AMD Next Generation ATI Radeon Eyefinity Technology

[BoogerBomb]

Believe what you want, but when things don't match to our eyes it is distracting for most of us. I think if you experience some actual gameplay with bezel management removal your opinion would change. Its like looking out an old fashioned windowpane. With bezel management the world exists behind the panes. You just have to tilt your head left or right to see what the pane covered. Without bezel management there is a gap in space for no logical reason to the mind. The scenery just stops then continues on an inch or so over. Hardly conducive for better flow.

The way I would like it is as if I was looking through a window or the view from a car where one screen/section doesn't pick up exactly where the previous one left off. I would like it better if the part the bezels cover isn't shown unless I move around. That is the way I would like to see it.

 

[funkydmunky]

Thats exactly what bezel management software does.

 

[Mccaula718]

They had me until the DVI required part. I just upgraded to triple monitors, 25" DVI to HDMI, 19" through DVI, and another 19" that only supports VGA which is hooked up to my onboard GPU. If they could make it so that it supports this older hardware monitor, I'll buy a card immediately. If not, I'll just stick w/ my HD 4850 as it is more than enough performance for the games i play.

 

[BravO)))]

They had me until the DVI required part. I just upgraded to triple monitors, 25" DVI to HDMI, 19" through DVI, and another 19" that only supports VGA which is hooked up to my onboard GPU. If they could make it so that it supports this older hardware monitor, I'll buy a card immediately. If not, I'll just stick w/ my HD 4850 as it is more than enough performance for the games i play.

Display port is backwards compatible with hdmi, dvi, and vga.

 

[mastercheeze]

That is a 1080p TV...for an "undisclosed" price...not a PC monitor?

Also, it has an extra "feature" around the outside of the picture for a "borderless" monitor.

 

[Mccaula718]

Display port is backwards compatible with hdmi, dvi, and vga.

That's awesome. In the article they only mentioned DVI so i was confused. I'll def buy the mainstream(HD 5850?) version as soon as they're available then.

 

[Sublym3]

This probably can't be answered right now, but is the ability to lock applications in specific monitors available?

Like in a typical 3 monitor setup where you could have your email application maximised on one screen, browser on another and watching a full screen movie on the 3rd?

Maybe some sort of hot-key to switch between different modes.

 

[Edgar]

is it just me or did anyone else notice the left for dead pic....how the left and right monitors were stretched to hell and back?anyone else notice?

 

[obobski]

is it just me or did anyone else notice the left for dead pic....how the left and right monitors were stretched to hell and back?anyone else notice?

yeah, the FOV is not configured correctly for how wide that setup is, additionally the drivers are compensating and adjusting things, it looks quite similar to what Matrox's SurroundGaming feature does to adjust FOV to the monitors, and assumes you've got the monitors tilted to either side (http://www.matrox.com/graphics/surroundgaming/en/games/supported/left4dead as an example)

somewhat unrelated, but give this a once-over:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinerama

sort of explains why it looks like it does, and why it won't actually look terrible in person, at least if you can infer things from that article based on what you know of triple monitor setups

 

[jeremyshaw]

This probably can't be answered right now, but is the ability to lock applications in specific monitors available?

Like in a typical 3 monitor setup where you could have your email application maximised on one screen, browser on another and watching a full screen movie on the 3rd?

Maybe some sort of hot-key to switch between different modes.

IE8 can max on one screen, while I am doing WMP11 on another (not max, but close).

However... I don't have 3 monitors.

But I need serious ADHD to accomplish both.

 

[obobski]

skimmed the first page, found two gems

Your Intel graphics can set up 3 monitors on its own? I'd like to see how you got some top secret Intel stuff!

You really don't think some people having to deal with a giant 20+ MB spreadsheet wouldn't love being able to set up 2 monitors just for the spreadsheet (be it vertical or horizontal, whichever they need) then setting a 3rd to do the work they need to in support of it?

convince my firm's IT buyer that we need 5870's in every office PC, and consider that single card is about half the price of the entire finished PC (including monitor) that is currently being purchased

honestly, you just learn to live with a single or dual monitor setup, it won't kill you to not have the third display, and if you really need it that badly, you can add cards to accomplish that (because you know, a pair of 8400GS boards is obviously so much more expensive than a 5870)

So if you have 2x22" panels, it's not 1680x1050 + 1680x1050, applications will recognize it as 2560x1050.

