A new paradigm for graphics

Atech said:
I was being generous for the sake of the argument
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

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NVIDIA SLI (2 GPUs) 
[B]2.04%[/B] 
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ATI Crossfire (2 GPUs) 
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NVIDIA SLI (4 GPUs) 
[B]0.04%[/B] 
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NVIDIA SLI (3 GPUs) 
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is valve as relevant as it used to be ?
 
Sycraft said:
I think you are confused. I am not saying that this isn't something people will use. Clearly people are using it. I am saying this is not the new gaming paradigm. This is not the Next Big Thing(tm) that is going to take off and have everyone switch over. It is going to be a niche product, just like SLI/Crossifre.

A few people will get it and enjoy it. Most people will give it a miss.
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Dude, eyefinity is that big, in fact it may single handidly save pc gaming. I have an xbox and PS3 hooked up to a 120" projection screen and I have a 20x30x20 monitor setup working with softTH, and I have not touched my xbox since I got the three screens working with my favorite game Over Flanders FIelds. However, SoftTH has its limitations and I have been contemplating on what to do for three similar screens.

I love my 30" but its not enough anymore, however, I am not going to spend over two thousand dollars for two more 30"s because that is such overkill. And the cost for three nice U2410s would be $1,500. All of that seems to be such a shame because I really like my 20x30x20 setup. So what I am doing is ordering another 20" Dell 2007FP and putting the 30" away until they support mixed portrait x landscape setups. This will only cost me another $150 and will give me matched three screens, while I can keep my 30" for a rainy day.

Once you go three screen you can never go back, I am trying to play crysis at 2560x1600 and it is annoying me because I feel like I am playing with blinders on! And don't even get me started on how much better my flight sims are with three screens!

Seriously, you can find decent panels for $150 bucks and buy them incrementally. You are going to see a resurgence in pc gaming because of this, mark my words. I switched over from Two 8800 ultras and two 285gtxs for a 5870 and now a 5970 (if my rma goes thru) and do not regret it one bit!
 
Sycraft said:
I think you are confused. I am not saying that this isn't something people will use. Clearly people are using it. I am saying this is not the new gaming paradigm. This is not the Next Big Thing(tm) that is going to take off and have everyone switch over. It is going to be a niche product, just like SLI/Crossifre.

A few people will get it and enjoy it. Most people will give it a miss.
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Triplehead has been available for years. Matrox TH2G have been the most decent solution so far for this, while SoftTH with extra cards have been another option.

With Eyefinity, triplehead has become a mainstream option. Even now, shortly after release, we can see a lot of new people using it which haven't been tripleheader earlier and more people are considering TH then ever before.

Being "Next Big Thing(tm)"? Just look at the [H] Eyefinity event. When people see more and more of this, its something people would want at home. Why wouldn't they, considering the immersion factor? After all, people buy new cards just to get some AA in newest game. Eyefinity brings much more.
 
PlatinumPC said:
the fact remains though it's still a niche thing at this stage, and most gamers do not and are not upgrading with this in mind.
It is awesome though, but not an option for most of the gaming market at this stage.
even for an enthusiast it is still fairly full-on to go and get 3 monitors and a desk big enough to accommodate,
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Most enthusiasts already own 2x monitors. It's a common setup now. What's the cost of upgrading to 1 more monitor to get the Eyefinity experience? That's certainly cheaper than buying a 2-3k Wraparound displays like you're suggesting.

And you want to talk about gimmick? Nvidia's 3D glasses thing has to be the worse gimmick. You have to buy a specialized 120hz monitor that costs twice as much as others and only does 1680x1050, then you have to buy 3d glasses that costs as much as an additional monitor, and then search long and hard for games that actually support the 3d function. Now that's a gimmick.
 
Why shouldn't Eyefinity become something "big" for PC gaming? I'd rather buy 2 more 24" monitors for $400 and have a triple-display set-up than buy a 42" 1080p TV and have hundreds of dollars left over for, I dunno, games maybe?
 
