AMD Next Generation ATI Radeon Eyefinity Technology

3DChipset said:
Ironically no one seems to be talking about wattage? Granted the GPU might consume less then the previous generation, but now you're adding a ton more wattage for all those displays now! lol...
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Maybe not cooler at full load but no where near close to 2900XT levels.

Wazooty said:
I really don't think they expect many people to do 6 monitor setup. I think 3 is the happy medium.

Not saying tons of people will do that, but that's closer to your "average' enthusiast, I think.
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I think 3 24" displays is the sweet spot. Maybe 3 in landscape mode or 5 in portrait for gaming!!! :eek: 5 22" DisplayPort monitors from Dell for $1000 total each?
 
Even if GT300 is slightly faster than the RV870, I would still choose the RV870 because of Eyefinity. This feature is much more useful for me than PhysX and DX11. I would still wait for the GT300 because the price could be adjusted when GT300 is out.
 
Kenjiwing said:
Anyone else feel like having to look at all of the monitors (the frames etc) is really annoying? Id much rather have 1 full picture instead of scaling it through 8 monitors..

1252542061vF1413MgL9_1_4_l.jpg


an example is that.. it looks terrible.
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had to bump this, to keep things in perspective...Well done ATI , I actually thought NV would have had this simple way of using multi-displays ;( done and dusted. It's nice but I WANT the game devs to build in fully customizable multi-display support....and then I WANT a new, decent game to play it on!!!!!!!!! These console ports are killing me!!!!! Sorry all, rant is ova...:mad::cool::cool::cool:
 
Well, I do agree with ATI's own assessment that holodock might well become an affordable reality within this decade. Based on how well thought out this scaling of display grid array is, I think that better displays in the near future will actually push for surround mode for all sorts of personal computing usage, instead of just gaming.

This new generation of video card will bring down the time and costs associated with setting up a display wall. I think just because of this 1 reason, the next generation of Radeon will sell well, nevermind the fact that the graphical processing power of this new generation of cards seems to be very promising.

It cannot be denied that the bezel is of annoyance to more than 1 person, but such fluid scalability of the grid array alone makes the future prospect of bezel-less display that can connect piecemeal to form quadrants appealing. It will take a while to get truly uniform displays that are calibrated to match each other off the shelf, but I now think that this is a possible path in the future.
 
Went to the party, had a great time. :D

Made a short video of the DIRT 2 setup they had playable there, quality is fairly crappy since I used my iphone and it really compresses the video when it uploads it, but oh well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teE5wqT2DNU

It looked amazing in person, almost makes me want to buy a few extra monitors. :p
 
don't know if this came up, but can you account for the bezel with eyefinity similarly to how you can with softth?
doesn't seem like it in these demos.
hopefull ati hops on that!
 
are the cards actually rendering the high resolutions or are they just stretching it across the monitors?
 
er....stretching? If you look, you'll see the resolution they select in the games is the actual resolution of 3 or 6 or howevermany monitors they're using added together.
 
Open monitor.
Make your OWN rack.
Enjoy the minimal grid.

I did it with some old 19" lcd's, works pretty good!
 
Decko87 said:
Yeah I have no idea how anyone would want to play a game with those huge gaps in it. This is great for graphic design though. I use dual monitor just for web design and a still wish I had more screen room.
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I doubt that sitting back a good distance it problably would not be an issue, you would adjust pretty quick, though Kyle (lucky bastard) might have some additional input on that.
 
It only supports the monitors laid out flat like a big wall which you see in airports, etc. I would have thought for gaming you are going to want to curve them around you which means the game has to display multiple view points which is not possible. Equally you'd want stuff like ammo count, etc to appear in the middle monitor - not on the far right one. What it comes down to is the game really needs to know how many displays you've got and how they are configured (.e.g layout, separation distance, angle to each other), the graphics can't just hide it and tell the game it's one big monitor. If you've played supreme commander with 2 monitors you'll see it a bit - that's an rts not an fps but it's really smart - you get the overview map on one monitor and the close up game map on the other. The game knows you have multiple monitors and treats them differently, and it works brilliantly - that's how to use multiple monitors.

Hence for gaming this feature is just a gimmick imo.

Being able to use more the two displays for desktop work is cool however, although again you want to use windows dualview (well ???view) as you don't really want one big display. For desktop work I am pretty sure dual view with >2 monitors is supported by windows so that's really useful.
 
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Sigh...

