AMD's ATI Radeon Eyefinity Performance Review @ [H]

heatlesssun said:
Thanks for the review! Would a 5870 be bottlenecked with 5760x1200 Eyefinity on a stock clocked QX9650 with 4GB DDR2 of ram? I don't won't to rip out my 3 280s in my main rig because that's still a fast GPU subsystem and it works well and a single 5870 is a step back in overall single monitor performance.
Click to expand...

I have a pretty similar system except 8GB of RAM, so you should be fine for the most part. I'm able to run Borderlands and Dragon Age maxed out at 30+ fps. Occasionally in Borderlands in complex environments, the fps would drop to the 20s, but it's still playable. L4D2 can run flat out everything maxed, but you already know that from the review.
 
Last edited:
I am kind of an "x pc gamer". I still have my gaming PC, but it is 3 years old now. I no longer look forward to getting PC upgrades. Heck, it is an AGP based box!

Let's see...now instead of a single LCD monitor, I need 3!!! Looking at newegg, a 5970 video card is going for 650!!!

Used to be where you could build your own high end PC and beat the pants off of anything that had a brand name. That is no longer true. Laptops seem to be selling for less than the enthusiast CPU is going for these days. Ouch.

Well, I still game, some on my 360, and some still on my 3 year old system. The money I no longer use on continuous PC updates I use instead on two different hobbies: paintball and guitar/music equipment and maybe some mods for my car. To upgrade now I have to basically start from scratch (except my monitor and kbd/mouse, I think).

I just don't see myself spending this kind of dough on a PC anymore. Just too many changes, too quickly, and for too much money to end up feeling like you got left behind in about 6 months...

But, I have to add a "hats off" to you guys out there that are driving PC gaming to new heights. It takes dedication, lots of $$ you are willing to spend on your hobby, and the hope that good games come out often that you can enjoy. I had a blast having gaming as a main hobby for quite a few years and I can't fault anyone else for wanting to carry the torch. Maybe I'll see a friend sometime with an up to date rig that will get me thinking again.
 
Last edited:
I was nearly about to spend buku bucks on three S-IPS 24" monitors, three 5870's for tri-fire, giant PSU and a socket 1366 subsystem...That was until I read about many games still not working properly with CF and Eyefinity enabled at the same time. A lot of games were only running on one GPU, despite CF being active, when eyefinity was going at the same time :( Not surprising, since AMD has only had 2 or 3 driver releases since they launched 5870 and eyefinity. Things still need to mature before i invest.

Though I'm very anxious to jump on the EF bandwagon, I think I'll watch from the sideline and wait for greater EF and CF compatibility. After all, what's the point of running such a high resolution if you can't go dual/tripple card to keep your FPS respectable? (above 60fps). 40fps will barely cut it for offline gaming, IMO.

A side benefit will be the inevitable price drops that will occur as I wait. I'm also curious to see what more 120hz LCD monitors showing up on the market will do.
 
Last edited:
thenewrick said:
To me.. It seems like hardocp is in ATI's pocket. Eyefinity is not impressive, not interesting, and not the future of electronic gaming, but the author sure says it is. I don't think the site is totally corrupt, but the eyefinity fanboism is pretty meh. I'd like to see more focus on other areas of technology.
Click to expand...

Eyefinity is cool and for gaming and PC hardware enthusiasts can you name something out now that's cooler? Didn't think so.

As for it being the future of gaming, time will tell. What's really going to be interesting is if Fermi will have this type of support. Even nVidia's CEO said it himself, pure performance gains will not be enough.

If Fermi doesn't support multi-monitor gaming, I will be buying 3 of whatever is AMD top of the line single GPU part some the spring refresh. And a set of three 24" monitors.
 
just from the pictures of the [h]forum users pix and many pix from the web :) i wasn't sure if u needed just 1 or multiple SLIs to pull that off.

kllrnohj said:
Where did you get 16 displays from? Eyefinity currently works with *3* displays, with *6* being planed (special 6 port card will be coming).
Click to expand...
 