OpStar said:
Eyefinity is cool and all but its not new.

I mean seriously:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_Parhelia

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2007/09/24/matrox_triplehead2go_digital_edition/8

Surroundgaming on 3 screens has been around for what 7 or 8 years?
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Of course it's been around for a while, but it required a very powerful GPU setup to run the high resolution PLUS a 300 dollar adapter, and was limited to 3x 1680x1050 (this setup could only be achieved on monitors that would run at 57 Hz which is apparently a pain to find)
It is much more accessible nowadays, to buy 1 video card, and be able to use any res up to 2560x1600.
 
vjcsmoke said:
Most enthusiasts already own 2x monitors. It's a common setup now. What's the cost of upgrading to 1 more monitor to get the Eyefinity experience? That's certainly cheaper than buying a 2-3k Wraparound displays like you're suggesting.

And you want to talk about gimmick? Nvidia's 3D glasses thing has to be the worse gimmick. You have to buy a specialized 120hz monitor that costs twice as much as others and only does 1680x1050, then you have to buy 3d glasses that costs as much as an additional monitor, and then search long and hard for games that actually support the 3d function. Now that's a gimmick.
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So your suggesting more than 50% of the enthusiast market own 2 monitors?
I think you may be confused with 'resonably common' and 'most'
I can only speak from what I've seen, however please show us any stats that backup your suggestion.
I'm not suggesting that people will buy wraparound displays, I'm just of the belief that in years to come they will be a very viable option for the community.
 
FranklyShankly said:
Of course it's been around for a while, but it required a very powerful GPU setup to run the high resolution PLUS a 300 dollar adapter, and was limited to 3x 1680x1050 (this setup could only be achieved on monitors that would run at 57 Hz which is apparently a pain to find)
It is much more accessible nowadays, to buy 1 video card, and be able to use any res up to 2560x1600.
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This. My point is that its now a standard feature.
 
lloose said:
Lets be honest and say that video cards have done a good job of keeping up with the games offered on the pc platform. There aren't many games that I cant max out with my current setup and almost 2 generation old hd4870. When the new 5 series cards came out, I thought this generation would be trivial. I mean, why upgrade when you have a card that plays everything you want maxed out already?
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Well this is partly because speeds increase as usual, but partly because of the slow down of graphical advancement, with the current generation of consoles being so like PCs there has been a big market for multiplatform games, and with consoles using graphics hardware which about 3 generation old now and most multiplatform titles with production values of "lowest common denominator" it means maxing out graphics on the PC is affordable for almost everyone.

The trade off is lack of decent graphics advancement, look at modern blockbusters like MW2, they look about the same as MW1 and WaW, nothing has really improved a great deal.

This is where the paradigm shifts. With the new generation came something that I think will change pc gaming forever. Eyefinity. 3 months ago, high resolution gaming consisted of a single large monitor. True enthusiasts found their muse in 2560 x 1600 30 inch+ monitors for showing off their system's abilities.
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No, it didn't. You've been able to use 3 monitors with tripplehead2go setups for a long time now, way before ATI took a stab at it. And a lot of enthusiasts have been doing just that, take a trip to www.widescreengamingforum.com and they've been rating games for TH2G compatability for a long time now

ATI have made it slightly easier and cheaper to impliment and maybe a few more people will take a stab at setting it up, but it's going to remain in the realm of enthusiasts because the cost of 3 monitors and a GPU to run them resolutions is a lot of money especially considering that high end GPU solutions require crossfire capable motherboards, powerful PSUs etc.

There are no gimics like wearing awful 3d glasses (that cost almost as much as the monitor you have... that probably wont work with the glasses) or promises of support in games (with little actual follow through... see physx).
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This just seems like a dig at Nvidia, while I'm not especially pleased with PhysX myself it seems like a nice bonus if you happen to side with Nvidia already. From all accounts the 3d glasses experience is very good I have several friends who have tried it at shows Nvidia have taken the tech to. I don't see what this has to do with multimonitor anyway.

