HDTV?"
But would you take that over a single high-resolution display or a giant HDTV?"
If I'm sitting at my desk play, an HDTV at 1080p is going to look absolutely horrible. So is even a ridiculously expensive large format display. Even three low end 20 inch monitors will give a much higher resolution, and much, much higher DPI than I could get for the same amount of money spent on a single large display.
Three HD projectors; One for each 8' by 15' wall. Desk with keyboard and mouse in the center. The optional garbage bag for motion sickness.
Even three low end 20 inch monitors will give a much higher resolution
With annoying gaps between the screens. Watch you not notice something because it's straddling a gap. But I bet you already realized this because you said three monitors, not two.
The problem with a big TV is only 1920x1080 max, and pixels the size of my fingernail. (There's a recent "obligatory" xkcd about this, I'll let some karmawhore who cares dig up the link...)
The problem with single high-resolution displays is that, while they keep the pixel density sane, they stop at only 30" (without going insanely expensive) and 2560x1600. Even these are way pricier than the same number of pixels in two or three smaller monitors.
Multiple monitors (30" if you can afford them, more likely 21-24") get loads of pixels, big display, and useful density. Who wouldn't want?
FWIW, though, this is nothing new -- nvidia has been offering multiscreen openGL forever. But it doesn't work with either generic X setup (XRANDR or multi-screen); you have to use their custom extension that does exactly what XRANDR1.2 does. Let's hope this _isn't_ like that.
It doesn't matter if the games work or not. Multiple display setups look retarded.
Massive bezel makes them incredibly annoying if not flat out unusable.
What's not mentioned in the summary is that, if the game properly supports it, the screens on the right and left of your setup get tilted inwards a little and your field of view is increased by 3X (assuming a 3 display setup). This means that you get all the view you would normally get on the central screen and a massive amount of the peripheral vision that we all enjoy in real life by never get in gaming. Is there a gap from the screen bezels? Sure, but you barely notice it because you don't focus on the left and right wings. You just focus on the central display and use the other two to detect motion you wouldn't have otherwise seen (such as the enemy approaching you from your left).
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No matter how big your TV, it's almost a certainty that 3x low res monitors would have more visual real-estate. More pixels.
You see more, you literally get a larger field of view.
You have a significant advantage if your resolution is higher and the game supports enhanced FOV. No TV, no matter how good, or no display no matter how big, can show you more.
If the one big screen was wider vs taller that would work. But most of them are too tall to keep docs and apps at a comfortable level. I would rather swivel around a little than look up and down very much.
http://xkcd.com/732/
One that hath name thou can not otter
You assume that a very widescreen setup gives you a wider vision. That the monitors on each side become sideviews. That is how flightsim setups work, but do games support this at all?
I don't think the gaps are that big a deal, cars have them and who cares about that?
Mostly I think this is a case of penis envy: "I can't afford a multi monitor setup, therefor it is stupid."
of course a single monitor that size would be better, but they just ain't available. You can buy three high quality 1980 monitors plus this video card for a 2500 monitor and then you still got only 30 inch. HDTV? Well sure, if you want to sit a mile off so you don't notice the low resolution.
I just wonder what the monitors are they use in newsrooms, I seen several setups with no gap at all, probably expensive but it proves the tech is out there. Ofcourse you can always buy that rounded dell monitor :P
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
With annoying gaps between the screens. Watch you not notice something because it's straddling a gap.
I've been doing a multi-monitor setup for a while. In practice this isn't a problem. Usually you have different items you are working on on different screens. Now and then you'll stretch across multiple monitors but really most of the time I prefer 2-3 monitors over one huge one. Normally I have my email/IM/calendar on one monitor, my active work on a second window and a browser or documentation on the third if I have it. (usually I have 2). Works really well.
I've seen pics of pure game view on screen and
everything else- maps, bags, stats, chat on the side monitor...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
two very small, fixed LCDs (OLEDs?) combined with eye tracking (camera?) and a system of small, light mirrors on voice coils. when you move your focus, the mirrors move so that you're still looking at the display .you could combine one high resolution display with multiple lower resolution displays for your peripheral vision, the mirrors could probably be engineered to eliminate the gaps. Are there any ~1" 1080p displays?
