AMD's ATI Eyefinity Technology Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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AMD's ATI Eyefinity Technology Review - Multi-display gaming is nothing new to gaming enthusiast but it has been something that was not easily attained. AMD has changed that by delivering Eyefinity Technology will all of is next generation GPUs that are currently being introduced to consumers. Eyefinity delivers great performance on the Radeon HD 5770 video card.

Hit the link for our video review.
 
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I am really disappointed that you did a video review.... I really don't need to be teased enough to want 2 more 30" monitors. Damn it..
 
Sorry, I think it really needed to be done like that so you could even begin to understand the impact. :)
 
I hope the triple dvi thing gets worked out, as that'd be the big barrier of entry for me.
 
Very informative review Kyle :) I like how you walked us through the setup and getting all three displays working correctly, I appreciate that and will refer back to this review, when I am setting up mine in the future. But looks like some driver updates will be needed to fix some minor game menus and little things, but other than that it looks kick ass.

Too bad my Apple 30" Display can't have two 20" 1600x1200res monitors added to either in Portrait mode. I guess Eyefinity only does all Landscape or all Portrait, not mix and match ?

Thanks for the review though :cool:
 
Loved it.

That it also changes for race games the time you run with that amount definitly shows the benefit for those that love those games.
I waited to get the new generation cards, eyefinity was a feature I didnt see coming.

Enjoyed the presentation.
 
Thanks for the review...guess there's still a chance the powered Dell/Bizlink DP to DVI adapter won't work either?
 
edit: nm.. didn't read the note above the video.

Great video review, though.. it makes the wait harder :(
 
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Mad_CatMk2 said:
Interesting video review.

Kyle, is it possible to show a video comparing the difference in NFS: Shift? (i.e. gaming with and without the peripheral monitors?)
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Near the end they show NFS Shift with side screens on and off. (around 29:00)
 
Nice review man !

21:55 : Kyle trying hard to click on Apply , lol :D just can't click there man !
 
Is this for the 5870 or the 5770? There are numerous locations in the article where you state "5770" (and I'm not talking about where you misspoke in the video).

Also, the second link in the article is the same as the first. Rather than linking to the 5870 review as it states, it links back to the original Eyefinity preview as well.
 
I'm curious, how does "applications" fair off with the use of 3 monitors? Will applications spread across the entire 3 screens? Or will you be able to choose where applications launch into? Something like UltraMon gave the ability to launch applications into seperate monitors...

Since the Eyefinity sets up the entire display as one will you have to be going in and out of the display properties to constantly change it going from application to games?
 
Im not really impressed right now, but its too soon for me to pass judgment. The fisheye effect is really turning me off but I know its not AMD's fault. Its trying to make a back library compatible with new technology. I want to see where this goes in about 6 months when companies have had time to play around with it. Once I see some game that are programmed to take advantage of it (instead of trying to jerry rig old games to work with it), then I will give my thumbs up or down.
 
I'm looking forward to testing Flight Sim X in DX10 with it, I imagine for racing sims and flying sims this has got to rock, we might finally be able to make FSX GPU dependent.
 
Kyle,

Without a doubt the best video review I have seen on [H] !! I would love to build a custom theater setup using 3 projectors. No bezel issues and HUGE screens!!

Thanks

Bryan
 
Brent_Justice said:
I'm looking forward to testing Flight Sim X in DX10 with it, I imagine for racing sims and flying sims this has got to rock, we might finally be able to make FSX GPU dependent.
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I would love to see some FSX results!
 
Brent_Justice said:
I'm looking forward to testing Flight Sim X in DX10 with it, I imagine for racing sims and flying sims this has got to rock, we might finally be able to make FSX GPU dependent.
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please post some pictures or even a short video.. flight sims and racing are the primary reason im looking at going this route..


2ntense said:
Kyle,

Without a doubt the best video review I have seen on [H] !! I would love to build a custom theater setup using 3 projectors. No bezel issues and HUGE screens!!

Thanks

Bryan
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good idea.. i never thought of that.. 3 projectors would be BAD ASS!!!
 
Kyle, did you imply that more pixels are pushed in portrait mode than in landscape mode?

I couldn't really understand what you said on the video.
 
Great review. I hope that Eyefinity eventually supports a center, landscape-oriented monitor with two satellite monitors in portrait mode.
 