There is out of the box support and full compatibility with current systems.
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No there isn't, there is no crossfire support which is very important considering the resolutions you're pushing, there's also other limitations and problems which make it far from out of the box compatible.

Enthusiests can now show off their systems on a wall of power, and the budget gamer with a few extra crt's can enjoy their gaming experience a little more... all standard on the 5 series cards. So the old idea of "I can max out my new games on my old hardware" is a mute point. I should be saying "I can max out my new games on my old hardware... with one monitor".
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I think this is still a bit of a gimmick, it's nice to show off and it's probably impressive to use at first but it remains an enthusiast setup. While we're stuck in a rut with graphics because of multiplatform games not pushing the PC this is going to work out well. Once developers finally start pushing the boundries again, probably when the new generation of consoles are released or if DX11 takes off, we're going to see a lot of people who invested in a 5870 and 3x 22" monitors for a cheap multimonitor configuration all of a sudden having no where near the power to push 5 million pixels.

I think eyefinity users may eventually become a cropper, with all this power floating around and DX11 on the way hopefully we'll see some development studios crank out some new graphics. I wonder what Crysis 2 will bring to the PC, Crytek seem to have the sense to seperate the PC and console variants of the game a little more than previous developers. I think it wont be long before powering a tripple monitor set up will be just as much of a PITA as powering 2560x1600 has been for other enthusiasts.

The natural order of things has always been for graphics and GPUs to fight each other and keep advancements coming in to always push the limits, that's been heavily disrupted due to modern consoles, at some point its going to return to normal and we'll be back to struggling to power our high end displays in new games. The benefit of 7mpix resolutions will probably be balanced by having to drop a lot of graphics settings.
 
Here's the problem: You two keep talking about "immersion factor" as if that is the one and only thing people care about and will automatically sell people on stuff. Sorry, but that's not the case. As I said, an excellent example of that is sound.

Sound is a big part of our sensory experience and good, enveloping, sound is important for immersion. That's why Hollywood went to 5.1 sound, despite the expense and technical hurdles when it was first developed: It offered a much greater level of immersion in theaters. Games these days pretty much universally support surround sound, and many of them are quite good at it. What's more, computers have no problems supporting it. Almost impossible to get a non-surround soundcard these days, even the integrated Realtek and IDT chipsets are surround. Many of the cards even speak Dolby Digital and/or DTS so you can hook them to your receiver in the same way you would a DVD player.

However, what do you see on a lot of systems? Cheap 2.0/2.1 computer speakers or headphones. Even the minority that have 5.1 setups usually have cheap ones, and often have them set up very poorly (incorrect speaker placement) and thus don't get a good sound field. Well why? Why don't people get a good theater like system? It really adds to immersion.

Two reasons:

1) It costs a lot. Good sound isn't cheap. For a reasonable HT setup you are probably talking $500-1000. Computer speakers can be had for far less, even 5.1 computer speakers are only $100-300, and 2.0 ones can be had for $20. People don't want to spend the money, even though if offers a better experience.

2) It's a pain. As I said, you have to have your speakers positioned right to really get a good experience. This means you need room, you can't have them just laying in any old place. That's a pain to do, so many people aren't willing to bother, even if they've got the money.

Now really, you don't see the parallels to eyefinity? It's the same thing. It offers a more immersive experience, but it costs more and is a pain to set up. As such most people are going to give it a miss.

Some people will get it and love it, and that's wonderful. Nothing wrong with a technology for a select crowd. But you really are kidding yourself if you think that this is going to be what everyone goes to. People are cheapskates (hence the popularity of the TN panel) and people are lazy.

Also, it requires some fairly beefy graphics hardware to do right. Lots of pixels requires lots of power to push. That means you aren't going to see it work all that well on midrange cards. Well guess what? Most people own those. The vast majority of PC gamers do NOT have high end hardware, it's too expensive. They own midrange stuff.