As it stand now guys, ATI plans to rollout 6 dp port cards... and in conjunction later down the road you will be able to run crossfire while running the ports off the other cards. If you have 4 5870's with 6 dp ports each, it will allow you to run a total of 24 monitors at once, but this is only with the advancement of future drivers, a video card with 6 ports each, and the money.
 
SnapperDragon said:
I am kind of an "x pc gamer". I still have my gaming PC, but it is 3 years old now.
Let's see...now instead of a single LCD monitor, I need 3!!! Looking at newegg, a 5970 video card is going for 650!!!
Click to expand...

Quoting you as the fabled "potential convert".

Eyefinity is the high-end, money-not-an-obstacle solution. More likely, the people who will adopt this are already PC gamers. Rabid ones, like H readers. Ones who dont mind dropping money to take their hobby to the next level. But I doubt it will attract any console gamers back; after the initial 'awe' factor comes the sticker shock and the realization they have to jump back on the PC upgrade rollercoaster. Its a huge expense to jump into PC gaming right at the Eyefinity level. AMD/ATI knows their target audience, and its us, the early adopter crowd.


SnapperDragon said:
Used to be where you could build your own high end PC and beat the pants off of anything that had a brand name. That is no longer true.
Click to expand...

What? Sure it is, and it never changed. Look at the crazy sigs of damn near anyone on this site. Not exactly Dell-issued computers :p

Personally I still want to see Eyefinity in action, dont know anyone in Miami with it yet. ATI needs to go on a roadtrip or set up demos at Best Buy or something. Barring some crazy Eyefinity conversion, in the next few months my display purchase will probably be a 120hz monitor. I'm in the target audience of people willing to throw cash at an awesome PC gaming experience, but I gotta test drive it first, and I already know how good 120hz is.
 
Last edited:
I'm historically a bang for buck gamer, but I also have been wanting to move from two LCD's to three for all the multitasking I do in windows. I'm also considering upgrading my video card for gaming. Those two non-eyefinity related things put you almost at the doorstep to eyefinity without realizing it. From there it's just a matter of do I get the third LCD with DP or do I just buy a DP adapter? It's that simple. Many gamers already own two monitors these days. And as has been stated, dropping the quality doesn't make eyefinity pointless. You still are going to get an amazing experience. I'm going to pickup a 5770 because all the stuff I play is older or fast paced so I don't care about high end visuals. If I decide it's not enough I'll just rotate it to another home machine that's using onboard video and bump myself up. I think you CAN do it without breaking the bank, it just depends on your personal expectations.
 
thenewrick said:
To me.. It seems like hardocp is in ATI's pocket. Eyefinity is not impressive, not interesting, and not the future of electronic gaming, but the author sure says it is. I don't think the site is totally corrupt, but the eyefinity fanboism is pretty meh. I'd like to see more focus on other areas of technology.
Click to expand...


lol in ATI's pocket? hardocp was hardcore pro nvidia for a long time as ATI lagged behind until they finally beat Nvidia to the punch.. what else can you expect from Hardocp.. nvidia refuses to shed any light on their new cards which leaves hardocp to review and talk about the only new generation of cards out.. which happens to be ATI.. if nvidia came out with the GT300 before the HD5k series then it would probably be the other way around..

"common sense"
 
hardocp is in PC gaming's pocket, its always been 'may the best solution win' ;)
 
Awesome review! Enjoyed every piece of it. Nice to see how much of a difference the 5870 will make at that type of resolution.
 
The "To me" part lets you know it's an opinion. It's a casual hardocp user opinion. Just seems to me like this site has gone nuts over a technology that is very unimpressive to me as a hardcore enthusiast gamer. That being said I'm more into the score than how pretty the screen looked when I won. I just think the bezels are messy, the 3 monitor system is not perfectly round.. There's just too many obvious, are you kidding me, flaws that make this stuff not impressive. I remember seeing technology like this in 80's movies. I'm just a very moderate person I guess, brings steam from both sides.
 
