ATI's Eyefinity: 18 Games Benched on 3 and 6 Displays

[Rob Williams]

When AMD launched its ATI Eyefinity technology, it helped redefine high-end gaming, and effectively made 2560x1600 look like child's play. In this article, we put the technology to a good test across 18 different games and on both 3x1 (5760x1080) and 3x2 (5760x2160) display configurations to see just how worthy Eyefinity is.

You can read our in-depth look at ATI's Eyefinity here and discuss it here!

 

[Doomsday]

now That is one BIG review! lol! very nice read!

a proper eyefinity setup might cost around $2000 aye? with 3 30" display i.e?

I loled at the con: Once you use Eyefinity, you learn to hate going without it.

ps: is tiberium twilight any fun to play? the change in RTS type gameplay looked awful!

 

[looisboo]

Nice review, 75 hours is alot of gaming

 

[Rob Williams]

a proper eyefinity setup might cost around $2000 aye? with 3 30" display i.e?

Well, it depends. If you went with Dell's 3008WFP displays, that would set you back about $4,000 for the three. One thing I didn't mention in the article due to space (it was getting long) is that another option is to stick with 27"/28" displays. You won't likely see the 2560x1600 resolution, but with those displays you could still see at least 5760x1080... the same as our 3x1 22". The difference is that the picture would be much larger, and again more immersive. Not to mention, this route is far more affordable.

Personally, I didn't care too much for the Dell P2210H displays we were sent, because each one of them had the same issue... backlight bleeding. This occurred not in the middle or corners were is typical, but at the top and bottom of each display. Needless to say, when you're running a 3x2 configuration, such blacklight bleeding is very noticeable, especially when playing a game with many dark scenes.

I find that strange, too, given that "P" is for professional, and at $240+, these displays are not cheap. By comparison, a 24" Samsung or ASUS can be had for around $200, so I'm not quite sure where the premium for the Dell is justified. Perhaps it's just for the design, and the fact that it includes DisplayPort, I don't know.

As for C&C 4, I am unfortunately not one to really say since I don't much care for RTS titles, but it didn't quite enthuse me too much. I didn't get too far into the game though, since I really had no drive or reason to.

Nice review, 75 hours is alot of gaming

Yes it is, haha. But to be fair, it took me two months to get that much gametime in. Rather than just rush the article out the door, I decided it'd be better to produce one that had real experience behind it. It's difficult to find all the bugs that could exist if you rush through something like this.

 

[Hydralisk_X]

I currently have 5870 xfire in 5760x1080 (3x 23") eyefinity.

A couple of notes on some games:

- Fear 2: Are you sure the game is fully updated? It was patched to make the game non anamorphic so it works with non 16:9 aspect ratios. Fear 2 runs fine for me at 5760x1080, it is Hor+ for extremely wide resolutions.

- Just Cause 2 runs fine for me in xfire with eyefinity, but I'm using the 10.4 drivers. I actually really want to see the scaling since several benches indicated a sharp scaling degrade as resolution increases, but never touched on eyefinity resolutions. My personal experience has been a mere 20-25% scaling with xfire at 5760x1080.

- Need for Speed Shift also runs fine for me in xfire eyefinity. The scaling from my own experience is pretty good (similar to dirt 2), not sure what the problems were for you.

 

[Rob Williams]

Welcome to the forums Hydralisk_X, and thanks for the post!

Conveniently, 100% of the games we've been testing with have been available through Steam, so all should be as up-to-date as possible. Unfortunately, I am 95% certain that all of the CrossFireX issues we ran into were a driver issue, and the reason you don't experience the same is because you're not (I'm guessing) using an Eyefinity 6 model. Despite the fact that both are Radeon HD 5870's, there's something about the Eyefinity 6 edition that needs additional driver tweaking, based on what AMD has told me.

I should have given an explanation as to the reason I chose to test with 10.3b over 10.4, so I'll do so here. The sad fact is, I benchmarked 75% of the total suite with 10.4, but as I began to wade through CrossFireX testing, there were undeniable problems. Some titles had bad texture tearing, so I knew something was wrong. At first I thought it might have a hardware issue, but after contacting AMD, I was told that I should have been using 10.3b.

After I rolled back to that driver, I understood the reason for that. I no longer had texture tearing, but performance in certain titles still had issues. So it's as though the 10.4 driver fixes some of what's not found in 10.3b, but on the other end of the stick, 10.4 doesn't properly support the Eyefinity 6 edition, due to the fact that the fixes and tweaks didn't pass QA in time for the release.