Finally, I get a little sick of this "save PC gaming" silliness. I keep hearing this as though it needs saving. Really? PC gaming is dying? Better tell the publishers! Recently we have seen:

Left 4 Dead 2
Sims 3 World Adventures
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Shattered Horizon
Dragon Age: Origins
Torchlight
Borderlands
FIFA Soccer 10
Tropico 3
Machinarium
Cities XL
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes
Risen
Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 3: Lair of the Leviathan

All that is just since October of this year, and just releases major enough to make big sites. There's more indy titles you can find on Steam and Impulse and the like.

PC gaming is doing just fine. No, PCs are not the be-all, end-all of gaming, they are just another platform. Guess what? Nothing wrong with that. Games are still coming out at a fantastic pace. By any real measure, PC gaming is not in need of saving. It is a major platform, just like the 360 or PS3 with plenty of titles, both cross platform and exclusive.
 
Sycraft said:
Here's the problem: You two keep talking about "immersion factor" as if that is the one and only thing people care about and will automatically sell people on stuff. Sorry, but that's not the case. As I said, an excellent example of that is sound.

*snip*

Some people will get it and love it, and that's wonderful. Nothing wrong with a technology for a select crowd. But you really are kidding yourself if you think that this is going to be what everyone goes to. People are cheapskates (hence the popularity of the TN panel) and people are lazy.
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Yes, I absolutely agree with this. Sound is a perfect example, I usualy struggle to tell the difference in sound quality but thats because I'd been using pretty awful onboard sound and cheap speakers for my PC for a long time.

I eventually got some audiophiles advice for a good set up but affordable at the same time, I ended up with a Xonar D2X sound card which does uncompress DTS 5.1 out via COAX straight to an AV receiver and some nice 5.1 speakers.

The same goes for monitors actually, play the bright vibrant crysis on a decent S-IPS with true 8bit colour and you'll realise that the colours on cheap 22" TN panels is just utterly shit. I've seen the 2 side by side, I ran my 30" S-IPS next to my old 22" TN panel for a few days and the difference was extremely obvious.

People are cheap and lazy, especially in the UK, everything here is about getting it as cheap as possible, trying to recommend a screen to a friend who was after new kit was an irritating experience, no matter how much you highlight the idea of quality they still shoot for the cheapest price.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
is valve as relevant as it used to be ?
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I'd say it's a decent representation of distribution.

if a person is into PC gaming, I'd think they would have Steam installed on their PC, and then it's just a matter of whether that person is paranoid and choosing not to provide PC hardware information.
 
FUCK Eyefinity already, it will not be the next big thing. You elite, ultra [H]ardcore can have it. I'll be damned if I ever split my gaming goodness up on three or more separate screens. Until a large single display comes along, count me out, hell, fuck LCD display's while your at it.

How about some damn games that take advantage of all that gaming power instead of pissing it away on some mega high res display setup.

I feel better now. Joy...
 
Sabrewulf... said:
FUCK Eyefinity already, it will not be the next big thing. You elite, ultra [H]ardcore can have it. I'll be damned if I ever split my gaming goodness up on three or more separate screens. Until a large single display comes along, count me out, hell, fuck LCD display's while your at it.

How about some damn games that take advantage of all that gaming power instead of pissing it away on some mega high res display setup.

I feel better now. Joy...
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... yeah u tell em girlfriend :p
 
lloose said:
True enthusiasts found their muse in 2560 x 1600 30 inch+ monitors for showing off their system's abilities.
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So you're not a "true" enthusiast unless you have a top of the line rig?

I know quite a few people, most of my game playing friends, actually, that play all their games on older hardware. They are plenty enthused about gaming. It's not that we don't have enough money to buy these multi-thousand dollar setups. It's just that we recognize it's not necessary to enjoy a good game.
 