404: sig not found.
According to ATI, support for Eyefinity on Linux will be enabled by a 'future Catalyst release'. Three releases of the Catalyst driver have come and gone since I got my Radeon in February, and they still have zero support for Eyefinity on Linux. Which is irritating as hell, because the famed YouTube demo of Eyefinity running a flight sim on 24 screens was a Linux box.
Some days, it really sucks to be a Linux zealot. This is one of them.
I was excited for this (and still) for a digital signage setup, being that to drive 6 individual screens at native res from a PC source was a challenge without real expensive gear (like an NVidia QuadroPlex), so at $500 this would be a bargain for certain setups, but without DisplayPort the card can only drive 2 screens video DVI/HDMI, anything else you need active (not a dongle like for the MBP since the card only has 2 DACs) DisplayPort to DVI adapters, which run at $99 each and are in terribly short supply thanks to this card. So if you want to use 6 screens without DisplayPort tack on another $400.
Let me be the first to say it is absolutely worth it.
Having 3 x 22" 1680x1050 Dell monitors side by side playing Hawx or WoW or any other game is absolutely stunning.
The Catalyst interface is a bit quirky (profiles do not remember relative screen position so you have to specify each time you change profiles) but once you have it setup and get into a game, choose your insane 5040 x 1050 resolution, you will be blown away.
Bezel gap is not as much of a problem as you might think. Your brain kinda just adjusts and ignores the gap.
There are three major problems you face:
1) Whatever amount you were willing to spend on a monitor, you must now spend 3 times that. It requires 3 monitors of the same resolution, and to look good they need to be the same 3 monitors. That means your budget has to triple. So the argument of "Well there are cheap monitors," doesn't hold weight. If you were happy with a cheap monitor, you probably didn't want to spend much anyhow and now you need to spend as much as a more expensive monitor. If you like higher quality monitors, guess what now you have to spend a bunch. Also, due to the extreme angles involved, IPS monitors like the Dell U2410 work much better than the cheaper TNs. Fine, but that is $1500 or more for a setup.
2) Your graphics card now has to push three times the pixels. These days, you discover that at 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 you don't need to break the bank to get good performance. A mid range graphics card should do fine even with the detail turned up and a high end one, like a 5870, for great. Well when you up that to 5760x1200, that's not the case. You need a lot more power, which of course means either more money spent, or lower quality settings.
3) Desk space. 3 monitors takes up a lot of room. It can be a non-trivial challenge to fit them on a desk.
So it's a cool idea, but just not that workable for most people. While some enthusiasts will mess with it, I don't think it is realistic to assume it'll become anything of any real amount of interest for normal gamers. After all, the big argument is that it is more immerse since you get more peripheral vision used. Fair enough, but surround sound is also far more immerse and you frequently see even the people who play with this using cheap stereo speakers.
I'd be happier with a high-resolution head-mounted display with head-tracking capability. With that I can look up or down and it'd be as if I had displays completely surrounding me. It'd also be a lot more immersive. So for anyone with the money to spare, when HMD's with their stereoscopic 3d capability get high-resolution, what's the point of this for gamers?
Most of the activities I perform work better with multiple screens simply because I can have applications maximized on separate screens. Whether it be surfing the web, working with spreadsheets, or debugging applications.
As for gaming, a single, large screen would be fun. Add in left & right screens and it's even better.
But would you take that over a single high-resolution display or a giant HDTV?
Yes, but point us to a mainstream HDTV which has indeed a triple resolution?
Most screens seem to be stuck at 1920x1080 (ob xkcd).
As the LCD Panel stagnates, an obvious work-around is to glue several of them together. Ergo EyeFinity.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
An actual high res monitor would be better than any of these supposedly "HD" screens kludged together using expensive GPU's.