Since the 10.4 drivers have been out for almost a month, I'm hoping that 10.5 will be out soon so I can test things out there. Computex is going to prevent me from getting the testing done in a swift manner, but soon after I return home, I'll re-test certain things like CrossFireX and see if the issues have been resolved.

 

[Misha]

GTA 4 is my favourite game with eyefinity
I will never play again with one monitor setup
Also FSX, just suffer from really slow frame rate...
But that is partly because my Athlon X4 instead of i7 9xx....
I still don't read whole review, just charts and few lines, but i will when i found some time...
Thanks Rob, another great review!

 

[stangflyer]

quick info on eyefinity!

I just registered on techgage after reading this article. I have had my eyefinity setup for 6 months now. I have a 5970 ati gpu and a I7 920 at 4.0. Anybody looking for info on eyefinity should go to the wsgf. (widescreen gaming forum) It has the best info and help on multi mon gaming on the net. Some quick notes on the article. On Fear 2 go to advanced options in graphics and turn OFF the widescreen setting. Your eyefinity should work perfectly now. Took me awile to figure this out. As far as the call of duty games there is a utilty called widescreen fixer that will correct the call of duty games. The games that I have that do work in triple screen are. Both crysis games, rainbow six las vegas 1/2, dead space, fear 1/2, Both GRAW games. Half life 2, Bf bad company 2, borderlands, dirt 2, far cry 1 and 2, left for dead 1/2, serious sam hd. I even have il2 1946 working which is a flight sim from 2003 or some year like that. Flight sims like Hawx etc are great with triple screen.
What I do recommend to everyone is to have there center screen on a 3x1 to be a native display port monitor. Dell makes some very affordable dp monitors. If you need a cable go to monoprice. My 5970 has the mini dp port so I needed a cable. There has been some issues with the passive and active adapters. Mine has been perfect for 4 months since getting a dell native dp monitor. Link to wsgf.
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=64
Once you play triple screen you will never go back to single. Also after 2 weeks you forget the bezels are there also. Have fun!
This is my first visit to this website. Nice design! Saved as a favorite. Gotta go to work now.

 

[Rob Williams]

Misha: How on earth did you get GTA IV to run well with Eyefinity? Even on an HD 5870 and minimum detail levels, the game lagged horribly for me. Perhaps it was an issue with the driver I was using, I'm not sure.

stangflyer: Welcome to the forums, and thanks for the nice comments and commentary

The WGS forums are indeed quite good, I agree. As for MW2 and FEAR 2, I will try both of those things soon. I had tried the MW2 fix a while ago, but it didn't work for me for some reason, so I'll have to give it another shot.

Once you play triple screen you will never go back to single.

You couldn't be more right there, it's nuts. It's hard to explain this to someone, too, haha. It's only when you play with 3x1 for a little while that you really begin to appreciate it a lot, even if you don't realize it at first.

 

[lga45]

I already have a 5870 - standard edition with 4 output ports. One thing I've been unable to find out: is it possible to run eyefinity with 2 displays, or does it have to be either 3 or 6? I wanted to get my feet wet slowly! I already have one 24" dell, and I could easily add another identical model to make a 3840x1200 display group. That's the plan anyway. The article makes me want to try it out for myself now, since I have everything I need except a second monitor. Does the second monitor need to be on a display port, or can I use the 2 DVI connectors on my card to power the 2 monitors?

 

[Rob Williams]

AMD supports numerous monitor configurations, including 2x1, but for gaming, that's not desirable. I can't think of a single game that would benefit from two monitors, as in FPS, your crosshair would be in the middle of the bezel, for racing games you would have a bezel straight in your way of seeing, and so forth. I could see RTS being the only potential genre to see a benefit, but that would be if the game was designed to support to, otherwise you'd run into the same issue as above.

3x1 is preferred because that way you have a monitor in the center and nothing is going to block your gameplay, which is obviously very important.

You can use two DVI ports for 2x1, and two DVI + DP for 3x1

Welcome to the forums!

 

[elior77]

hi Rob !

I loved your review, great work (a lot of work )
It is almost the only real review for ef+cf on the web - that I could find.

I use a 5970 with 3x1 setup (1680x1050x3) with 10.5 driver and profiles. (i5 750 @ 4.2)

I have a few feedbacks:

- JC2 will not run ef+cf but will run no ef +cf.
- The graph for jc2 and the table does not hold the same numbers...
- GTA4 will run ok(20-40fps~) all @ max, if I take down the texture quality the game runs better.
- vsync probs all over... jc2, gta4 any idea ?

All I want is jc2 ef+cf

 

[stangflyer]

good site to show eyefinity

http://sites.amd.com/us/underground/products/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-experience.aspx

This a great link to send people of to show people what eyefinity looks like!