Eyefinity is a brand new, never-before-seen technology that we've never experienced before...if you dismiss everything Matrox has done, of course. I don't.
 
phide said:
Eyefinity is a brand new, never-before-seen technology that we've never experienced before...if you dismiss everything Matrox has done, of course. I don't.
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Its just never been so easily available or cheap.
 
It's all about the bezels to me. I'd buy a crazy priced high quality projector set up before having to deal with thick black voids between my views. It's like looking through a window with multiple panes instead of looking through one big piece of glass. I don't like obstructions.
 
Sabrewulf... said:
FUCK Eyefinity already, it will not be the next big thing. You elite, ultra [H]ardcore can have it. I'll be damned if I ever split my gaming goodness up on three or more separate screens. Until a large single display comes along, count me out, hell, fuck LCD display's while your at it.

How about some damn games that take advantage of all that gaming power instead of pissing it away on some mega high res display setup.

I feel better now. Joy...
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You know your right, I have split it up on three screens and it just totally sucks, I soooo cant stand to have to suffer thru crysis like this, man wish I had just one big display like the 30" in the center, the two side 20"s just suck waaaaay toooo much, I mean check how it hinders my gaming goodness.....and yea fuck dem lcds too, bring back MONOCROME!!
112220098256.jpg

112220098259.jpg

112220098260.jpg

112220098264.jpg
 
l88bastard said:
You know your right, I have split it up on three screens and it just totally sucks, I soooo cant stand to have to suffer thru crysis like this, man wish I had just one big display like the 30" in the center, the two side 20"s just suck waaaaay toooo much, I mean check how it hinders my gaming goodness.....and yea fuck dem lcds too, bring back MONOCROME!!
112220098256.jpg

[]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v725/l88bastard/112220098259.jpg[/IMG]
[]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v725/l88bastard/112220098260.jpg[/IMG]
[]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v725/l88bastard/112220098264.jpg[/IMG]
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Dood, how did you get that to work? I thought eyefinity only supports the same resolution displays :O
 
so I love how ATi is "creating a paradigm shift"

when this exact technology was released for a single board consumer graphics card in 2002
for about the same price (in terms of what the board cost)
it did perform alright for its day
it worked quite well
did have bezel management
supported high resoultion monitors (especially for its day)
supported modern games (for its day)
was more available at retail than 5870 is today
didn't require new monitors or adapters to implement



it failed for two reasons:
the manufacturer never followed it up with anything
games quickly outpaced its processing abilities, making it an incredible performance drain

honestly, from one generation to the next, there isn't an expectation of somehow gaining 200% performance, 30-40% is the norm, 5870 hit that spot on, software moves in lock-step with hardware, if the hardware isn't there to support it, devs won't touch it, and it takes a while for things to trickle down (FX 5200 and 6600GT are still two of the most popular graphics cards in use today)

but no, you're right, ATi has created an entirely new, revolutionary technology, something that never existed before today, and before Eyefinity, you could never connect more than one monitor to a computer, under any circumstances, regardless of how much the machine cost or its hardware abilities, and for this, ATi has brought fire to the masses, changed the entire history of the world, re-written the bible, prompted the second coming of Christ (for surely he also must bow before the sheer awesomeness of that which is Eyefinity), and whatever other superlatives you can think up

honestly, the amount of hype (no doubt the result of viral marketing) this nonsense receives never ceases to amaze me

serious questions for thread:
l88bastard - how's the DXP bar work as your main speakers (I'm assuming)? I found the thing too screechy and washed out to use daily, or do you just use it as a center channel?

kudos and cookies to anyone who can accurately name the hardware listed in my example, without google, without making some false claim about it in the process
 
Why are people still debating if Eyefinity will be relevant? It already is for the simple fact that it is a standard feature. Period