I do have a 22.2" 3840x2400 IPS display (ViewSonic VP2290b), it's from 2003. It's driven by two DVI ports of a regular GeForce 8800GT in my Mac Pro. Additionally, I have two low-res (1920x1200) 24" screens connected to another GPU for video and games.
IBM sold their monitor factory to Sony around the same time they sold their ThinkPad business to Lenovo in 2005.
Since then, the meaning of "HD" has been just 1920x1080, just 22.5% of the resolution these 3840x2400 displays have.
Here's a wikipedia article about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
Huge screen with huge resolution is probably the way I'd prefer and the technology is there, but for some reason ever since HDTV the resolutions themselves have been going backwards. And yes, of course there is an xkcd on the subject: http://xkcd.com/732/
Minor editing nitpick: Does it have problems AND potential, problems OR potential, problems WITH potential or potential problems? I suspect it has problems BUT potential; this would be so more clear and less lazy than a comma ;)
And Here I was thinking 1080 lines of vertical resolution should be enough for anybody.
obviously you've never owned a 30" lcd, 2560x1600 is a wonderful resolution. I've got one of those screens. It blows away anything you can buy in multi monitor.
A 3 monitor setup with 1920x1200 displays gives an effective resolution of 5760x1200. That's roughly 50% more pixels than your 30" 2560x1600 display. Nothing wrong with a huge monitor but it's not better for every purpose. Personally I find a multiple monitor setup more useful for the way I work. YMMV.
One of my biggest bugbears with Eyefinity is the inability to switch easily between multiple desktops and the giant Eyefinity desktop... I bought my 3x 2209WAs to use a landscape multiple desktop solution whilst studying my MS certification (one display for 2003/2008 Server, one for XP/Vista/W7, one for e-book/web/onenote), for honing my Java skills and having a whopping display area for playing HL2/Crysis/any other app I can get working Unfortunately ATi's drivers aren't suitable for easy switching between multiple desktops and an Eyefinity setup and require some man-handling to switch between the two modes. Application support is extremely hit and miss, with some apps supporting it fully, some having small bugs, and some being completely unusable. Perhaps the worst failure is when Eyefinity fails in it's capacity completely and the same display is replicated across all 3 monitors. It is truly immersive when it works, and although the end monitors distort the image it's generally not noticeable, especially on the periphery of your vision. Just need to get used to looking left and right to find my Start button and my system tray icons now!
These sorts of things have been part of the multi-monitor gaming experience for a lot longer then ATI's eyefinity method. For anyone who's got genuine questions/interest in it you can find *all* the answers and tonnes of info at the Wide Screen Gaming Forum: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
It is the best resource out there for all your multi-monitor and wide screen gaming needs and where many of the work-arounds and solutions to getting games to work on either are born.
The biggest problem I see with these cards is that they do not support frame sync between displays. At work, we run two 4K projectors behind a 15' piece of glass. There are workstation variations on this card coming out that support frame sync, but they're not available yet. With the bezel on normal monitors it's not an issue but if you want to do anything exotic, you'll have to wait, unfortunately.
-SaNo
Why decide based on either/or? Go for "and": 3 screens, all huge!!!
As far as bezels go, it shouldn't be much more distracting than the A-pillars of your car.
If you want to eliminate them, you can set up projectors and align them.
The real issue of this is not few new monitors vs new huge hdtv its lots of SPARE ALREADY BOUGHT AND SITTING AROUND monitors vs new expensive huge hdtv. a non rich with some luck, can surely get several used lcd displays ( iwould). a poor guy wont deffinitly buy or get (steal?) an 30" hdtv. OFC this may* potentially* have impact on the hdtv display market(dont think so, as the poor guy wont buy one of those anyhow, its more a matter of status?). maybe the buzz is about that.