As cool as it is, I just don't see something like this getting huge adoption due to the physical real estate required and the cost of some good quality screens (unless they come way down).

I could never hope to do a 3 screen setup where I am, even 2 screens would be near impossible.

Might be interesting to set up a poll to see how many of us could actually set up 3 or more screens on their current desk.
 
Thanks for the article.

My question is in regards to why it is always 3 monitors? Are (2) 24" monitors not an ideal setup? I personally will never have desktop realestate for anything but (2) 24" monitors stacked in landscape mode. Is 1920 x 2400 a viable EF resolution?

One other thought is I could buy two projectors and put the images side by side. I am sure this would be awesome if it was calibrated right, and the projectors had high enough resolutions.
 
parasitoid said:
Thanks for the article.

My question is in regards to why it is always 3 monitors? Are (2) 24" monitors not an ideal setup? I personally will never have desktop realestate for anything but (2) 24" monitors stacked in landscape mode. Is 1920 x 2400 a viable EF resolution?

One other thought is I could buy two projectors and put the images side by side. I am sure this would be awesome if it was calibrated right, and the projectors had high enough resolutions.
Click to expand...

You could do two monitors, but then the crosshair of any shooter games would be right where the bezel is in the center.

I don't have the desk space for 3x24" in landscape mode either, that's why I have them in portrait mode.
 
Only way display technology can impress me now is if it's a giant rounded screen, 3d without glasses, paper thin, uses no energy, and costs little. 3 ugly, bezeled monitors, side by side, that slow game performance, is just not impressive. On a sidenote I think sli and xfire slowed technological advancement in graphics processing because it focused on the niche of power, and not features, mostly to suit giant-screen fps enthusiasts that love spending money.
 
I think you'd need 2 projectors for Eyefinity to be enjoyable if only going to use 2.
Otherwise, your character would be split by the bezels.
 
parasitoid said:
Thanks for the article.

My question is in regards to why it is always 3 monitors? Are (2) 24" monitors not an ideal setup? I personally will never have desktop realestate for anything but (2) 24" monitors stacked in landscape mode. Is 1920 x 2400 a viable EF resolution?

One other thought is I could buy two projectors and put the images side by side. I am sure this would be awesome if it was calibrated right, and the projectors had high enough resolutions.
Click to expand...

Before I bought my third monitor, I tried just what you suggest.
Unfortunately, the action was in the middle and that was somewhat obscured by the bezels.
In short, it was a pain in the ass and really took away from the game.....as you can well imagine.

Now.........if AMD comes up with some "bezel correction" stuff in the drivers, that may help alot.

I used the two in landscape, side by side; by the way.
 
Good revview [H] but i darn you to do better as there are other games that are better then what you picked to reveiw..HawX has support and COD 4/5/6 can be used with Eyefinity with widescreen fixer that fixs the field of view issue (FOV) and it's free to used..
http://imk.cx/pc/widescreenfixer/

Also most of the LCD's out now are 16 x 9 =5760 x 1080 which may give alittle better results in some of the benchs and the HD5850 has way more to offer then stock setting as the CCC allows 775Mhz core/1125Mhz ram but there are also work arounds to bring the card even higher to HD5870 clocks and higher so it not like the bottom of the bucket..

Also platforms like Intel 775 socket can even push Eyefinity at 5760 x 1080 as i use a overclocked e5200 at 3.9Ghz with my HD5850 so the cost of Eyefinity is really not that bad if one can reuse there old platform and does not hang onto there old DX 10 card until there is no resale value as the card and 3 new 21.5" LCD's (1920x1080) and the DP/VGA connector cost me about $480 for the package after selling my old card.
 
Last edited:
thenewrick said:
To me.. It seems like hardocp is in ATI's pocket. Eyefinity is not impressive, not interesting, and not the future of electronic gaming, but the author sure says it is. I don't think the site is totally corrupt, but the eyefinity fanboism is pretty meh. I'd like to see more focus on other areas of technology.
Click to expand...