I suddenly soured my own excitement with this painful slap of the face:
TWISTED NEMATIC

The horrible issues of viewing angle and color bit depth will rear their ugly heads in an array much more than they will with a singular near field configuration. That means that merely buying your $200 24" and x6 will NOT cut it.

One will have to purchase at least some sort of IPS or VA panel, which are at 'best' double the TN price at least to get a tolerable picture on such a setup.

So, forget spending only 1 grand and get an acceptable grid if you want the 6x1920x1200, Even using 2209WA e-IPS, 1680x1050, at $300 a piece would set you back 2 grands.
 
Hmmm....at least on a 3 screen setup, I imagine the 2 side monitors would be angled in a bit. Don't see much of a problem there.
 
Wazooty said:
Hmmm....at least on a 3 screen setup, I imagine the 2 side monitors would be angled in a bit. Don't see much of a problem there.
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Well the things I would see that are key are:
1) separation - even if you have thin bezels there is a gap between monitors of a few pixels. The game needs to know what that gap is and take account of it by inserting invisible pixels to fill that gap. If you don't you get a stretching effect when an object crosses the boundary - try it with two monitors on your desktop - drag a window across and note how it suddenly seems wider as it crosses the two monitors. For desktop work this is ok, for a game it would prove very distracting.

2) angling - a slight angle you could get away with I agree. However as the angle increased you'd get a distortion effect towards the edge of all the monitors. The game draws the world as if you were looking though a big flat window. If the window isn't flat you'll get funny distracting effects - to look *right* the game needs to know the shape of your window.

3) secondary information - by default games tend to tuck stuff like ammo count, or weapon load out right out in the corners of your screen, or along the bottom. For a multi monitor setup you don't want that appearing say on the far right of the right most monitor - it would be very hard for you to glance and see it. Equality for games that have some sort of control pane along the bottom you don't want that stretched right across all the monitors, that's just far too wide. To work well this all needs to appear only on the middle monitor.
 
sbuckler said:
Well the things I would see that are key are:
1) separation - even if you have thin bezels there is a gap between monitors of a few pixels. The game needs to know what that gap is and take account of it by inserting invisible pixels to fill that gap. If you don't you get a stretching effect when an object crosses the boundary - try it with two monitors on your desktop - drag a window across and note how it suddenly seems wider as it crosses the two monitors. For desktop work this is ok, for a game it would prove very distracting.

2) angling - a slight angle you could get away with I agree. However as the angle increased you'd get a distortion effect towards the edge of all the monitors. The game draws the world as if you were looking though a big flat window. If the window isn't flat you'll get funny distracting effects - to look *right* the game needs to know the shape of your window.

3) secondary information - by default games tend to tuck stuff like ammo count, or weapon load out right out in the corners of your screen, or along the bottom. For a multi monitor setup you don't want that appearing say on the far right of the right most monitor - it would be very hard for you to glance and see it. Equality for games that have some sort of control pane along the bottom you don't want that stretched right across all the monitors, that's just far too wide. To work well this all needs to appear only on the middle monitor.
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the first two can be done by ati if they haven't already done so.
the third is just up to the games setting options so yea some might be sol
 
s1eepy said:
the first two can be done by ati if they haven't already done so.
the third is just up to the games setting options so yea some might be sol
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Ati could do the separation (they don't seem to have done so in the screen shots: see http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI1MjU0MjA2MXZGMTQxM01nTDlfMV83X2wuanBn - note how the cards crossing monitors have the wrong shape and don't fit together). However because the game doesn't know there are invisible bits of screen it wouldn't know not to draw important stuff in the invisible pixels. e.g. it could just so happen that important parts of the games bottom control panel were placed on those invisible pixels - you'd never see them.

Ati could not do the second one - the game would need to do this, really by adding an extra view point and separately sending the rendering information for each angled monitor.
 
Ought to be great for the workplace, I'm a systems administrator and deal with most of the IT in our workplace, recently some of our managers have had large TVs put into their offices, and their laptops are powering 3 screens (native, 2nd monitor and TV) and we have to rely on products like EVGAs UV which is a USB display port, which actually works well.

For gaming I don't see this being hugely popular, good quality screens are still pretty expensive when you have to buy 3 of them, and the bezel is just ultra distracting.

Sure you could run with cheap solutions like 3x 1280x1024 screens but thats less pixels than a single 30" monitor. When you factor in the quality of cheap TN panels which almost all small screens are vs high quality PVA/IPS panels which almost all large screens are...one large screen just makes more sense a lot of the time.

