Software and Gaming with Eyefinity

Once you’ve got all the hardware setup, the software side is fairly easy. ATI has setup a fairly nifty wizard in the desktops and displays section for setting up a wide range of Eyefinity monitor configurations. The card automatically detects all the displays connected to it, and provides a range of monitor groups (3x2, 3x1 etc) based on your current configuration.

You won’t need to physically move monitors or reach around the back of your case to swap mini-DP ports from one output to another, everything you need can be adjusted via ATI’s Catalyst Control Center software. For instance, when configuring a 3x1 group, CCC will black out all but one monitor, which will be left with an all blue screen. Simply highlight which monitor is active, and voila you’re done. With the latest Catalyst drivers, there’s even built-in support for bezel correction:

While the Eyefinity 6 Edition board can technically drive six 2560x1600 displays, ATI officially recommends using six 1920x1200 displays for the 5870 Eyefinity 6. Running six displays at higher resolutions like 2560x1600 would obviously be a challenge for one Radeon 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition card, although CrossFire is of course an option if you have the funds to afford two boards. With two Eyefinity cards running in CrossFire you could conceivably run up to eight displays with the two added monitors would run in extended mode.

After you’ve got your monitor groups setup, your desktop resolution is automatically adjusted to your bezel-corrected resolution (if you choose to enable bezel correction that is) and from there it’s available as a selectable video resolution from within games.

Gaming with Eyefinity 6

Unfortunately, it’s here where things begin to go downhill, at least if you’re a fan of shooters.

Unfortunately displays with thin bezels have yet to hit the market, and as a result, the bezels on the Dell P2210H LCDs do get in the way of the gameplay experience with FPS titles. With the crosshair located dead center of the screen in first-person shooters, it’s hidden right between the bezels of the Dell LCDs.

As a result, aiming becomes a difficult affair, as you’re literally guesstimating about where the crosshair should be.

This is a problem in all of the first-person shooters we tested: Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare 2, and Aliens vs Predator, all of which are Eyefinity certified games. Another issue with MW2 is that it lacks support for aspect ratios beyond 16:9, so everything appears as if it’s stretched. It’s not as big of a deal as the crosshair, but it is annoying nonetheless.

Until LCDs with thin bezels are introduced, fortunately you can set up two 3x1 groups: one for FPS gaming, and the second for running Windows apps:


With its third-person perspective, running six displays with Batman: Arkham Asylum was a ton of fun. The bezels were certainly still a distraction, but it wasn’t a frustrating distraction like the lack of a true crosshair in FPS games.

Ditto for HAWX and DiRT 2.


We have more video footage of the games in-action that we’re hoping to get uploaded later today, but we did record the following frame rates with the Eyefinity 6 board on a Core i7-920 rig:

Notes

As you can see, enabling Eyefinity comes with a substantial performance hit. However, the 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition board is still capable of delivering playable frame rates in Batman (without AA), HAWX and DiRT 2 (with DX11).

In our case with Aliens vs Predator DX11 and surprisingly enough, Modern Warfare 2, you may want to turn down the settings a notch or two depending on your preferences when it comes to frame rates. As you can see sometimes in MW2 the action gets pretty hot – especially when multiple RPGs are flying at you, and the frame rate can chug from time to time as a result.

Conclusion

We’ve got a lot more testing yet to do with the Eyefinity 6 board. We still need to boot up Supreme Commander 2 and see how it runs, and we may dabble a bit with Relic’s Dawn of War 2 as well.

The lack of crosshairs in first-person shooters is a really big deal in our opinion though. Until LCDs with thin bezels hit the market, anyone willing to fork over the cash for a 6 display Eyefinity setup will probably want to play FPS’ with a 3x1 configuration. Honestly though, we’d probably recommend waiting to see how well the thin bezels work out in actual games before forking over the cash on an Eyefinity board.

In a lot of ways, today’s Eyefinity 6 launch reminds us of NVIDIA’s 3D Vision in 2009. Like NVIDIA was a year ago, ATI’s waiting on the infrastructure to catch up to their hardware, and until that happens we think Eyefinity 6 is going to be a niche product. It also doesn’t help that active DisplayPort adapters are still way too expensive and are hard to find, making it hard for gamers with multiple DVI-equipped monitors to take the plunge on Eyefinity.

Until these issues can get sorted out, it’s going to be hard for gamers to justify spending $1,000 or more on the monitors needed + $479 graphics card. By the time the monitor manufacturers and dongle/adapter makers have their products in the channel in large quantities, ATI may have a faster GPU on the market.

Still, if you do have the money and you aren’t a huge fan of FPS titles, it doesn’t get much better than gaming across 6 displays. 3x1 is obviously going to be the price/performance sweet spot though.