Not interesting???? What the fuck are you smoking??? Jesus.....:eek:
This recent addition to gaming is the most serious advance I can think of since SLi was adopted as a meaningful choice for high resolutions and AA.

[H]ard|OCP has been up ATIs ass for the longest time..........where have you been. Ain't no fanboys here, just the [H]ard facts......try reading once in a while.

More focus on other technology???? Are the articles and reviews of Intel's latest CPU, Patriot's Media Box, three or four Motherboard releases, DX11 advances,new PowerSupplies, and Heatsinks not enough for you????
Not to mention a forum full of whatever trips your fancy????

Damn, what else do you want???
 
Brent_Justice said:
Correct, I do not own any console systems in my home. I don't even have my Super Nintendo anymore :p I'm a PC gamer, I've tried playing games on Xbox 360, I hate the controls, give me my keyboard and mouse.
Click to expand...

Compared to something like an i7 Eyefinity setup a console is less powerful than the box the PC parts came in. Why the hell would you play a game on a POS console (assuming the game runs on the PC) if you have that kind of setup?:confused:

As for the Xbox controller, its GREAT for things like Dirt 2. SF IV is another god controller game. Shooters? Hell frackin' no!:D
 
magoo said:
Before I bought my third monitor, I tried just what you suggest.
Unfortunately, the action was in the middle and that was somewhat obscured by the bezels.
In short, it was a pain in the ass and really took away from the game.....as you can well imagine.

Now.........if AMD comes up with some "bezel correction" stuff in the drivers, that may help alot.

I used the two in landscape, side by side; by the way.
Click to expand...

I think any way you slice it, cutting your FOV right down the middle with any sort of bezel in the way is going to be distracting... I think you're always going to have to go with odd numbered panels for the best experience..

edit: er.. well, odd/even not a good way to reason here.. we might be seeing 6 panel eyefinity very soon.. but not splitting the front view between two or more panels will be best I am sure.
 
Last edited:
Bezels on 3 monitors is just like the front a-pillars on your car. You know they are there but you get used to them. You don't look out the windshield and the side windows all at one time, so it doesn't really matter.

Thanks for the great review. Waiting for something "special" in the way of monitors to come from CES in the next week or so. If nothing comes, I'm selling both of my Viewsonic 22" LCDs and buying 3 with display port. Probably the U2410s. They seem to be the ticket right now. Either that or the P2310s but they are TN panels and I'd rather pay more up front for the investment.
 
^^^^ hell that's the best way to describe the bezels I've ever heard :)


If you haven't played the latest patch of GTA4 on a not criminally shit computer (particularly pre 9.7 Cat drivers), your opinion isn't right about it. Performance has improved a lot, and it's going to get a lot more popular this year now that they'll finally give the best platform for the game both DLC packages. It consumes GPU memory like no other and kicks CPUs in the balls, it's an excellent benchmark - more so than Crysis/Wars.

It's also a f'in excellent game that has been avail on Steam for absolutely f'all many times in the holiday season up til now.
 
thenewrick said:
The "To me" part lets you know it's an opinion. It's a casual hardocp user opinion. Just seems to me like this site has gone nuts over a technology that is very unimpressive to me as a hardcore enthusiast gamer. That being said I'm more into the score than how pretty the screen looked when I won. I just think the bezels are messy, the 3 monitor system is not perfectly round.. There's just too many obvious, are you kidding me, flaws that make this stuff not impressive. I remember seeing technology like this in 80's movies. I'm just a very moderate person I guess, brings steam from both sides.
Click to expand...

For the record, when you wrote:

"Eyefinity is not impressive, not interesting, and not the future of electronic gaming, but the author sure says it is."

It was not prefaced with "To me". The sentence before was.
 
All this eyefinity stuff is important, in the same way Supercars that go over 200 mph are important. they demonstrate the state of the art, the bleeding edge of tech. but for the average user, not so much. Who has room for more than 1 widescreen display on a desk? not me. Still, it is nice to see what the top 1% of computer users are doing, same as I like watching shows with Porsche GT3's and other high end cars...
 