Here's the thing that all these multimonitor solutions (including matrox's triple head to go, etc.) Most games are written with one eyepoint. For dual head or triple head to work properly, you have to have multiple eyepoints. Each monitor is like a window into the virtual world. If you're wanting to get a straight ahead view and two side views, say at 45 degrees, you need 3 eyepoints, one looking straight ahead, one looking 45 deg to the left, one 45 deg to the right. Games don't do that. They think they're rendering to 1 display, one eyepoint. Then these multi-display solutions take that one image and spread it accross multiple monitors. That's why it never looks right. People have found good uses for the extra monitor space, say in a flight sim dragging your instrument panels to the other monitors, or in WoW using a viewport mod and putting all your addons on the other monitors, etc. It's nice that there are now 3 and 6 channel cards from ATI. Just need games to support them properly. But until games support multiple eyepoints it won't be working like what we want. Supreme Commander 1 does support 2 independent eyepoints in 2 monitor full screen mode, but it's an RTS.
....two years ago with the unit they demoed at CES '08. The prototype was a rear projection DLP curved job that sported 2880x900 resolution.....Interesting concept, and no bezel issues, but I don't think the unit ever panned out as the they're only listing two Alienware badged on their website: the OptX AW2310 23" and AW2210 21.5" unit.
As a hard-core gamer that had SLI since its inception, I'd love (hint: and pay for) something that doesn't have immersion issues like the bezel breaks which can not only be a nuisance, but breaks the gear info panels in games like Borderlands.
The bottom line is there really is no panacea in large display area gaming yet. When the manufacturers create bezel-less monitors that have no gap and a majority of the games you would play can work with it (rather then a very small minority of them) then this will take off. Until then, I'll stick with SLI and a single large display.
Not until OLED becomes the standard. And at the current rate, possibly 5+ years, definitely under 10.
Then we can have all sorts of wacky interfaces.
Want a screen with the size of a cinema screen but the same pixel density of a regular monitor?
Well now you can with the Roll-out Cinema Screen Experience!
Also, hopefully by then memory will be down in price a little more since it is mostly the memory that is the limiting factor in GPUs for screen estate.
Unfortunately, finding one of these magnificent monitors is damn hard and they still command rather high prices (although nowhere near the original ~$7500 price tag).
Dear monitor manufacturers, I just want a 200+dpi monitor, is that really so hard to understand? 100dpi is stone age technology compared to the massive leaps forward every single other piece of hardware has experienced.
Even the lowly computer mouse has gone from low-res two-button models hindered by the low update speed of the serial port to modern USB/wireless/bluetooth models with resolutions in the thousands of dpi, multiple hundreds of updates per second, plenty of buttons and scroll wheels and superb ergonomics to boot.
Not to mention the proliferation of multicore processors, ridiculously powerful graphics adapters (they're almost complete computers by themselves, now!), perpendicular recording on hard drives, solid state drives, the list goes on and on.
Why are we still stuck at 100dpi?
Eat the rich.
Why are we still stuck at 100dpi?
We aren't stuck at 100dpi. The monitor quoted by otuz is about 200 dpi. If you are asking why they aren't more common, and why they are so expensive. That is becaus they are:
- Difficult to manufacture
- Unsupported by most software
- Pointless for 99% of applications
- Require high-end hardware to even make use of it
You can't compare the DPI of mice to DPI of screens. To increase the resolution of a mouse you don't have to increase the density of the sensors. Creating high resolution LCD screens is not trivial. Your other comparisons are equally silly. I could make a similar plea: Dear car manufacturers, I just want a car that gets 500 miles per gallon, is that really so hard to understand? 30mpg is a stone age technology compared to the massive leaps forward every other piece of hardware has experienced. Even the lowly radio has increased it's signal gains 10-fold. Computers are 100x faster than they were a decade ago. Yet - my new car is just as large as my old one and doesn't even go as fast! Won't you please release a car that goes 500mph and fits in my pocket?
You covered the main drawback to such monitors - price.
Did you also catch the insanely low refresh rate (25 or 41 Hz) and rather high 50 ms (or 25 ms, depending on how you measure) response time? Anything involving moving images would be a streaky, smeared mess. That said, it does seem odd that nothing similar is offered today for photo & graphic design folks.