Taikero said:
Great review. I hope that Eyefinity eventually supports a center, landscape-oriented monitor with two satellite monitors in portrait mode.
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Me too. My 30" plus two 20" flipped in portrait mode would rock, don't understand why that cant work ? All three displays would have the exact same vertical height of 1600res each, so it should work ?
 
Thanks so much for this review.

Too bad I don't have enough space to fit 3 screens even if I could afford it now :D

I think this is a welcome feature and some of my friends will deffinetly get the SIX version just for this.
 
It'd be cool if someone can do a review of 1080p monitors in a 3x1 setup (1920 x 1080). The only reason why I say that is those types of monitors are considerably cheaper than 1920x1200 monitors (50% cheaper). Wondering how much of the experience is diminished...
 
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The triple portrait setup is a beauty, but tell you what would make it even better - Windows 7 supporting border-drop for it. Instead of maximizing a window dropped on the top of the (middle) screen it takes up the size of the screen, same for the other sides. Code in one, preview work in another, surf in the third.
 
what sort of processing power is needed to handle that sort of resolution? All I currently have is an E7200 overclocked to 3.8ghz and I doubt that a dual core is really capable of feeding enough information to the videocard at what my resolution would be, 5760x1080.
 
inglewood78 said:
It'd be cool if someone can do a review of 1080p monitors in a 3x1 setup (1920 x 1080). The only reason why I say that is those types of monitors are considerably cheaper than 1920x1200 monitors (50% cheaper). Wondering how much of the experience is diminished...
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the view would be much narrower then with 1920x1200.. id say for the best view 1920x1200 is the smallest you want to go..

Stoly said:
Kyle, did you imply that more pixels are pushed in portrait mode than in landscape mode?

I couldn't really understand what you said on the video.
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yes thats what he said..
 
Zorachus said:
Very informative review Kyle :) I like how you walked us through the setup and getting all three displays working correctly, I appreciate that and will refer back to this review, when I am setting up mine in the future. But looks like some driver updates will be needed to fix some minor game menus and little things, but other than that it looks kick ass.

Too bad my Apple 30" Display can't have two 20" 1600x1200res monitors added to either in Portrait mode. I guess Eyefinity only does all Landscape or all Portrait, not mix and match ?

Thanks for the review though :cool:
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I have a feeling we will see Eyefinity mature greatly now that AMD is getting outside feedback on the technology.

I would GUESS that Eyefinity will mature with how it can handle different size surfaces too, but I could be wrong.

Banks said:
Thanks for the review...guess there's still a chance the powered Dell/Bizlink DP to DVI adapter won't work either?
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AMD / ATI is working right now to get AMD CERTIFIED active dongles for triple DVI display usage. I bet this gets fixed before December. AMD knows this is a big deal.

GuruX said:
Is this for the 5870 or the 5770? There are numerous locations in the article where you state "5770" (and I'm not talking about where you misspoke in the video).

Also, the second link in the article is the same as the first. Rather than linking to the 5870 review as it states, it links back to the original Eyefinity preview as well.
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Thanks, those things are fixed. Been some things going on here making me lose focus. Sorry I had my head up my ass.

3DChipset said:
I'm curious, how does "applications" fair off with the use of 3 monitors? Will applications spread across the entire 3 screens? Or will you be able to choose where applications launch into? Something like UltraMon gave the ability to launch applications into seperate monitors...

Since the Eyefinity sets up the entire display as one will you have to be going in and out of the display properties to constantly change it going from application to games?
Click to expand...

Applications work like they always have with extended monitors in Windows from my experience. CCC has an app that will monitor last used window size and position.

lloose said:
Im not really impressed right now, but its too soon for me to pass judgment. The fisheye effect is really turning me off but I know its not AMD's fault. Its trying to make a back library compatible with new technology. I want to see where this goes in about 6 months when companies have had time to play around with it. Once I see some game that are programmed to take advantage of it (instead of trying to jerry rig old games to work with it), then I will give my thumbs up or down.
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Its awesomeness will be too much for some folks. ;)

Enduring_Warrior said:
Kyle neexz to get some more Sleep.

Love the new review format with the Vid right at the beggining.