One other major factor is game support, sure the driver makes a lot of this simpler but games are going to have to support this in so much that they allow the additional resolutions, some games still have static lists that are not built from drivers. Many games cannot handle the correct transformation between traditional screen sizes like 4:3 and 5:4 to widescreen (which has been around for years) without chopping large parts of the screen off much less address the more complex problem of any configuration of screens...

Vert- is still widely used in games today it's a big problem which has caused places like www.widescreengamingforum.com and more recently my website www.pcgamingstandards.com to pop up to try and address these issues. But not all games can be fixed, and while vert- is only slightly distracting in traditional 16:10 widescreen with the ultra wide aspect ratios of multi monitor become unplayable.
 
sbuckler said:
Ati could do the separation (they don't seem to have done so in the screen shots: see http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI1MjU0MjA2MXZGMTQxM01nTDlfMV83X2wuanBn - note how the cards crossing monitors have the wrong shape and don't fit together). However because the game doesn't know there are invisible bits of screen it wouldn't know not to draw important stuff in the invisible pixels. e.g. it could just so happen that important parts of the games bottom control panel were placed on those invisible pixels - you'd never see them.

Ati could not do the second one - the game would need to do this, really by adding an extra view point and separately sending the rendering information for each angled monitor.
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there are ways to keep important info on screen. you can identify 2d and 3d objects and most HUD info is 2d so you can alter/shift them to keep them on screen.

and what you're describing is the fisheye effect that happens in some games from increasing the FOV. this can be fixed with lens correction methods for 3d objects.

much of this has already been done in softth, just fyi
 
s1eepy said:
there are ways to keep important info on screen. you can identify 2d and 3d objects and most HUD info is 2d so you can alter/shift them to keep them on screen.

and what you're describing is the fisheye effect that happens in some games from increasing the FOV. this can be fixed with lens correction methods for 3d objects.

much of this has already been done in softth, just fyi
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Ati would have fun trying to guess the purpose of 2d info but I agree something is possible ... not trivial to do and the sort of thing that's going to keep going wrong as it's highly dependent on the games implementation - i.e. some 2d info shouldn't move because it directly applies to the 3d data behind it, some needs too - how does the ati card decide? Equally some stuff could be rendered in 3d - if you look back at that picture I linked if they had done the correct separation then the middle cards would have almost disappeared - you wouldn't be able to see what's on them.

This is not the fish eye effect - that's just caused by setting the wrong fov. This is a problem because of the sharp angles between monitors. I am aware of lens correction methods - they are used to mesh images together or correct for a curved screen. I agree you might mange to improve it with but to make it work correctly while the game still thinks it's projecting one big flat display - that would be fun :) - the angles the separation, the mixture of 2d and 3d info, info drawn in 3d that's actually 2d - I don't think it would be possible to get it working. The only way to really make it work correctly is to render each monitor separately - to do that the game needs to know about it.
 
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So...can we remove bezels somehow and get the screens combined? I'd take advantage of that! Lol. That would actually be a cool product. Somehow remove the bezels, use dual arm mounts or something to combine the screens (behind so it doesn't look ugly) with a custom bezel for something?

Just talking out my ass for something I don't know about. :p
 
I know in Oblivion if you set a large field of view the HUD actually centers in the middle of the screen. Potentially this would allow the hud to snap into the middlemonitor and allow for the left and right screens to be your periphreal vision.

Proper FOV and HUD manipulation support in games should make this very feasable. Someone mentioned earlier that this would be perfect for making an array of several projectors. Careful suspension and alignment of them could potentially make a seamless and extremely high resolution display. This would not only be good for games but imagine upscaling of 1080p video to true theater proportions.

Ars Technica let slip that the 5870 is capable of 2.5 TFLOPs. Stokes has written books about processor architecture so I'm inclined to believe him. That number would definitely indicate a theoretical 2x bump over the 4890 which should confirm 1600 shaders at 850 MHz. This also indicates that no major improvements were made to the shader (same FLOPs/shader at a given clock) but since R600 already had DX11 class features ATI didn't need to change much to meet the final DX11 specs. The rumored 'uncore' improvements should increase performance in specific scenarios such as AA and folding.
 
ecmaster76 said:
Ars Technica let slip that the 5870 is capable of 2.5 TFLOPs. Stokes has written books about processor architecture so I'm inclined to believe him. That number would definitely indicate a theoretical 2x bump over the 4890 which should confirm 1600 shaders at 850 MHz. This also indicates that no major improvements were made to the shader (same FLOPs/shader at a given clock) but since R600 already had DX11 class features ATI didn't need to change much to meet the final DX11 specs. The rumored 'uncore' improvements should increase performance in specific scenarios such as AA and folding.
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R600 didn't have DX11 class features...