Those cherry picking Valve statistics are willfully ignorant because they fail to understand that market penetration does not happen overnight. That, or they for some equally ignorant reason have an agenda against the technology. Get over yourselves. If you don't want the technology don't use it, it will still be a standard feature whether you like it or not. It needs no special developer time devoted to it other than enabling ultra high wide screen resolutions in the game.
And yes go ahead and bring the argument about Matrox having done this already, trying to sound like you are insightful and know anything. If you bothered to do the research you'd know that Matrox's solution was incredibly limited in both flexibility and performance. AMD solved both of those issues and bridged the gap that separated the niche market from the mainstream for all.
The future of Eyefinity is incredibly exciting. Market penetration will be even greater than it already is once OEMs and SIs pick it up, which will be soon since the competition will have no directx 11 parts for OEMs for a loooooong time (Third quarter of next year at least). With this huge installed base the next step is developers adding support of the technology as a standard feature for all their future titles. It makes no difference if people use it or not. The simple fact that it is a standard feature in a whole generation of video cards means the market is already there to support it. More importantly is the cost of entry, it is incredibly low compared to earlier versions for both the developer and consumer. Developers know this and will use it as a selling point for their software.
 
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obobski said:
FX 5200 and 6600GT are still two of the most popular graphics cards in use today
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...really? For some reason, I think both those cards add to under 10% of the market. If you said the 7 and 8 series from nVidia, I could start to believe your description as 'two of the series of most popular graphics cards in use today'. Or if you said the Intel on-board video card series. Since many bought-from-big-box-store pcs tend not to have a seperate video card.
 
Lorien said:
Why are people still debating if Eyefinity will be relevant? It already is for the simple fact that it is a standard feature. Period

Those cherry picking Valve statistics are willfully ignorant because they fail to understand that market penetration does not happen overnight. That, or they for some equally ignorant reason have an agenda against the technology. Get over yourselves. If you don't want the technology don't use it, it will still be a standard feature whether you like it or not. It needs no special developer time devoted to it other than enabling ultra high wide screen resolutions in the game.
And yes go ahead and bring the argument about Matrox having done this already, trying to sound like you are insightful and know anything. If you bothered to do the research you'd know that Matrox's solution was incredibly limited in both flexibility and performance. AMD solved both of those issues and bridged the gap that separated the niche market from the mainstream for all.
The future of Eyefinity is incredibly exciting. Market penetration will be even greater than it already is once OEMs and SIs pick it up, which will be soon since the competition will have no directx 11 parts for OEMs for a loooooong time (Third quarter of next year at least). With this huge installed base the next step is developers adding support of the technology as a standard feature for all their future titles. It makes no difference if people use it or not. The simple fact that it is a standard feature in a whole generation of video cards means the market is already there to support it. Developers know this and will use it as a selling point for their software.
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they did nothing "innovative", the tech already existed (and Matrox's solution wasn't limited at all....especially for '02), not only did Matrox have hardware supporting this in '02, they weren't the only ones by a long shot (even older ATi hardware....hell, 3dfx hardware....), its just a matter of bringing a once pro-only feature to the consumer, slowly, and with an assload of viral marketing, to make it look they've shifted things all around and made some big bang
just like (for fun):

Stereoscopic 3D
AFR/SFR
AA
H/W accel geometry


things we're still waiting on (but I don't doubt we'll see in the next decade in some form):
head-tracking/motion tracking
object-based SMP
TMB (in hardware, with USM, why this isn't across the board....)
TBDR (I'd half wager we'll see this from Intel, if anything, they seem to like tiles, a lot)


and it isn't a standard feature for at least 99.4% of users, because about 99.4% of users don't have the required hardware
honestly, Eyefinity is a neat feature, I'm not discrediting that, I'm questioning if the hype is really earned, since they've done nothing "new" or "innovative", yeah they've packaged it up nicely, created a great UI, and made it a bit more user friendly sure, but they haven't created some new tech from the ground up, not to mention that the vast majority of users don't have the hardware to even support it, even if OEMs/SIs "pick it up" as you assert (I'm not even going to debate nVidia with you, thats a flamewar I'm not even about to entertain), does this also mean they're gonna include the additional monitors for free, just to drive market penetration? you realize that multimonitor adoption (in spite of NEC/Utah's best efforts) is exceptionally limited for a number of reasons (price being a big factor for the average user, space being another factor, complexity being another factor (remember not everyone is an enthusiast)

