Eyefinity 6's Included DP to DVI and HDMI Adapters. What's the deal?

Spare-Flair

Supreme [H]ardness
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Well, luckily the Eyefinity 6 models look like they come with almost all the adapters you need - 2 DVI, 1 HDMI, 2 mini DP to DP. [5? shouldn't it come with 6?]

eyefinity6.jpg

Why couldn't ATI have included one of these DP adapters with the regular Eyefinity models? And these look like simple passive passthrough connectors to me, does it work just like that? What about all the fuss with active adapters we had to deal with for our regular 5xxx models? Are the mini DP's somehow different? Why couldn't ATI have included one DP to DVI for their regular models when most of us will have to find $125 adapters that may or may not even work (as we have had several posts about approved list active adapters still causing blinking screens).

seinfeld.jpg
 
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These adapters are passive, they're worthless for a 3rd monitor. They will only work on the first 2 non-DP monitors you plug in and all the regular Eyefinity models already have 2xDVI 1xHDMI so no point in passive dongling the DP away.
 
The reason is probably because there are only DP connections, and no DVI/HDMI. This is probably to avoid customer frustration. Imagine the folks who aren't savvy enough to know that you'd need an adapter, they buy the card and plunk down a good chunk of change only to come home and find out they cant use it on their PC. At least with the standard 5870 you've got DVI outputs.
 
^^^. Correct. You can use the passive adapters, but only 2 of them. The remaining 4 outputs must go to a display port native connection OR use active adapters. This is because there are only two 'clock generators' in the 5870. ATI has never revealed how much it would add to the costs to implement a third 'clock generator'. I simply don't see why they couldn't have put in one more for the people who don't want to be forced to use displayport. How much more expensive would it be, REALLY?
 
^^^. Correct. You can use the passive adapters, but only 2 of them. The remaining 4 outputs must go to a display port native connection OR use active adapters. This is because there are only two 'clock generators' in the 5870. ATI has never revealed how much it would add to the costs to implement a third 'clock generator'. I simply don't see why they couldn't have put in one more for the people who don't want to be forced to use displayport. How much more expensive would it be, REALLY?

I don't know but reading the interview on Anandtech with an AMD engineer they had a set die size and they really had to fight to even get Eyefinity into it ended up having to increase the die size slightly to keep those features in so I doubt they could've fought for another RAMDAC/TDMS signal generator.
 
To answer any lingering questions about the MiniDP-to-SL-DVI dongles, they are indeed SL passive dongles and won't work for any DL resolutions. 1920x1200 on the 3008wfp and 1280x800 on the ACD30.

One thing I wanted to mention about the dongles for ppl who have DP monitors, MonoPrice has a great price on MiniDP-to-DP cables so you can avoid using a dongle altogether. $7 for a 10' cable.
 
I don't know but reading the interview on Anandtech with an AMD engineer they had a set die size and they really had to fight to even get Eyefinity into it ended up having to increase the die size slightly to keep those features in so I doubt they could've fought for another RAMDAC/TDMS signal generator.

The Signal Generator has to be on the gpu core itself? They couldn't place an auxiliary one on the PCB?
 
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