wait so you lose some 800 horizontal pixels in the process? wonderful math fail there.

honestly I agree with the second post (boohoo if kyle doesn't agree ), as a halo product for the enthusiast segment its great, but for the average day to day PC user, it'll go as unnoticed as SLI-AA, GeForce 3D Vision, Surround Gaming, T-Buffer, SLI, MVP (hah!), CrossFire, MultiChrome, Stereo3D and a slew of other vendor unique products released over the years to entice buyers away from the competition, none of them are particularly bad tech, but joe average isn't running out to buy them, and probably doesn't even know of any of them

yeah, on [H] its known about and purchased, but not everyone on [H] will be rocking 3+ monitors for gaming, then think about the steam hardware survey, 1024x768 is still VERY high up there

I won't hold my breath for it, its an interesting implementation of something they've been doing for ages, it'll get a lot of people on the "AMD invented multimonitor" or "multimonitor could not exist without AMD" train, which will bring them customers, but if Hydravision is still the same old shit, and if performance drops off within the first 18 months because the complexity of games increases exponentially beyond the ability of the processor (oh wait, that can't happen, because you know, it would make their marketing brochures look bad ), I'm really not that interested in a technology that has me staring at a bunch of bezel blackspace and not really being able to focus in on the game

 

[ZerazaX]

skimmed the first page, found two gems



convince my firm's IT buyer that we need 5870's in every office PC, and consider that single card is about half the price of the entire finished PC (including monitor) that is currently being purchased

honestly, you just learn to live with a single or dual monitor setup, it won't kill you to not have the third display, and if you really need it that badly, you can add cards to accomplish that (because you know, a pair of 8400GS boards is obviously so much more expensive than a 5870)



wait so you lose some 800 horizontal pixels in the process? wonderful math fail there.

honestly I agree with the second post (boohoo if kyle doesn't agree ), as a halo product for the enthusiast segment its great, but for the average day to day PC user, it'll go as unnoticed as SLI-AA, GeForce 3D Vision, Surround Gaming, T-Buffer, SLI, MVP (hah!), CrossFire, MultiChrome, Stereo3D and a slew of other vendor unique products released over the years to entice buyers away from the competition, none of them are particularly bad tech, but joe average isn't running out to buy them, and probably doesn't even know of any of them

yeah, on [H] its known about and purchased, but not everyone on [H] will be rocking 3+ monitors for gaming, then think about the steam hardware survey, 1024x768 is still VERY high up there

I won't hold my breath for it, its an interesting implementation of something they've been doing for ages, it'll get a lot of people on the "AMD invented multimonitor" or "multimonitor could not exist without AMD" train, which will bring them customers, but if Hydravision is still the same old shit, and if performance drops off within the first 18 months because the complexity of games increases exponentially beyond the ability of the processor (oh wait, that can't happen, because you know, it would make their marketing brochures look bad ), I'm really not that interested in a technology that has me staring at a bunch of bezel blackspace and not really being able to focus in on the game

You're assuming it's only on the 5870 bub... the base feature is supposed to be across the 5xxx series as a whole and is just going to be standard. So yeah, in your example, rather than the 8400GS, you're just going to have the 5400 or whatever they have.

And I don't get the mentality on this board - it's like this 'feature' manages to personally offends them. It's a friggin additional capability, namely that mainstream video cards will inherently be able to support 3 monitors, rather than 2 as in the past. Whether you use it or not doesn't matter one bit - it's an additional feature that will probably soon be the standard once Nvidia adopts their own version.

And you know what? A lot of people do buy a crappy video card, see that it has two outputs, hear that they can use dual monitors, and eventually some try it out. Same thing applies here... they see three outputs and they consider it. People once wondered why a video card would support two monitors and have two outputs... and look at the number of people who now use multi-monitors.

I swear, people forget we once had single output cards and thought it was silly they'd need an extra monitor

 

[FrgMstr]

Hmm, why wouldn't they make the bezels a uniform size on all sides? I like the idea of ultrathin bezels, but those numbers/proportions sound odd.

Because they wanted to make it the smallest they could on each side instead of giving all bezels the largest width? Just a guess.

I'm curious, during the presentation did ATI/AMD give any recommendation of the sizes of monitors use what's the "optimal" viewing distance? Like with HDTV's. Something like a 50" HDTV, recommended viewing distance is like 7' to 10'. I'm just curious with the addition of 3 monitors, if a viewing distance was talked about to maximumize the experience due to pheriphal vision?