Even the tessellation unit for the DX11 spec was different than the one used in R600. Still what was said from the horse's mouth, was that the Scheduler was the only unit that received a massive overhaul. Other things were changed and reworked, but nothing like the changes done to the scheduler.

As for folding performance, theoretical FLOPs capacity has very little to do with it:

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=10442
 
ecmaster76 said:
Ars Technica let slip that the 5870 is capable of 2.5 TFLOPs. Stokes has written books about processor architecture so I'm inclined to believe him. That number would definitely indicate a theoretical 2x bump over the 4890 which should confirm 1600 shaders at 850 MHz. This also indicates that no major improvements were made to the shader (same FLOPs/shader at a given clock) but since R600 already had DX11 class features ATI didn't need to change much to meet the final DX11 specs. The rumored 'uncore' improvements should increase performance in specific scenarios such as AA and folding.
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He is wrong on that TB number, but not by much and he is low as well. :) I will suggest that is a good source of speculation if you are looking for a non-NDA source to actually believe.
 
Silus said:
R600 didn't have DX11 class features...

Even the tessellation unit for the DX11 spec was different than the one used in R600. Still what was said from the horse's mouth, was that the Scheduler was the only unit that received a massive overhaul. Other things were changed and reworked, but nothing like the changes done to the scheduler.

As for folding performance, theoretical FLOPs capacity has very little to do with it:

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=10442
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An interesting point on the tessellation front. ATI has now built its sixth tessellation engine in production silicon. This would suggest that ATI has a really good grasp of doing it right. One thing for sure, this ain't your mother's TruForm!
 
shadow74205 said:
Why do you torture us so????:p
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Because I honor my gentlemen's agreement with companies to honor its Non-Disclosure Agreements. It ultimately leaves HardOCP in a better position in the long-run to better cover the hardware for our readers. So hang in there with us. :) That and I like to torture you! :eek:
 
I guess I don't understand the point, for gaming at least. With 6 monitors, you will have to sit back from the screen a good amount to view it properly without throwing up (and trust me, I've sat too close to a projection screen just watching football and it will make you ill, let along playing a game), at which point there isn't much point to having that many pixels. A 1080p DLP projector would give almost an identical experience at 1/3 the cost with somewhere around 3x performance...And no monitor bezels to get in the way.

I could see this being useful for some games, like sim city type - but not really fps or racing. I don't know if the [H] guys have taken a hard look at 3d gaming, and I don't mean these trick monitors, but I mean a 1080p 120hz dlp projector with page flip 3d glasses where it looks like you could walk through the screen and be in the game. If you think what you saw on this setup was impressive, you'll shart when you see something like that...
 
bobzdar said:
I guess I don't understand the point, for gaming at least. With 6 monitors, you will have to sit back from the screen a good amount to view it properly without throwing up (and trust me, I've sat too close to a projection screen just watching football and it will make you ill, let along playing a game), at which point there isn't much point to having that many pixels. A 1080p DLP projector would give almost an identical experience at 1/3 the cost with somewhere around 3x performance...And no monitor bezels to get in the way.

I could see this being useful for some games, like sim city type - but not really fps or racing. I don't know if the [H] guys have taken a hard look at 3d gaming, and I don't mean these trick monitors, but I mean a 1080p 120hz dlp projector with page flip 3d glasses where it looks like you could walk through the screen and be in the game. If you think what you saw on this setup was impressive, you'll shart when you see something like that...
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I would suggest, don't knock it till you tried it. And no, a 1080p projector is NOT the same. You are totally discounting fidelity grounded in high resolutions blowing 1080p out of the water.
 
ecmaster76 said:
I know in Oblivion if you set a large field of view the HUD actually centers in the middle of the screen. Potentially this would allow the hud to snap into the middlemonitor and allow for the left and right screens to be your periphreal vision.

Proper FOV and HUD manipulation support in games should make this very feasable. Someone mentioned earlier that this would be perfect for making an array of several projectors. Careful suspension and alignment of them could potentially make a seamless and extremely high resolution display. This would not only be good for games but imagine upscaling of 1080p video to true theater proportions.

Ars Technica let slip that the 5870 is capable of 2.5 TFLOPs. Stokes has written books about processor architecture so I'm inclined to believe him. That number would definitely indicate a theoretical 2x bump over the 4890 which should confirm 1600 shaders at 850 MHz. This also indicates that no major improvements were made to the shader (same FLOPs/shader at a given clock) but since R600 already had DX11 class features ATI didn't need to change much to meet the final DX11 specs. The rumored 'uncore' improvements should increase performance in specific scenarios such as AA and folding.
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FYI, 3 projectors using pretty much any vid card you want is already possible with softTH2GO - you just need a second pci express graphics card in your computer and can run 3 monitors/projectors via DVI allowing for adjustment etc. I had thought about getting 2 lower res projectors (ie cheap 640x480) for side views from my center projector but I decided at that point it was just too stupidly excessive and I'd rather spend my money on my cars and motorcycle. I guess the solution is a 'nice to have' in that you can run 6 monitors, but I don't see ever actually doing that for the reasons in my above post. The power of the card is what's more interesting to me at this point, especially if some games come out that actually properly use it.
 
Silus said:
R600 didn't have DX11 class features...
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It was certainly a long way from DX11 compliant but feature wise it was ahead of its time due to the work done for the xbox 360.

I was trying to inicate that ATI has been been chomping at the bit for Microsoft to expand the DX API unlike its competitors. DX11 includes a lot of features that were supposed to have been in 10/10.1 but were left out since about half the market couldn't use them.

Kyle said:
He is wrong on that TB number, but not by much and he is low as well. I will suggest that is a good source of speculation if you are looking for a non-NDA source to actually believe.
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My jaw dropped looking at the 24 monitor pics yesterday. If 2.5 TFLOPS is on the low side then the Eyefinity support will ultimately be a side note. ATI appears to have taken the correct approach with their shader design. Another die shrink and we're looking at 2400-4000 shaders per die. With numbers like that Larrabee will be consigned to competing with Cell and Sun's T1 if anything.
 
bobzdar said:
FYI, 3 projectors using pretty much any vid card you want is already possible with softTH2GO - you just need a second pci express graphics card in your computer and can run 3 monitors/projectors via DVI allowing for adjustment etc. I had thought about getting 2 lower res projectors (ie cheap 640x480) for side views from my center projector but I decided at that point it was just too stupidly excessive and I'd rather spend my money on my cars and motorcycle. I guess the solution is a 'nice to have' in that you can run 6 monitors, but I don't see ever actually doing that for the reasons in my above post. The power of the card is what's more interesting to me at this point, especially if some games come out that actually properly use it.
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Blasphemy!!! You should be planning on clearing out one side of your room in preparation for the 6 HD projectors!!!
 
Silus said:
As for folding performance, theoretical FLOPs capacity has very little to do with it:
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=10442
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I didnt say it did. I said 'uncore' improvements would. By this I mean the scheduler, registers/cache, memory controller, etc. I dont know know if they will be be able to recycle intermediate results (nvidias big advantage as I understand it) but surely folding will benefit from some feature.
 
bobzdar said:
I guess I'll have to see it, but based on seeing little difference between 720p and 1080p when playing some games on a projector where I'm sitting about as close as I felt comfortable, I don't see how going even higher than 1080p will make a big difference.
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Imagine screens set up like this \__/ (curved no corners) . We're talking imax for games. If you sat just inside of the edges of the left and right screens your entire field of vision would be filled by the game. That would be amazing.
 
ecmaster76 said:
If 2.5 TFLOPS is on the low side then the Eyefinity support will ultimately be a side note. ATI appears to have taken the correct approach with their shader design. Another die shrink and we're looking at 2400-4000 shaders per die. With numbers like that Larrabee will be consigned to competing with Cell and Sun's T1 if anything.
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i believe i read elsewhere that the total was between 2.63-2.7 T/flops depending on whether the core speed was 825 or 850 MHz, so just slightly higher than the 2.5 quoted in Ars.
 
ecmaster76 said:
Imagine screens set up like this \__/ (curved no corners) . We're talking imax for games. If you sat just inside of the edges of the left and right screens your entire field of vision would be filled by the game. That would be amazing.
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like alienware's monitor? :cool:
 
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