Thinking about ditching eyefinity for single 30"..

[jhatfie]

I have been running 3x HP ZR24w's for a while now. I love the monitors and I generally love eyefinity most of the time. However I actually find that most of the time my two extra monitors go unused during desktop use. When gaming, I am not always satisfied with the frame rates because of the high resolution that has to be pushed requiring me to run lower settings sometimes diminishing the visuals and this is with two 5850's in crossfire. Racing games still wow me in landscape eyefinity mode, but most racing games are played on my HTPC, since I like to play them from my couch on my 60" except for when the family is in bed late at night.

Who has switched from eyefinity to a 30"? What are your thoughts? What are the better gaming 30's right now.

 

[lobski2]

To be honest, if you're already at 24" and you game often but you're not satisfied with performance, I would keep eyefinity and upgrade your GPU or something. Ditching the 3x24 setup just because of bad performance is a bad idea. Upgrade those 5850s and keep on gaming on eyefinity.

Of course if you don't game much anymore, that's different.

 

[jhatfie]

I still game a fair amount, but my office is on the bottom floor, next to the garage, while my living room and HTPC setup is on the 2nd floor and bedrooms on the 3rd. I have a 2 year old daughter that I have with me all the time when I am not working so I often cannot escape to the office to play since I need to be in ear shot of her at all times. So often my gaming PC only sees use after 10PM and normal hour play with controller friendly games like Fallout: New Vegas, Dirt 2, Assasin's Creed 2, Darksiders, etc get work on my HTPC.

I suppose I could look into getting 6950's when they come out.....

Of course since a 3x24" resolution is around 50% more than a single 30", I should be able to run my current cards without needing to upgrade them at the moment to get the performance I'd like.

 

[cactus]

Also try portrait mode for regular desktop use. I have the same screen setup if they were in landscape I would never use more than 1. I agree with lobski that it would be a good idea to upgrade your GFX cards before you move away from eyefinity. As you said you already have a large screen to game on, your tv, and the 30" is going to tax your system a lot anyway.

 

[WorldExclusive]

I had three U2211H and after a month, it all looked excessive to have for gaming. I just got a U2711 and my experience is better.
It could have been the size of the U2211s, but I had a 3007 and now a U2711 and they both gave me a better overall experience than Eyefinity.
Some games have to be played in portrait Eyefinity which brings the bezels even closer together.

3 vs 1. It comes down to personal preference but I won't go back to a three monitor setup anytime soon. I need a few months to think about three U2711s.