No. I think that is going to have to do more with the panels used and configuration rather than the just having an extra monitor or two.

The biggest disadvantage of SoftTH is is has no means of compensating for the gap in space between monitors, as can easily be seen by your screen shot. The analog versions of THtoGo had this same issue, but an app was created for the digital version. It is obvious from the demo's that ATi understands this and has it working as it should. No mismatched frames.

Just started to watch the Cry-Engine 3 demo and it obvious in that instance that they have no panel removal system.
Can any one who attended the demo on the carrier comment on this? I know if I was there it would have been the single most important question to get answered.

Ouch, I think I spoke way too soon. I have watched a few demo's more and am seeing much the same. Bezel gap, misalignment. I think the ultra high rez and the extreme number of monitors has masked this problem. It wouldn't effect multi projector users like I hope to be, but makes it all but worthless for multi LCD monitor gaming if your a visual perfectionist. Matrox digital THtogo is still king FTM.

Are you saying you don't see bezel gap misalignment on the various video's posted? Sure Brent was amazed, multi monitors is frickin awesome in almost every sense, especially the Dirt2 demo with seamless projectors. But the video's that show bezel gap misalignment pretty much ruin it for me. Hopeful that ATi has a software fix soon.

Yeah, there's clearly some gap in there, but I would be amazed if they didn't eventually include a feature to reduce or eliminate it for those that want to. For FPS I would want to remove it, but in some RTS type games, I wouldn't want to compensate for the spacing.

As someone who's been running multiple displays for years now, I'm just happy as can be to finally see some real mainstream support for it. AMD will very likely win my next purchase, and future purchases, assuming the green team doesn't catch up with something better (and I really hope they do, competition ftw).

I have specifically addressed this and will again.

Currently AMD does not have the soltware to compensate for the distance "under" the bezels but AMD did state it would be specifically addressing that.

 

[Blackstone]

Finally! With that many monitors, it is theoretically possible to create the illusion that the player is actually in the game and not just sitting at the computer in their parents basement.

I am all for it but I feel like 3 monitors will be the sweet spot! Anyone have any idea what the resolution would be for 3 monitors?

 

[Wazooty]

Finally! With that many monitors, it is theoretically possible to create the illusion that the player is actually in the game and not just sitting at the computer in their parents basement.

I am all for it but I feel like 3 monitors will be the sweet spot! Anyone have any idea what the resolution would be for 3 monitors?

Add the lengths and widths of the 3 monitors resolutions together.

 

[inotocracy]

Display port is backwards compatible with hdmi, dvi, and vga.

Is it with a multi monitor setup thought? I don't have much experience with DP, but from what I've read the daisy chaining happens from monitor to monitor, not on cable (like a splitter), right? The thought of purchasing 3 new monitors just for displayport kind of turns my stomach.

 

[Jaguar Jim1]

Kyle I came away with the Same Feeling after viewing your Article, and Just mumbling under my Abated Breath, About FN Time. This is what the Graphics Industry needs to Spark the Next wave in Computing, and Gaming, and from you've said, it just might be, "What the Doctor Ordered!" Thanx Now I know what I want for Xmas, More Monitors!

 

[Jaguar Jim1]

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..

an example is that.. it looks terrible.

Like Learning to Use Glasses for the Unitiated, your Eyes will adjust Paduan, and soon you would not even notice "The Bezels" as your Brain has Built in Filters, that will Remove Extraineous Distractions, If I'm Wrong I'll stand Corrected.

 

[s1eepy]

so when will this be standard?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqh_F4iN8pg

 

[Oldie]

is it just me or did anyone else notice the left for dead pic....how the left and right monitors were stretched to hell and back?anyone else notice?

If you're talking about the one I posted, that was not with an AMD Eyefinity card. That was my own personal setup at home using SoftTH to get the game on all three screens. Because I'm using a 4:3 format, that SoftTH doesn't support, it does lead to some bad fisheye. I'm 100% certain that AMD's cards are going to blow SoftTH well out of the water. It's kind of like comparing a McDonald's cheeseburger to nice steak.

 

[BravO)))]

here is a pic of the video card. seems like there is 6 display port

Is it with a multi monitor setup thought? I don't have much experience with DP, but from what I've read the daisy chaining happens from monitor to monitor, not on cable (like a splitter), right? The thought of purchasing 3 new monitors just for displayport kind of turns my stomach.

