The Eyefinity Challenge with HardOCP

HardOCP and AMD have been working together to get Eyefinity in front of more gamers and gauge their first hand Eyefinity gaming experience.

On Saturday November 14th, here in Dallas, TX we will be having The Eyefinity Challenge. This will be an invitation only event, and yes, we will be extending invitations to HardOCP readers in the DFW metroplex.

What we are doing is setting up a 5 on 5 team gaming/deathmatch scenario. 5 stations with Eyefinity, 5 stations without Eyefinity. You get the picture, right? Which team kicks more ass and does Eyefinity truly impact your gaming experience? There will be other demo stations set up as well to show off Eyefinity. We are planning on having the 6 display 24" Eyefinity demo setup supported by yet-to-be-announced hardware.

HardOCP and AMD will be shooting video at the event and taking before and after interviews with you guys to get us real world feedback on Eyefinity. We will need about 2 hours of your time and if you choose to stay longer and hang out, we have a venue big enough to handle our needs.

If you are part of a professional gaming team located in Dallas, I would love to hear from you. It would be great to have two professionally organized teams go head to head. Also, if you are interested in attending and are sure you have time on November the 14th we will be holding a drawing next week for invitations for HardOCP readers.

If you are not sure what Eyefinity is, I encourage you to give our video review a look.

What game(s) will you be playing?

Call of Duty 4? /cross fingers

How does one go about getting an invitation, Kyle?

edit: For a reader.

Bah, only an ocean and more between me and an invitation

Links fixed - Kyle

a pro gaming team w/o eyefinity can beat a normal team with eyefinity anyday i think

This is cool that you guys are doing this. Hopefully this will bring more people into the eyefinity setup. I personally love mine (3x1 landscape), and multitasking with it is freaking great. There are still some issues with it, but I will never go back to a single monitor again for my main setup. 3x1Ls 4 life.

I hope you swap the test groups, and have multiple samples. You could then compare the difference in scores.

There are plenty of other threads to discuss the technology in. This thread is about The Eyefinity Challenge. - Kyle

Cool! Any chance of live feed for us that lives far far away?

Originally Posted by Kyle_Bennett

We are planning on having the 6 display 30" Eyefinity demo setup supported by yet-to-be-announced hardware.

5970?!?!

Awesome idea Kyle, I hope you'll be streaming/broadcasting the event

Really looking forward to the results on this; another real Life [H] analysis! Thanks Kyle!

Are these guys bringing their own equipment? What is the control group? How are you going to standardize the gameplay and player's abilities to tell if it is truly the technology or the player that is causing the advantage? Will you have single large displays vs a multitude of smaller displays using eyefinity? Will you be gauging multitude of eyefinity small displays verse one small display? Will you be using the same cards, or different ones? If you use all AMD cards, what is to say that there isn't something in the card limiting or extending capability to influence Eyefinity.

In short, there is no real way to scientifically prove Eyefinity helps the gaming experience at all without an indepth lengthy study involving quite a large number of different people, hardware, setups, and situations. You should call this exactly what it is. The EPT, Eyefinity Propaganda Tour. I have been using multiple display setups since the Matrox Parhelia came out, and last I checked the "Eyefinity" technology has been out for ages in different forms and was pioneered by Matrox long ago. I have already seen people do setups of 6-12 displays using Nvidia and ATI cards in conjunction with Matrox technology (dualhead2go and triplehead2go) long before this came out.

While I applaud them for including this in a single card, I honestly fail to see the significance for the average user, or even most high end users. It is truly a niche market.

Too bad the Parhelia was crap, had barely any support and couldn't drive the resolutions it touted. Yeah, pioneered for sure.

Originally Posted by Karndog

5970?!?!

It's a little early for a refresh to be in the hands of reviewers. Why don't we try the 5870X2 since that isn't exactly "officially announced" but there seems to be enough leaks to prove it's existence is already out there in the hands of some lucky reviewers.

That's right I'm looking at you big [H]arderators that run this site.

On a more relevant note, I can not wait to put my name in for this drawing. I'm just about done my probationary period here at work and I have over a week of vacation accumulated already!

Originally Posted by Derfman

It's a little early for a refresh to be in the hands of reviewers. Why don't we try the 5870X2 since that isn't exactly "officially announced" but there seems to be enough leaks to prove it's existence is already out there in the hands of some lucky reviewers.

Its not called the 5870x2, AMD dropped the "x2" brand name and called their dual GPU card the 5970

Awesome. Great to see such enthusiastic support for this technology.

I wish I lived closer to Dallas.

I have used EyeFinity on my own hardware and found it to be a very workable technology for gaming. My only gripe is the bezel of the monitors, which unfortunately can't be helped. I've played FEAR2,HL2,COD5,and a little Borderlands. My experience was very positive. I'm anxious to see this up and running with CrossFireX.

I look forward to the write-up following the 14th.

Originally Posted by NoOther

Are these guys bringing their own equipment? What is the control group? How are you going to standardize the gameplay and player's abilities to tell if it is truly the technology or the player that is causing the advantage? Will you have single large displays vs a multitude of smaller displays using eyefinity? Will you be gauging multitude of eyefinity small displays verse one small display? Will you be using the same cards, or different ones? If you use all AMD cards, what is to say that there isn't something in the card limiting or extending capability to influence Eyefinity.

In short, there is no real way to scientifically prove Eyefinity helps the gaming experience at all without an indepth lengthy study involving quite a large number of different people, hardware, setups, and situations. You should call this exactly what it is. The EPT, Eyefinity Propaganda Tour. I have been using multiple display setups since the Matrox Parhelia came out, and last I checked the "Eyefinity" technology has been out for ages in different forms and was pioneered by Matrox long ago. I have already seen people do setups of 6-12 displays using Nvidia and ATI cards in conjunction with Matrox technology (dualhead2go and triplehead2go) long before this came out.

While I applaud them for including this in a single card, I honestly fail to see the significance for the average user, or even most high end users. It is truly a niche market.

Equipment will be supplied. Groups of 20 will be brought in to play for 1.5 hours every 2 hours.

This is not a scientific study and we never presented it as such. This is a bunch of gamers getting to experience the technology and see if it impacts their gaming experience. Nothing more, nothing less.

I am sorry you see it for something other than what it is. Your opinions are noted and you need not post in this thread again.

Originally Posted by NoOther

Are these guys bringing their own equipment? What is the control group? How are you going to standardize the gameplay and player's abilities to tell if it is truly the technology or the player that is causing the advantage? Will you have single large displays vs a multitude of smaller displays using eyefinity? Will you be gauging multitude of eyefinity small displays verse one small display? Will you be using the same cards, or different ones? If you use all AMD cards, what is to say that there isn't something in the card limiting or extending capability to influence Eyefinity.

In short, there is no real way to scientifically prove Eyefinity helps the gaming experience at all without an indepth lengthy study involving quite a large number of different people, hardware, setups, and situations. You should call this exactly what it is. The EPT, Eyefinity Propaganda Tour. I have been using multiple display setups since the Matrox Parhelia came out, and last I checked the "Eyefinity" technology has been out for ages in different forms and was pioneered by Matrox long ago. I have already seen people do setups of 6-12 displays using Nvidia and ATI cards in conjunction with Matrox technology (dualhead2go and triplehead2go) long before this came out.

While I applaud them for including this in a single card, I honestly fail to see the significance for the average user, or even most high end users. It is truly a niche market.

So what setups beside eyefinity can run 5760x1200 resolution with 4xaa on operation flashpoint 2 and maintain a nice average framerate?