Take a $50 to IKEA, look for MIKAEL, there's your Eyefinity on a budget Desk.

You'll have to figure out a good way to rig speakers with it of course, easier if you're going portrait.
 
Frankly, If you show me an eyefinity setup, I'll say the emperor has no clothes, and not even feel bad about it, open mind. Theres ENOURMOUS black lines through what you view from the bezels, it like really obvious to me I guess. I go nuts when my fps drops even a little, or if I even get minor artifacts and glitch lines on my screen let alone permanent 1 inch black nightmare lines all over my shit. I mean, It's a first step into usable tech, but it's pretty sloppy tech. Setting up 3 portrait-style, bezel-less, 70 inch OLED monitors would be cool tho to showoff to people I guess.
 
motomonkey said:
All this eyefinity stuff is important, in the same way Supercars that go over 200 mph are important. they demonstrate the state of the art, the bleeding edge of tech. but for the average user, not so much. Who has room for more than 1 widescreen display on a desk? not me. Still, it is nice to see what the top 1% of computer users are doing, same as I like watching shows with Porsche GT3's and other high end cars...
Click to expand...

If I removed everything else from my desk I could fit 3 30" monitors on it. Thats the nice thing about corner desks, they provide a lot of room.
 
thenewrick said:
Frankly, If you show me an eyefinity setup, I'll say the emperor has no clothes, and not even feel bad about it, open mind. Theres ENOURMOUS black lines through what you view from the bezels, it like really obvious to me I guess. I go nuts when my fps drops even a little, or if I even get minor artifacts and glitch lines on my screen let alone permanent 1 inch black nightmare lines all over my shit. I mean, It's a first step into usable tech, but it's pretty sloppy tech. Setting up 3 portrait-style, bezel-less, 70 inch OLED monitors would be cool tho to showoff to people I guess.
Click to expand...

3 70" monitors? WTF Dude?

You don't care for Eyefinity, we got the memo, repeating it over and over is just trolling.

I'll have to see what nVidia comes up with next but the idea of 3 monitors for something like Dirt 2 is something I've just got to try before long.
 
thenewrick said:
Frankly, If you show me an eyefinity setup, I'll say the emperor has no clothes, and not even feel bad about it, open mind. Theres ENOURMOUS black lines through what you view from the bezels, it like really obvious to me I guess. I go nuts when my fps drops even a little, or if I even get minor artifacts and glitch lines on my screen let alone permanent 1 inch black nightmare lines all over my shit. I mean, It's a first step into usable tech, but it's pretty sloppy tech. Setting up 3 portrait-style, bezel-less, 70 inch OLED monitors would be cool tho to showoff to people I guess.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you spend more time admiring your games instead of playing them.:p
 
Derangel said:
If I removed everything else from my desk I could fit 3 30" monitors on it. Thats the nice thing about corner desks, they provide a lot of room.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have a corner desk as well for my main rig and I was thinking about 3x 30" but that's just asking to go blind if used on a desk at normal monitor viewing distance, 3 24" just about fill my field of vision so 30" along with the massive performance hit you take isn't worth it now.

But I do have some ergonomic issues I need to work out as I have my laptop to my right and to my left I have all of my gadgets (phone,Zune,camcorder) and I like to be able to reach everything easily. It one reason I don't do three monitors now.
 
Last edited:
shawnoen said:
Bezels on 3 monitors is just like the front a-pillars on your car. You know they are there but you get used to them. You don't look out the windshield and the side windows all at one time, so it doesn't really matter.

Thanks for the great review. Waiting for something "special" in the way of monitors to come from CES in the next week or so. If nothing comes, I'm selling both of my Viewsonic 22" LCDs and buying 3 with display port. Probably the U2410s. They seem to be the ticket right now. Either that or the P2310s but they are TN panels and I'd rather pay more up front for the investment.
Click to expand...