Daisy chain? It looks like all the connections that are made are parallel and would not need a splitter. I also imagine that vga, hdmi, dvi, and dp will work similar to how they already are with the two monitor setups. I don't think imo you would have any problem with this.

 

[ZerazaX]

Those are 6 display ports w/ the mini-DP adapters I believe. No daisy chaining

 

[King Icewind]

It's pretty sweet. The edges of the screen would be too much for me tho

Need a monitor that has very small edge to it...or not one at all?

So what is Nvidia doing to compete with it?

 

[aldamon]

This idea has always seemed gimmicky to me because I've never seen the point in dedicating so much GPU power and money to peripheral vision. I'm glad many people are excited though.

 

[Wazooty]

Theres also the idea of looking at things using your eyes...in real life you dont turn your entire body to face everything you want to look at.

And beyond that, there's not really anywhere else to go to add realism.

Yeah more realistic games, but that's up to game designers. Adding a fuller field of vision is taking the next step

 

[Snowdog]

This idea has always seemed gimmicky to me because I've never seen the point in dedicating so much GPU power and money to peripheral vision. I'm glad many people are excited though.

It's not for you then. Personally, I won't pass judgment on whether it works for me until I actually try it.

Before some people were willing to shell out $300 for an add on that let them do this.

Now I see this as opening this up to the people who already have multiple monitors and thought $300 was too much to give TH gaming a shot.

But as this goes from a $300 add on with limitations, to a FREE inclusion that is much more powerful, it is clearly a nice step forward for those who will use it and will definitely expand the user base of TH gaming.

For those who won't use it. No real cost to them, so nothing to complain about IMO.

Even though I may not use this, it is nice to see a big new feature.

 

[Impulse]

I haven't read the thread (it's ballooned way too fast before I had a chance to) but I've got a couple questions, forgive me if it's already been asked... Do you absolutely need to use same-res displays in order for this to work? That's the impression this and other articles give at 'least (since it's seen in Windows as one large display, etc.).

I ask because I have a 24" panel that I absolutely wouldn't wanna let go... And I'd consider adding two 20-22" side panels to take advantage of something like this, but unless I find some 1920x1200 22" panels (which would look weird sitting next to a larger panel at the same rez anway) then I wouldn't be dealing with a rectangular screen area.

My only other option is to spend significantly more on two 24" panels, or give up the main 24" panel for a 22" but then I'd have to buy three of them anyway, so that'd be a wash.

Second, is ATI gonna step into the realm of UltraMon/DisplayFusion/etc.? If Windows treats the total display area as one big screen then it's gonna want to stretch the taskbar across all screens, which seems impractical (having start on the left-most end and the tray area on the right-most end)... MS has never had much support for multiple displays, hence the existence of the aforementioned programs to create extra taskbars on the other screens (harder than you'd think), add windows management shorcuts/tools, etc.

I'd imagine ATI would have an easier time handling all of that than the independent devs who handle those projects (AFAIK it's a single lone dev behind each of them, and w/o deep access into the OS some of their tasks are often pretty time-consuming), just wondering what they've got planned on that end.

 

[s1eepy]

yes you can mix and match res'

you can also group and span displays to your choosing

its looking like this will do it all.

 

[s1eepy]

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity.aspx

 

[Impulse]

My biggest concern with this, and the biggest hurdle for it to take off imo, is the practical matter of panel size and display panel tech... Using TN panels in a vertical orientation as some people have suggested would just blow, the vertical viewing angle (which would turn horizontal) on them is typically horrid... And I say this being a generally satisfied owner of a 24" TN panel.

 

[Impulse]

yes you can mix and match res', you can also group and span displays to your choosing, its looking like this will do it all.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity.aspx

Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong (or you mis-understood my question), but that explicitly doesn't say that you can create a single display area out of several displays with a different res... They've got separate displays areas designated on the diagrams with displays of a different res, one are per display res it seems. Unless that's not what the 1's and 2's mean? I'm confused.

 

[s1eepy]

ah i misunderstood.
i'm not sure if you can use mismatched res' in sls mode.
seems that would complicate things.
hopefully someone else here knows.

 

[lopoetve]

Like Learning to Use Glasses for the Unitiated, your Eyes will adjust Paduan, and soon you would not even notice "The Bezels" as your Brain has Built in Filters, that will Remove Extraineous Distractions, If I'm Wrong I'll stand Corrected.

until you get a targeting cursor or something that splits the boundries perfectly. Then it just sucks.

