Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 — Gaming On Six Panels 111
MojoKid writes "AMD's 6-output Radeon has been seen in action at a number of events, but today the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is being officially launched. HotHardware paired the card up with six 22" Dell LCD panels in a 3x2 configuration — with a max resolution of 5760x2160 — and ran it through a number of popular titles including Dirt 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Crysis. For specialized, high-end graphics cards like this, the market potential may be relatively small. If, however, the idea of multi-monitor gaming is appealing to you and you've got the means to score one of these cards (along with multiple displays), you won't be disappointed."
Reader Vigile adds a different analysis of the card's six-monitor gaming: "PC Perspective found FPS games were basically unplayable because of the bezel through the middle of their vision while RTS and racing games like StarCraft 2 and DiRT 2 were spectacular."
6x 22"? What about one large TV? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV? (Score:3, Interesting)
This sort of setup is very much a niche market for gaming, but pretty useful for commercial flight simulators or display walls.
Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why didn't they make it an odd number so that you could have a center screen without having two monitor edges dead center?
Re:Obligatory question... (Score:3, Interesting)
Having 6 heads out of a single PCIe 16x slot? Probably so.
Frankly, I'm not the gamer that I used to be, so I don't really care about the driver features that allow you to force multi-monitor functions on games that are ordinarily single monitor. I'm interested in the fact that 6-headed graphics cards are now within the realm of gamer enthusiasts(ie. ~$500, stocked by normal retailers, drivers downloadable without support agreements, and so forth) rather than super-pricey financial workstation integrators and custom display wall types. I can only assume that Matrox has been praying fervently for the demise of the entire ATI driver team in a messy accident; because it is only ATI's somewhat uneven reputation in regards to software that is keeping them relevant now that this thing is in the wild.
Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had this done with 3 monitors for a couple of months now. Its actually pretty easy to do and I got the bezel down to about 1/8th of an inch which is barely noticeable at all. They were Lenovo 22" monitors to begin with and only had a little more than 1/2" of bezel between two monitors regardless. Sadly I actually LIKED the bezel for separating things I was working on multiple desktops with, I noticed this after the mod was done of course.
YMMV.
Re:6x 22"? What about one large TV? (Score:3, Interesting)
I also like this... "racing in Dirt 2 on a 3x2 Eyefinity configuration is a totally different experience than playing on a single, smaller screen" - Indeed, but I also think that probably, "racing in Dirt 2 on a 3x2 Eyefinity configuration is just like playing on a single, similar sized screen, except with annoying frames"
Surely a projector would be just as good/better?
One area that I think this kind of setup would be very great is where the 'peripheral' screens were displaying 'peripheral' view-ports so that when you look to the side, you have a 'to the side' camera angle rather than just the widened forward view. For a racing game say, then you could glance to the side for your mirrors and for people coming up beside you (but not level yet) - just like real driving!
I really thought this was what EyeFiniti would be when I first heard of it but was quite disappointed that it was just an expanded screen. I guess it may even be possible to do it without specialist game support, assuming that the 3d world is pretty much rendered fully on-card. If the card has the whole 3d world in its memory for any frame then surely it can generate a new viewport (I'm not up on the internals of modern graphics hardware, is this even viable?)
Oh well.
Tom...
Quadroplex setup (Score:3, Interesting)
I see these cards more useful to those with setups like ours; projectors that can display without borders and for high-quality visualizations.