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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.
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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Yes, yes it does.
World in Conflict can put a map of second monitor.
There is some number of games which do allow changing their field of view, and work quite well...
http://www.matrox.com/graphics/surroundgaming/en/games/
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/Essential_Games_List
One that hath name thou can not otter
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.
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
And Here I was thinking 1080 lines of vertical resolution should be enough for anybody.
+1 funny mod needed for a matrox.com URL that contains the substring 'gaming'
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc