3x 120Hz Eyefinity Portrait Setup

I had a U3011 for a few weeks and while I returned it due to some issues, I felt it very smooth. While I do lots of video editing and photography in the back of my mind I keep thinking that maybe I should go for three 120hz monitors due to that next level of motion.
 
Vega now with AMD cards. I'll be damned. :)

Nice set-up. And you did the right think switching to the red side with 2X6990. AMD is giving you alot more for the money. Now you finally understand my points after all this time. ;)

But all the hard work you did on your other set-up! The months waiting for you waterblocks, posting all this on 50 different forums, the threads about ''Quad-SLI scaling so well'', the threads about ''AMD bridge bandwitdh problem'', etc. And all those posts against the 6990, or all those hateful posts in the 6990+6970 better then 580 SLI threads... You worked so hard!

All this to ditch everything after 2 or 3 months only to go with the red team, and with 2, yes 2X 6990? Funny. :)

You were the idol of a green generation! Teenagers were dreaming of you! People were asking to be adopted by you! You were the new Messiah!

All this to be on the red team now. Funny. :)

But hey. Have fun with the new set-up. And welcome on the red side. :)
 
Last edited:
Seems cool, but I gave up on TN's a long time ago. Especially in portrait. I used to run a 5x1P with TN's, you know before it was cool, and the first IPS I got (Dell 3007) made me replace the setup with two more (total of 3) and I'm looking to go 5.
 
Looks great. It's unfortunate that they've gotta be TNs but that's pretty much your only option for 120hz I guess.

First time seeing somebody who actually owns those speakers too :D
 
suiken_2mieu said:
Seems cool, but I gave up on TN's a long time ago. Especially in portrait. I used to run a 5x1P with TN's, you know before it was cool, and the first IPS I got (Dell 3007) made me replace the setup with two more (total of 3) and I'm looking to go 5.
Click to expand...

5x 30"? I thought Windows had a max resolution of 8192x8192? Will you go portrait? 8000x2560?
 
Crest said:
5x 30"? I thought Windows had a max resolution of 8192x8192? Will you go portrait? 8000x2560?
Click to expand...

Well to my knowledge Windows doesn't not have a max resolution. Certain Driver sets, video cards, and Direct X versions do have a max res. DX8 is 8192, DX9/10/11 is around double that at 16384. ATI 5000 cards are 8192 where as 6000 cards are 16384.

But yes I'm going portrait. I tried 5x1P again with 3x30"rs and 2x23"rs at 6000x1920 and it left a bad taste in my mouth, I need all the same panel or at least all the same size / aspect ratio / resolution.
 
Do you plan to game on 5x 30"? Most modern games would easily overwhelm even 3GB VRAM cards. Not to mention even 4x video cards you would get relatively low FPS. As someone who has done 3x 30" portrait, I could not see any reason to add a screen on either end. Higher cost, many more problems and nearly halving your FPS for images that would be way in your blurry peripheral vision.
 
thats awesome would be good for movies as well i wish there was something like this i could mount portrait but seems the bezels are always gonna stick out like a sore thumb
 
Vega said:
Do you plan to game on 5x 30"? Most modern games would easily overwhelm even 3GB VRAM cards. Not to mention even 4x video cards you would get relatively low FPS. As someone who has done 3x 30" portrait, I could not see any reason to add a screen on either end. Higher cost, many more problems and nearly halving your FPS for images that would be way in your blurry peripheral vision.
Click to expand...

I rarely play any modern games to be honest. I play a lot of emulators, UT2K4, and Minecraft. I do play a bit of bad company, but I've got the settings where I want them, where I get decent fps with enough details to make me happy. My problem is that I cant go smaller then 30" panels and I want my 5x1 setup back. I may not be able to run full graphics, but that's never been an issue for me. I came from console gaming, so almost everything looks better to me.
 
Have you tried mounting that right monitor in the opposite orientation? That being with the "top" of the monitor facing towards the left? TNs seem to be best viewed from a top down orientation and that may help with the right edge being dark. I've been wanting to try this with mine, but need a monitor arm to do so as mine only rotate one way.
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
Have you tried mounting that right monitor in the opposite orientation? That being with the "top" of the monitor facing towards the left? TNs seem to be best viewed from a top down orientation and that may help with the right edge being dark. I've been wanting to try this with mine, but need a monitor arm to do so as mine only rotate one way.
Click to expand...

Eyefinity nor NVidia Surround allow you to do that.
 
Going to post some videos of BF3 on the setup here when it launches. Don't have much loaded at the moment as I just re-installed Win 7 due to AMD's wonderful drivers.
 
Very nice Vega. I will post my u2311h portrait setup as soon as I get those damn bezels off and see how thin it is. I ran 3600x1920 dell 2407 portrait with an older phillips tn panel in the middle for a bit and the tn panels viewing angle just killed it for me. I would think that these new tn panels are much better in viewing angle compared to the older ones though.
 
Hey Vega, let us know if you have any micro-stutter and or response issues with your multi-gpu setup. BC2 was the most optomizied crossfire game ever, but it still had a very minute bit of detectable input lag that I never got when I went single card.

To me an all 120hz setup would be a complete waste if any input lag & micro-stutter were present. I would rather go with one card and knock detail settings down on my eyefinity setup then deal with any input lag or micro-stutter.
 
Nice setup. I tried portrait eyefinity with my wide bezel displays and it just didn't work as well as I wished. First of all in portrait the bezels end up taking more space, and it really works only with monitors that have even bezels. The second issue was that 16:9 monitors are IMO too thin in portrait, 1080 width just isn't enough for most applications, 1200 would be much better.

At the moment I'm using IPS panels as side monitors and one 120 Hz LG as the center display. I ordered one S23A750D yesterday and am planning to replace the LG with it. It has really nice thin bezels so it should work much better as the center monitor. Mostly I'm concerned how it will look, since it's a glossy LED TN screen compared to my matte CCFL IPS screens. I was also wondering if it was a tough job to get those acrylic bezels removed?

I use 6950 Crossfire to run Eyefinity and still the FPS just isn't enough to justify 3x120 Hz though, so I either play 60Hz@Eyefinity or 120Hz@1080p. I'm going back to single gpu when 7900 series is released due to micro stutter issues. I haven't noticed any input lag issues though.
 
Last edited:
Vega, I just got curious, as you know I also run 3x portrait eyefinity @ 120hz. How are your monitors connected? Mine had 1 dual link dvi from card to monitor then 2 Active mini dp to dual link adapters from monoprice going from the card to the dual link dvi cables the monitors came with. Are you using adapters? If so which ones and how have they worked out for you so far?
 
Cool, do you have any pics of your setup? What kind of monitors are you running? I am using 3x DP outputs on the 6990.
 
Vega said:
Cool, do you have any pics of your setup? What kind of monitors are you running? I am using 3x DP outputs on the 6990.
Click to expand...

I'm seriously considering going 3 DP outputs and selling one of my 2 6950s unlocked and getting a 6990 for trifire. That would eliminate the tear you get at rare times by having mismatched outputs used on the cards. Anyway, I'm not sure if you remember but you actually walked me through the process of removing the bezels. I posted before and after results of which I'll re post below

I'm using 3 Asus VG236H Monitors

http://www.asus.com/Display/LCD_Monitors/VG236H/

Review

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Asus-VG236-120Hz-LCD-Monitor-Review/?page=1

Here's my setup before and after.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Zoomed in to give you an idea of how much bezel was ruining my life :(



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

With the new improved Bezel removal Mod!! :D (I also moved the buttons/Light to the back of the LCD)



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

One more for good measure



Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
Ah ya, I remember your setup. Have 2x 6950s been able to keep up? I remember that annoying mixed output screen tear. Drove me crazy rooting that problem out! If you are going to play BF3 I think a 6990 + unlocked 650 would do good. Or just go 2x 6990 ;)

So far I am playing BC2 in DX9 and there is zero micro-stutter. Buttery smooth. Although I did change DPC latency and it hovers as low as 5 µs with 14.3 Mhz QPC set using HPET. I cannot run Afterburner with BC2 with that crash bug from punkbuster. Hopefully BF3 will not be affected.
 
I doubt I'll ever pick up 3x 120hz monitors. I'll probably keep my U2711 for movies/web/whatever and get a 120hz 24" for gaming.
 
Here is a few pictures of the back:

SANY0019.jpg


SANY0020.jpg
 
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

Vega what about resale value? Say they come out with bezelss 120hz panels in the next year or two and you decide to upgrade......are you gonna put those back together again or sell them as is? I know its a down the road question, but resale value is always in the back of my mind when upgrading the rig.

And please let us know how multi gpu frames, smoothness & micro stutter issues go with BF3...because I got my finger hovering over the "add to cart," button for a 6990 to add with my 6970 in trifire :cool:
 
I have kept all the parts, I just put them back together when going to sell.

Going to do a lot of testing with BF3 and make a video. Although, in typical AMD bad driver team fashion, Eyefinity keeps crashing with the BF3 preview drivers. I am forced to use the regular WHQL 11.9's with CAP 3.
 
Yea, there is something amiss with those preview drivers...don't feel bad because they leveled my system pretty good. I had a complete system lock and almost had to reinstall everything but luckily safe mode worked on the 5th try and I basically had to rebuild the egyptian pyramids from inside out to get operational again.

I ended up stepping all the way down to 11.5b because they are the only drivers that handle 3d worth a shit.
 
Here is a video of some wacky GPU usage with Battlefield 3 on my setup. Hopefully AMD/NVIDIA and DICE get their acts together as tons of people are having issues with multi-GPU setups and Eyefinity/Surround.

http://youtu.be/zPACzI9yUSA?hd=1
 
Vega said:
Here is a video of some wacky GPU usage with Battlefield 3 on my setup. Hopefully AMD/NVIDIA and DICE get their acts together as tons of people are having issues with multi-GPU setups and Eyefinity/Surround.

http://youtu.be/zPACzI9yUSA?hd=1
Click to expand...

@25 seconds vega can be seen clearly on the right monitor because of the mirrorlike gloss. LOL. Thanks for the video and that is indeed some strange gpu usage. Surely a driver issue or cap issue. The official drivers are due on the 31st so lets see if that brings even a tiny improvement over what we have now. I am doubtful, as they are supposedly almost identical to 11.10 v3 according to the twitter post posted by the catalyst creator. I hope at least a newer more improved cap can come in the interim between 11.10 whql and 11.11 preview. BTW can you post a multi player video. I want to see if they fixed the portrait 3240x1920 issues. I couldn't get my squad list, minimap and health to show up no matter what I did in that resolution. Also let me know if it just works right out of the box or if you had to play with the screen adjustment options.

Edit to add request

***Request*** replace memory mhz frequency in your OSD with Vram usage which I think would be more useful data. You need afterburner 2.2 beta 8 I believe for that. Tested and working on my Cayman Crossfire.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
@25 seconds vega can be seen clearly on the right monitor because of the mirrorlike gloss. LOL. Thanks for the video and that is indeed some strange gpu usage. Surely a driver issue or cap issue. The official drivers are due on the 31st so lets see if that brings even a tiny improvement over what we have now. I am doubtful, as they are supposedly almost identical to 11.10 v3 according to the twitter post posted by the catalyst creator. I hope at least a newer more improved cap can come in the interim between 11.10 whql and 11.11 preview. BTW can you post a multi player video. I want to see if they fixed the portrait 3240x1920 issues. I couldn't get my squad list, minimap and health to show up no matter what I did in that resolution. Also let me know if it just works right out of the box or if you had to play with the screen adjustment options.

Edit to add request

***Request*** replace memory mhz frequency in your OSD with Vram usage which I think would be more useful data. You need afterburner 2.2 beta 8 I believe for that. Tested and working on my Cayman Crossfire.
Click to expand...

What you see in the reflection is just a ghost... :D

I am not getting my hopes up on the WHQL driver release on 31OCT. It's been tweeted that it is pretty much identical to 11.10 Preview 3 which I can't even use as it crashes portrait Eyefinity.

In the video the VRAM usage is enabled. It is next to the VRAM frequency.
 
I'm just curious of a few things because I like to keep a few charts going with different screen specs to keep a perspective on different displays and such.

What is the diameter of the whole array? 39" ?
How far away do you generally keep it from your eyeballs?

I used to have a 37" 1080p (obviously really bad ppi) but regardless of the ppi I ended up moving it back around 4' on a pillar so I wouldn't have to bend my eyeballs up to the corners and periphery of the panel. I found that it was putting too much content "out of bounds" and it became tiresome. LLL setups on the other hand are designed for the side panels to be completely in your periphery while keeping all important screen data on the central monitor (huds, notifications, indicators, pointers, chat, etc) in games. I prefer to keep that frame within a certain boundary as it relates to my viewing angle. It would be nice if you could set up a virtual screen in the middle of any given overall resolution, a virtual screen that had invisible borders, with all of the "prime screen data" displayed within the virtual screen boundaries, and all further screen real-estate being additional FoV - especially in a setup like yours. Without that kind of virutal monitor capability - I'm not a fan of making the bars closer together vs the overall full-monitor-array game FoV, nor of using a larger than 30" screen at normal desk monitor distances. I have to say without the bezels you've made it considerably less intrusive though, and the distance or scope of the picture you took shows a much better viewing angle than sitting right in front of the monitor would have, which is how I would prefer it (~ 4'). That is a great choice of a wallpaper , but I'd like to see a few pictures of a game running on your setup sometime if possible so I could get a better idea of the bezel-free bars on game huds and 3d modeled environments with virtual depths vs the "up front bars", with scenes of different brightnesses and colors too, (rather than a flat wallpaper with a lot of black in it).
.
I found this image on a wiki page that said if you measure the length or width of a 200px x 200 px box with a ruler up to your eye, then divide 200 by the number you measured, it will give your percieved ppi at any distance. That method is very loose to say the least. Does anyone happen to know the formula for perceived ppi increase at increasing distances? That optic is why large 1080p tv's look fine at normal tv viewing distances obviously.

200px-Square_200x200.jpg

.
I'm curious what your 95.78 ppi monitor's ppi would look like set back 3.5 - 4', bascially increasing the ppi and fitting the display into your viewing angle more. I have a 23" 1080p in my front hall so I guess I could experiment with that. No pc hooked up to it atm.
,
Eventually I might go with a LLL setup using my 24" widescreen crt at 1920x1080/115hz, and two side 23" 1080p's similar to this guy's setup(edited photo to overlap the bezels)
eyefinity_fw900_bc2_overlapped-bezels.jpg

fw900-with-lcds-eyefinity_overlapped-bezels2.jpg


One final thing since I just re-read the comment about glossy reflection. I set up my corner desk to take over an entire corner of a room, facing outward. That way all room lighting and windows are behind the back of my monitor. Any near desk lamp lighting is adjacent. There are no light sources that can hit the face of my monitor, which is glossy. I highly recommend that kind of setup if you can get away with it. The room still has a lot of room lamps, and gets a good amount of sunlight in the daytime. Of course photos and using a flash can always make bad reflections regardless.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top