FWIW, review of the VP2290b here: http://www.trustedreviews.com/monitors/review/2004/06/30/ViewSonic-VP2290b-High-Resolution-TFT/p1
My point is that the average monitor is still stuck somewhere below 100dpi for no good reason.
Laptops are available with 145+dpi displays, some smartphones have displays in excess of 200dpi and yet the average desktop monitor has only moved from about ~75dpi to less than 100dpi in the last 20 years. Why can't I buy a desktop monitor with the same pixel density display as a 15.4" 1920x1200 Thinkpad?
- Difficult to manufacture
- Unsupported by most software
- Pointless for 99% of applications
- Require high-end hardware to even make use of it
- Somehow the panel manufacturers make it work for laptops etc.
- It's just higher resolution, nothing fancy about it until you reach the limits of DVI etc. Can't see stuff because it's too small? Too bad, some of us can and glasses and contact lenses have been available for a long time. Ideally, we'd have completely resolution-independent windowing systems, but it's a chicken and egg problem.
- Says who? I want to tile my windows for efficient usage without having them resized to unusuably small window sizes.
- Just about any graphics adapter today can do at least 2560x1600 via dual link DVI, regardless of price. Many cards can do even more with linked DVI and the proper flag set in the driver (every Nvidia Quadro card made in the last 5-6 years or more can do this)
Like all car analogies yours falls flat, you're comparing apples to oranges, fuel efficiency != electronics, plus the internal combustion engine has had a lot more time to be perfected, we're banging into the ceiling of what's possible with current fuels.
Why, when there have there been such massive leaps forwards in electronics as relates to personal computers in almost every aspect are we left with one glaring exception?
Eat the rich.
Unless you're watching video, the drawbacks you mentioned aren't particularly serious. For working with large amounts of text, pictures, graphs etc. or photo editing, you'd probably never even notice. Besides, the T22x monitors were first introduced in 2001. 9 years of semiconductor development should be able to get us markedly better response time (the 41hz refresh rate is perfectly fine for anything but gaming or 60fps video).
As you wrote, it's perfect for photo and graphic design work, why hasn't high-resolution monitor tech trickled down into the mainstream in the last 9 years?
Eat the rich.
I have run multi-monitor setups for a very long time. Started using a Monochrome Display/Printer Adapter + EGA in the mid 1980s. Running Codeview or SoftICE on the mono screen was normal (well, "normal" in a /. sense...).
I ran multiple displays using 1 x AGP and one or more PCI display cards.
I ran four 19" displays, all pivoted to portrait mode, to give a display surface of 4096 x 1280, using a pair of 6600GT cards (2 DVI outputs each).
I usually run a different app on each screen, rather than having one app across multiple screens. On four screens, if you have e-mail maximised on one screen, debugger maximised on another, a web browser on a third, and the app under test on the fourth, then the bezels are useful for separating the windows - they were a positive thing, not a negative.
So this is far from new for me. It's just convenient to be able to run more than two screens from one adapter, although most of the motherboards I use have multiple PCIe x 16 slots anyway.
On one machine I'm running a 30" 2560x1600 + a 22" 1600x1200 - that's OK, but the difference in dot pitch is a little irritating. It's easy when you use multiple screens of the same size and dot pitch. I am plotting to get three 27" 2560x1440 screens in the not too distant future - that is probably today's sweet spot, given that 30" screens are so damn expensive.
Speaking as an Eyefinity user, the two bigger problems with games that can handle the higher resolutions are thus:
1. Having the HUD anywhere that's not the main screen unless it's definitely peripheral and not necessary to be looking at constantly.
2. Games are expecting a flat screen and product an image that reflects this. Games should take into account the angles of the new monitors and adjust the FOV to accurately reflect what the user can see, rather than give high FOVs on smaller monitors. Otherwise this nasty stretching occurs on the very edges of monitors and things like very out of proportion. One hack may be to produce 3 cameras in game and have 3 different viewports. The cameras would be angled in relation to the monitors.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
My point is that the average monitor is still stuck somewhere below 100dpi for no good reason.
My point is that 1) they aren't stuck, and 2) there is good reason for them to be behind.