also, next time, make sure you've read my post correctly the first time through, and understand that I'm not even debating the technology or its merits, I'm simply stating that the complete "blackout of knowledge" as the result of the EXCESSIVE hype machine leading to posts like "you're jealous of new technology" or "you're a luddite" or "it IS A STANDARD FEATURE FOR ALL USERS FOREVER, EVERYONE WILL ADOPT, IT IS THE FUTURE, PERIOD." is somewhat saddening in context

really, its neat, but lets be fair and call it what it is, and quit with the "its a new paradigm shift re-invention of 3D gaming second coming of the messiah be all end all standard of the future forever point blank period" hype machine parroting

WBurchnall said:
...really? For some reason, I think both those cards add to under 10% of the market. If you said the 7 and 8 series from nVidia, I could start to believe your description as 'two of the series of most popular graphics cards in use today'. Or if you said the Intel on-board video card series. Since many bought-from-big-box-store pcs tend not to have a seperate video card.
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I think the current most popular card on the steam hardware survey is actually the 8800GT (sorry for the inaccuracy, I just remember from a few months ago, the FX 5200 was still hitting the list near the top, has moved down now)

just to be accurate, loaded it up (here, if you're interested: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ (and no I'm not saying this representative of all gamers, I'm saying this is representative of gamers who have steam and participated))

63.19% has nVidia, 5.4% has Intel, so thats 68.59% that is 100% guranteed to NOT be able to support Eyefinity (thats more than two thirds right there, that by itself sorta kills the "paradigm shift" hype imho)
of the 28.71% with ATi graphics cards, the most popular ATi graphics card is the HD 4800 series (overall), with 8% of total marketshare, the second most popular card is the HD 3870 (neither of which support Eyefinity nor, or ever)

Radeon 5000 fails to make the list in any category
yes I realize its new hardware, yes I realize it will gain market share, but considering HD 4800 series (as a series, which means 4830 through 4890) doesn't even have 10% of the entire mess, and if you throw 3870 in for good measure it still doesn't hit 10%, you'd have to add the next lowest card (HD 2600) on to even 10%, furthermore consider that nVidia has over 63% of the total marketshare (of Steam users, but I can't think of any more objective data, if you have a source, I'd be happy to see it), so thats over half of your users right there that'll never see this tech, they have SLI Multi-monitor (wait, that couldn't exist, could it? it isn't Eyefinity, so how can you have multiple monitors?) or some other multi-head rendering solution, but it doesn't require AMD's UI to work, it doesn't require AMD's branding to work, and it gets along just as well

now to correct my previous statement
the most popular graphics cards are the GeForce 8800, Radeon HD 4800, and GeForce 9800 (couldn't they just add this into the 8800's count :p) (FX 5200 is about 1.3%, which is still more than GTX 275, GTX 295, GF6800, GTX 285, etc, GF6600 is about 1.4%, combined they're sitting on around 2.5%, which puts them >GF 9500, GF 7600, etc, and about half as widespread as GF9800, not bad for 4-5 year old tech (point is: cheap survives, expensive does not, see any FX 5800's up there? 6800's (6800 is way down at the bottom at .55%), X850's? etc))


few more facts:
most common resolution of steam users: 1280x1024 (....)
multi-GPU adoption is around 2.5% (its only had about 5 years and god knows how much marketing....)