Thx.
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Yeah, I had to shoot this entire video review twice. Going through it the second time was a real ass kicker. :( I could have and should have been better, but I had to rent a third camera to shoot this with and it had to be back today. So there were some things editing and reshooting were not going to get done. This is the biggest video review production I have done and it was getting pretty effin complicated.

Stoly said:
Kyle, did you imply that more pixels are pushed in portrait mode than in landscape mode?

I couldn't really understand what you said on the video.
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Not, sure what I said, but no. I think I was talking about not having the native resolution set properly at first. Same screens, same amount of pixels. :)
 
Great review Kyle. I just thought I'd point out that when three screen setups are more mainstream, the software developers will likely fix some of the issues you mentioned.

I am a race sim guy. iRacing is my flavor of choice.

Many iRacing users have three screens via TH2go, myself included. iRacing has several configuration options for 3 screen users. It will render to the three screens separately. It's menu asks you for the screen width with bezel, the screen width without the bezel, and the angle of the screens relative to one another, and also the distance from your face to the center screen. Once you give it this info, the bezel issues are corrected, and that fisheye effect is gone. It works extremely well.

I imagine other developers may follow the same route. At least I hope they do.
 
Sojuuk said:
what sort of processing power is needed to handle that sort of resolution? All I currently have is an E7200 overclocked to 3.8ghz and I doubt that a dual core is really capable of feeding enough information to the videocard at what my resolution would be, 5760x1080.
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The easy answer is very, not a problem for most of today's games. Very much more GPU limited than anything else.

sirmonkey1985 said:
the view would be much narrower then with 1920x1200.. id say for the best view 1920x1200 is the smallest you want to go..
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I would agree on the size ratio of the monitors.
 
Bodido said:
I imagine other developers may follow the same route. At least I hope they do.
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I will suggest this will absolutely positively will happen. Game devs that are not rushing to support this are ignorant or simply paid off NVIDIA marketing companies....and there will be a couple.
 
and this is why you're [H]ard ;) I have been looking for a review for the past few days to show anything about the portrait mode with triple displays and I knew that at some point you'd tickle my fancy, but this video review covered everything and more. Kyle you never disappoint the tech community. thanks again.
 
lloose said:
Im not really impressed right now, but its too soon for me to pass judgment. The fisheye effect is really turning me off but I know its not AMD's fault. Its trying to make a back library compatible with new technology. I want to see where this goes in about 6 months when companies have had time to play around with it. Once I see some game that are programmed to take advantage of it (instead of trying to jerry rig old games to work with it), then I will give my thumbs up or down.
Click to expand...

I think it's a field of view/aspect ratio problem. Near the beginning for instance he set it to 16:9 aspect ratio for a 5760x1200 resolution. Obviously that's nowhere near correct (it's more like 24:5 aspect ratio). Not saying it's Kyle - the game simply isn't capable of automatically realizing what field of view or aspect ratio it's at when dealing with such extreme wide screen resolutions.

I hear some games already are capable of simply showing you MORE on the side screens, rather than stretching the picture on the side screens. WoW in particular I hear works without the fish eye effect, I'd bet EQ2 and various other MMOs do too (the MMO genre seems to handle gaming in windows, and other odd window sizes better than most genres) RTS games should probably work without the fish eye look right off the bat too.

I'd bet over time people will find ways to modify older games, and it'll become public knowledge.

Kyle could open up the Half Life 2 console, type "sv_cheats 1" and then "fov XX" with XX being a number (try 90 and go up from there) to try to see if it helps at all with the fish eye effect.
 
hey kyle did you try manually editing the hl2 video config files to make the tall 3x1 work?
 
Ualdayan said:
Kyle could open up the Half Life 2 console, type "sv_cheats 1" and then "fov XX" with XX being a number (try 90 and go up from there) to try to see if it helps at all with the fish eye effect.
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Sojuuk said:
hey kyle did you try manually editing the hl2 video config files to make the tall 3x1 work?
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No I did not do this with HL2. I did go in an use this with Quake 4 and it worked fine for 3x1 Landscape however. On the portrait stuff, I will just running out of time. (I have to go out of town tomorrow and I wanted to have this published today so I could get your questions answered and nursemaid all the corrections I would need to make.) I had to fully reshoot this on Sunday. (The camera I bought to replace my two fulltime cams that were not in working order, looked HORRIBLE in edit, so I rented and highend HDV cam to reshoot with.)
 
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