Laptops are available with 145+dpi displays...Why can't I buy a desktop monitor with the same pixel density display as a 15.4" 1920x1200 Thinkpad?
You can. And they are expensive. Just like laptop displays are expensive.
- Somehow the panel manufacturers make it work for laptops etc.
Yes, just like they do for desktops. It's exactly the same - laptop displays are really expensive. This is why.
- It's just higher resolution, nothing fancy about it until you reach the limits of DVI etc.
There's a lot that is fancy about it. Memory usage, bandwidth, cost. Monitors work over more than just DVI connections. Manufacturing yields decrease by the square of the pixel density. So the higher the resolution, the harder it is to manufacture.
Can't see stuff because it's too small? Too bad, some of us can and glasses and contact lenses have been available for a long time.
I suggest you write to Sony and tell them how great your vision is. I'm sure they will jump right on making those high DPI displays just for you. Also, write a letter to everyone who can't read their monitors, and tell those morons to put on their friekin glasses! Or get contact lenses! Or surgery! They are holding you back! Sorry dude: the world does not revolve around you.
- I want to tile my windows for efficient usage without having them resized to unusuably small window sizes.
Then you are the 1%.
Just about any graphics adapter today can do at least 2560x1600 via dual link DVI, regardless of price
Your facts are simply wrong. For example: I work in a building with over 500 people. Most of them don't even have DVI connections.
Like all car analogies yours falls flat, you're comparing apples to oranges,
*facepalm*
Your analogy was stupid. I made an even stupider analogy to point out the flaws. The fact that you thought it was serious shows just how far-out there you are.
Why, when there have there been such massive leaps forwards in electronics as relates to personal computers in almost every aspect are we left with one glaring exception?
This really is the heart of the issue. It is a common fallacy. People see a leap in some area of technology, and assume that all areas of technology must scale the same way. The world isn't that way. The DPI of monitors doesn't scale linearly with the speed of microprocessors.
Where are these mythical 150+dpi displays sold? I have yet to see any for sale outside of the bizarro-pricing world of medical displays etc., which goes far beyond what I'm guessing you meant by "expensive".
But it seems you'd rather insult me than offer any geniune insight. It's funny how people seem to kneejerk about this particular issue and revert to outright luddism if anyone dares to suggest moving beyond 100dpi. I want print-quality text on my monitor and I'm willing to compromise on a lot of other parameters to get it, but god forbid people lose their precious visibly blocky pixels. Moving to a significantly higher DPI would render antialiasing, sub-pixel hinting and a whole lot of other ugly hacks in one fell swoop.
But oh no, let's insult the people who desire improvement in the most significant output device by a far margin.
Eat the rich.
But it seems you'd rather insult me than offer any geniune insight.
I didn't insult you because you want high-DPI displays. I insulted you because of your lack of reading comprehension.
Where are these mythical 150+dpi displays sold?
The very first post in this thread links to one. That's what started the discussion.
I have yet to see any for sale outside of the...
Aha! So you even know of them.
I want print-quality text on my monitor and I'm willing to compromise on a lot of other parameters to get it,
Except for price apparently. Every post you've complained that they are expensive. And every reply I've explained why manufacturing high DPI displays is pricier.
I am willing to compromise on price, but paying 10 or 20 times what I'd pay for a 100dpi display? That's just ridiculous.
Eat the rich.
Where are these mythical 150+dpi displays sold?
The very first post in this thread links to one. That's what started the discussion.
These aren't really available anywhere. There are just every now and then someone who sells a single display on ebay and they still sell for thousands a piece.
The display response time isn't worse than other displays from the era. The refresh rate isn't actually too bad, a regular graphics card drives it at 33.8Hz nowadays and I'd guess the largest limiting factor at the time was the driving electronics (dual-link dvi wasn't invented yet etc).
Sony probably also profits from the technology they bought from IBM by making 200dpi cell phone displays better than larger displays. After all, most people aren't demanding anything better than "HDTV", because most don't know anything better ever existed.