Well, the difference is that with an Eyefinity setup, you cannot move your viewpoint to effectively see around the obstructions. To stretch your analogy, it would be like driving with your head bolted to the headrest, unable to tilt or shift your angle of view. The pillars are always in the way. Now, it's true that there is no visual data lost; it's simply shifted. However, even if it is not actually blocking any content the incongruous break in your screen space remains.

I suspect that a user with Eyefinity and a TrackIR would be nearly oblivious to bezel spacing, as they could physically move their head to literally see around them. Adding bezel management controls to correct for the gap would further help to render this a non-issue, and is definitely needed. In addition to solving the one major complaint about Eyefinity setups, it would also allow new flexibility in screen placement for creative developers, and would prove useful beyond gaming implementations.
 
thenewrick said:
Frankly, If you show me an eyefinity setup, I'll say the emperor has no clothes, and not even feel bad about it, open mind. Theres ENOURMOUS black lines through what you view from the bezels, it like really obvious to me I guess. I go nuts when my fps drops even a little, or if I even get minor artifacts and glitch lines on my screen let alone permanent 1 inch black nightmare lines all over my shit. I mean, It's a first step into usable tech, but it's pretty sloppy tech. Setting up 3 portrait-style, bezel-less, 70 inch OLED monitors would be cool tho to showoff to people I guess.
Click to expand...

After you use the technology for a short while, the bezels disappear.
They are a non-issue.

What is impressive is what is "out there" in the game that you never see with a single monitor.

It's like having blinders on, and then removing them.

I'm sure in the next year we will see a monitor system that has no bezels and is adapted to the EyeFinity system. But the first step will be software that compensates for the bezel.......that has been done already.
 
If aranged right where the middle lcd sets behind the left and right lcd then the bezels are cut in 1/2 and are no were as big as some eyefinity setup's that display all 3 lcd bezels..

see picture..

2003_01010091-1.jpg
 
MrLonghair said:
Take a $50 to IKEA, look for MIKAEL, there's your Eyefinity on a budget Desk.

You'll have to figure out a good way to rig speakers with it of course, easier if you're going portrait.
Click to expand...

OldPueblo said:
^^^ I own several of those desks, good bang for buck.
Click to expand...

Do you guys know if the SUMMERA keyboard shelf would attach to the MIKAEL? I was looking at the FREDERICK at $100, which has metal frames and seem much better constructed. Oh well, I'm starting to get used to portrait mode all of the time and starting to not want to go landscape anymore :p
 
Nice review, and surprisingly, the first comprehensive benches of Eyefinity out there as far as I know. I agree with your summation: Eyefinity is a game changer and has reinvigorated my PC gaming experience. Also, great point that old games get a whole new life when played across triple screens.

There are, however, a couple of outstanding issues that still need to be resolved:

  1. Crossfire support in Eyefinity is garbage at the moment (works on only 3 of the 14 games I've tried, others it hurts performance). It's just not worth investing in a second card, but at the same time, that exactly what you need to push 5780x1200 or higher.
  2. No bezel management
  3. The majority of people using non-Displayport monitors are stuck using an over-priced adapter that only works some of the time.
  4. Eyefinity, on the whole, still takes a good amount of tweaking to get running on some games, and some games it just doesn't work (nor will it likely ever for some older games)

It's for this reason that I'd suggest those not willing to put some time into searching for the right hardware and a good amount of troubleshooting hold off until things are straightened out. For early adopters who don't mint the effort, it's a good trade-off.
 
The main drawback for me right now is the lack of gpu horsepower needed to run some of the newer DX10 and upcoming DX11 games at 5760x1200 between 30-60fps with max settings, even with relaxed AA settings of 0x/2x/4x. I hate when games dip below 30fps, especially down to 10fps in heavy action. That to me kills immersion, not the bezels which melt away later on. You have the 5970, which is crippled by only having 1 gig texture memory, slower clock speeds on the cores and memory, and that both gpus don't scale well in certain games, especially with Eyefinity. If only ATI would release their 5870 2 gig cards already with working drivers that work in CF and Eyefinity in most of the games, the situation would get better as far as havign higher, more consistent fps in Eyefinity resolution of 5760x1200.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top