I can't get over that we have divided displays. Cool idea, but not something I'd ever use for gaming like that. Maybe 3 wide where I can have a center screen for the detailed stuff in the middle, or 9, so there's a center point that's also clear, but that's about it. No even numbers.

edit: Actually, those would be perfect. 3 or 9 displays, as long as you can pick how to handle the bezels.

 

[Impulse]

I think 3 displays would work beautifully even w/standard bezels... None of you wear glasses? Or ski goggles? Your eye/brain adapts pretty quickly to any visual barrier, it's the same as the analogy someone brought up earlier w/A-pillars in cars. After a while you just don't notice, either you look left/right of it or you physically move to adjust your vantage point (with monitors you'd move your character in-game I guess, and/or you'd pan in-game... which you'd have to do anyway if you wanna focus on or head in that direction).

 

[lopoetve]

I think 3 displays would work beautifully even w/standard bezels... None of you wear glasses? Or ski goggles? Your eye/brain adapts pretty quickly to any visual barrier, it's the same as the analogy someone brought up earlier w/A-pillars in cars. After a while you just don't notice, either you look left/right of it or you physically move to adjust your vantage point (with monitors you'd move your character in-game I guess, and/or you'd pan in-game... which you'd have to do anyway if you wanna focus on or head in that direction).

except some games don't let you pan or move your character easily, which is the issue - or maybe it's an FPS with a set firing reticle at a certain point, that happens to interfere or match up with the bezel. That's what I'm worried about. You have to do something to avoid that- the car doesn't have an a-pillar in the middle of the dashboard, for instance. Glasses are close enough to your eyes that there's no dividing line right in the middle of each eye.

 

[Impulse]

And the bezels are not in the middle of your field of view either... What kind of game doesn't let you pan or move your character? Would you even wanna play that sorta game across three displays? Sorry I'm not trying to be dense, I'm just not being able to picture the type of situation you're imagining.

 

[funkydmunky]

except some games don't let you pan or move your character easily, which is the issue - or maybe it's an FPS with a set firing reticle at a certain point, that happens to interfere or match up with the bezel. That's what I'm worried about. You have to do something to avoid that- the car doesn't have an a-pillar in the middle of the dashboard, for instance. Glasses are close enough to your eyes that there's no dividing line right in the middle of each eye.

If a proper gaming setup is used (X3 or X5 screens) you are only adding peripheral monitors to either side of your main display. So no, nothing like a pillar in the middle of your dashboard. When the bezel management software is released you would have the option of gap or no gap to best suit the game.

 

[lopoetve]

And the bezels are not in the middle of your field of view either... What kind of game doesn't let you pan or move your character? Would you even wanna play that sorta game across three displays? Sorry I'm not trying to be dense, I'm just not being able to picture the type of situation you're imagining.

FPS? Targeting cursor in the middle of the screen?
Several RPGs have had fixed cameras in the past, as have various adventure games.
Heck, the WoW example above has the dividers in the middle of the character, and it looks stupid - the camera sets to several pretty normal places when you start moving, so unless you're going to keep resetting it, you may get confused.

The examples shown several times have bezels in the middle of the view.

That's smack dab in the middle, and would drive me insane. You have to have a clear view directly ahead - dividers to the side don't matter (see the L4D pic from the exact same set of photos), but in the middle (aka, 6 total screens, or 4, or 2)? That just causes problems for some people. I'd love it for 3/9 screens, but that's where I'm done.

My point isn't that it's bad tech, it's that there are some limitations. There are certain numbers of monitors that work well, and some numbers that don't. I hope they have software to deal with the bezels, and if they can let you scale it to different sets then it'll be solid.

 

[lopoetve]

If a proper gaming setup is used (X3 or X5 screens) you are only adding peripheral monitors to either side of your main display. So no, nothing like a pillar in the middle of your dashboard. When the bezel management software is released you would have the option of gap or no gap to best suit the game.

agreed wholeheartedly, but some of the examples used are a less-than-optimal number of screens.

one question - anyone know how they'll handle a big main screen, and smaller peripheral screens? Gets too expensive buying 9 or 5 or 3 big screens.

 

[funkydmunky]

Your confusing the fact that they were often demoing 6 monitors because that is what one card could produce! It was a tech example, not a well thought out gaming setup. The point is the user can set it up anyway they like. Some smarter then others.