I'll be honest, like I said before, its not a bad tech, but very few users are really gonna adopt it, its expensive, requires the user to invest more time into the system, and may seem clumsy to inexperienced users, its a feature for the enthusiasts, not the end-all revolution of technology its being hailed as, yeah it'll have some adoption, but it isn't gonna be in every home, not to mention, AMD doesn't have some premium on the technology either, every vendor to ever develop a discrete 3D chipset with a few exceptions (XGI/Trident, S3, Number Nine, Oak, and Intel) has functioning multi-head rendering, I don't doubt we'll see more multi-monitor advances (in terms of bezel/FOV tweaks), but its nothing to get one's undies in a bunch over


thats my entire point
 
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In support of "eyefinity"

Power supplies. If we have a minute portion of the population using SLI/CX why are PS companys all about being SLI/CX compatible PSs? Or modular PS, which is advertised hand-in-hand with enthusiast gaming? Why, because they profit and it takes them little work. As many of you have stated, the use of SLI/CX is very low, however when your shopping for a PS, what will separate one PS from the next?

eSATA. What percentage of the population you suppose has eSATA devices? How many motherboards now include it? It's because it easy! I takes very little effort to support the technology and you get to stay competitive.

What does is take for LCD manufactures to do to support Eyefinity? Pretty much nothing, perhaps slim down a bezel, or take back the whole "bezels as a design feature," and stick an Eyefinity sticker on the box. Why wouldn't LCD manufacturers support this? It costs them nothing! This is an LCD manufacturer's dream, you get a big company that hypes up a technology that YOU benefit from.

If you own a laptop/netbook, you now have a very easy solution for the screen size sacrifice. Eyefinity with a MiniDP port makes monitors a very easy addition to your computer. You can argue about this not being Eyefinity, but you're misjudging the public's perception. Eyefinity is the marketing that all previous multi-monitors deserved. Prior to this, most people never would have thought to hook up a second, or heaven's forbid a third monitor (kinda like more than one tv in the house). But, with the right exposure, now it makes not only ok, but mainstream, and mainstream is the goal.

Lastly, just because a setup is elite, or above the mainstream market doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. Once again, take the Power Supply market. You keep marketing the same ol' shit to OEM, but you add a few enthusiast items to your line and you gain instant notoriety. Not only that, but the profit you get on enthusiast items is higher than OEM (largest portion of the market), so doing a cost analysis can show just how little effort it takes to reap large profits. You just have to know your market, and I personally don't think this is an act of desperation on ATI's part, this is good market analysis.

I'll be buying an Eyefinity setup, I've went from one screen to two, and was pleased by my increase in work productivity, and yet, the more is better philosophy is still relevant. Not only that, but I get a "new" technology (eyefinity) that takes my practical justification and nudges it into my hobby category, gaining instant funding.
 
Mister E said:
It's all about the bezels to me. I'd buy a crazy priced high quality projector set up before having to deal with thick black voids between my views. It's like looking through a window with multiple panes instead of looking through one big piece of glass. I don't like obstructions.
Click to expand...

I dont think they are using eyefinity here, but this video gives you a very good idea at how the bezels just kind of melt away while playing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcPr_ihsaiU&feature=player_embedded

the bezels with a nice triple monitor setup are not that bad a all, but you know soon enough there will be bezeless monitors and then things will get really good!

And yes here is a video which showcases that only the RICH AND ELITE HARDCORE GAMERS desire and play only the most resource intensive games on their solid gold gaming powerhouses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGJtRktBNI
 
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WorldExclusive said:
I know you have to be talking about the Galant:D

I'm getting the same desk soon for my Eyefinity setup.
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Hehe, that's close. Got a variation of the Vika series:

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S49852135

I did away with the glass top and just went with the white wood paneling. At 55" wide, it's big enough to accommodate the three Samsung panels (with a little overhang). You could probably put two of these together for an ultimate triple-40" 'budget' build of 1080p panels from Costco for $600-$700 each. Immersion baby! :D:D:D
 
Well said obobski. Despite the current hype, and people's natural reaction to it, it's still a good thing that we're at least seeing some hype. I've seen enough awesome technology from small companies just die out because of a lack of marketing, so anything that makes it past that barrier is a plus.
 
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