AMD Multi-Display Tech Has Problems, Potential

EconolineCrush writes "While AMD's Eyefinity multi-display gaming tech is undeniably impressive at first glance, digging deeper reveals key limitations. Some games work well, others not at all, and many are simply better suited to specific screen configurations. A three-way setup looks to be ideal from a compatibility perspective, and given current LCD prices, it's really not all that expensive. But would you take that over a single high-resolution display or a giant HDTV?"

Missing from the summary...

[GameMaster]

What's not mentioned in the summary is that, if the game properly supports it, the screens on the right and left of your setup get tilted inwards a little and your field of view is increased by 3X (assuming a 3 display setup). This means that you get all the view you would normally get on the central screen and a massive amount of the peripheral vision that we all enjoy in real life by never get in gaming. Is there a gap from the screen bezels? Sure, but you barely notice it because you don't focus on the left and right wings. You just focus on the central display and use the other two to detect motion you wouldn't have otherwise seen (such as the enemy approaching you from your left).

As an Eyefinity card owner...

[PacketShaper]

Let me be the first to say it is absolutely worth it.

Having 3 x 22" 1680x1050 Dell monitors side by side playing Hawx or WoW or any other game is absolutely stunning.
The Catalyst interface is a bit quirky (profiles do not remember relative screen position so you have to specify each time you change profiles) but once you have it setup and get into a game, choose your insane 5040 x 1050 resolution, you will be blown away.

Bezel gap is not as much of a problem as you might think. Your brain kinda just adjusts and ignores the gap.

When will we get actual high-res displays instead?

[otuz]

An actual high res monitor would be better than any of these supposedly "HD" screens kludged together using expensive GPU's.

I do have a 22.2" 3840x2400 IPS display (ViewSonic VP2290b), it's from 2003. It's driven by two DVI ports of a regular GeForce 8800GT in my Mac Pro. Additionally, I have two low-res (1920x1200) 24" screens connected to another GPU for video and games.

IBM sold their monitor factory to Sony around the same time they sold their ThinkPad business to Lenovo in 2005.

Since then, the meaning of "HD" has been just 1920x1080, just 22.5% of the resolution these 3840x2400 displays have.

Here's a wikipedia article about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors [wikipedia.org]

Re:Of course, that assumes the setup changes that

[Kvasio]

a 1995 Doom 1 edition supported multiple monitors (attached to multiple workstations). If one could use 3 PCs for a single player, if worked nicely and gave advantage of sideviews.

Didn't RTFA but - requires support from games

[frist]

Here's the thing that all these multimonitor solutions (including matrox's triple head to go, etc.) Most games are written with one eyepoint. For dual head or triple head to work properly, you have to have multiple eyepoints. Each monitor is like a window into the virtual world. If you're wanting to get a straight ahead view and two side views, say at 45 degrees, you need 3 eyepoints, one looking straight ahead, one looking 45 deg to the left, one 45 deg to the right. Games don't do that. They think they're rendering to 1 display, one eyepoint. Then these multi-display solutions take that one image and spread it accross multiple monitors. That's why it never looks right. People have found good uses for the extra monitor space, say in a flight sim dragging your instrument panels to the other monitors, or in WoW using a viewport mod and putting all your addons on the other monitors, etc. It's nice that there are now 3 and 6 channel cards from ATI. Just need games to support them properly. But until games support multiple eyepoints it won't be working like what we want. Supreme Commander 1 does support 2 independent eyepoints in 2 monitor full screen mode, but it's an RTS.