ATI's Eyefinity Technology Put to Proper Test

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

In our news section a few weeks ago, we talked about ATI's new Eyefinity technology, one that would allow you to play most of your games across multiple monitors with relative ease. This kind of thing has been done before, but the difference here is that it seems to work well with more games than other technologies, and the best part? The price tag is far lower. All you need is an ATI Radeon HD 5000-series card.

I admit that at first, I wasn't that impressed. I even saw a demo in person last week, and even then, it didn't seem like something I could picture myself using. For me personally, the monitor bezels are a huge reason for that... I just can't stand having my gameplay split up to multi-monitors. After checking out a fully-detailed video review of the product at HardOCP though, I have to say... I think I changed my mind.

It's one thing to see one game being run on Eyefinity, but it's another to see many different games being put through the ringer, such as Counter-Strike: Source, Need for Speed: Shift, Crysis Warhead, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Call of Duty: World at War, and more. There's a lot of gameplay shown during the video, and it's become clear to me that after a while, your mind is just going to play tricks on you, and the bezels will disappear. It really does look like it could make gaming a lot more fun.

There are some caveats, primarily with the display adapters you must use. A DisplayPort or DVI to Mini DisplayPort adapter isn't exactly inexpensive, although ATI is apparently testing out different adapters in their labs to see if they can't certify some more affordable ones. After all, if you have 3x 24" or better monitors, who wants to spend another $100 or so on a cable or cables? Still, despite the cost-of-entry, this is very cool technology.

We have been holding off to hopefully give a more robust look at what Eyefinity might do for you in a gaming scenario. There are still some unanswered questions as to Eyefinity compatibility, but certainly AMD is aware of your questions and is working hard to get those answered. I felt as though I wanted to cover Eyefinity in a video format, and we have published that video below. We hope you enjoy it and it gets you a bit more acquainted with what Eyefinity might actually do for your gaming experience.

Source: HardOCP​

 

[gibbersome]

I was sold on the Eyefinity the moment they announced it. It will quickly become a part of any enthusiast gamer's setup, providing levels of immersiveness not feasible before. Not to mention the obvious gameplay advantages of having such a setup.

My only concern is that the video card itself won't be able to handle some of the games in a high resolution 3x1 setup. The 5870 seemed to be able to handle most games very well, but would this still be true of the games released over the next couple of years. Also, would it even be worth having the Eyefinity for the lower tier 5600 and below cards?

Either way, thanks to HardOCP we have a very good look at where the technology is at the moment. Even with minor issues with bezel correction and vertical LCD setup are fixed, I am very tempted to stick with ATI if Nvidia doesn't come up with something similar for their GTX300 series cards.

 

[Doomsday]

this is cool though! playing a game on 3 screens would be quite awesome and like u said, the bezels will disappear and u would not even notice em!

soo.........erm........Nvidia be sleepin' aye!? or they r laying dormant before they do summat big!?

 

[Kougar]

Games as of late just haven't kept pace with GPU hardware... a single original GTX 260 will play almost any game at full detail and AA at 1920x1200, yet both the 5870 and 5850 easily outperform the GTX 285.

It's always possible in two years some games might launch that would need extra horsepower, but by then the 5870 and 5850 would be outdated cards and it would be easy to buy one cheaply for Crossfire. But I really don't see a 5870 having trouble for now.

What surprised me was that pretty much all of Dell's better quality monitors already have Displayport hookups, including two 22" and 24" models on up. Better question might be why do they have five 24" displays now...