Eyefinity 6 fun and games

[robinhood]

On a quest for an ever better, ever faster digital cockpit I picked an ATI 5870 eyefinity 6.

 

I will find the link to my old thread and post it here about how far I took the eyfinity 3's and tested 5750's, 5770's, 5870's I settled for dual 5770's partly because of budget and partly because I found once you spread from the three main monitors to the second card the performance hit was huge and I saw little difference between the cards and when I wanted to really push the FRS on three I used crossfire.

 

With this in mind I recently picked up a 5870 eyefinity 6 in hope of getting better frames rates running all 6 monitors because all monitors were being processed and distributed by the same card.

 

I am happy to announce I found this to be true. I used to get between 8 and 12 FPS (running 5760x3120) which was not really playable it did let me fly around in peace and get some things working head tracking, screen placement, etc. with a full cock pit but it was impractical for real game play.

 

Now with the eyefinity 6 I am running at 16 to 20 FPS running all 6 compared to 8 to 12 I can tell you the game seems quite playable and I'm very happy. I'm not sure what would happen if I ran a second in cross fire but my budget is a little thin because of the following.

 

So I made a couple of mistakes HUGE mistakes, mostly because I should have know better. In fact I feel like a bit of dumb ass but thought I should share in case anyone comes close to making the same mistake.

 

When I received my eyefinity 6, as I mentioned above I had two 5770's and six monitors which meant I also had to have two ACTIVE display port adapters.

 

I run 3X 28" I-inc (HDMI 1920x1200) monitors across the top in landscape and 1x 22" (DVI 1680x1050) in bottom center landscape flipped and two Dell 22" (DVI 1920x1080) portrait and portrait flipped on bottom left and right.

 

When I bought the eyefinity six i looked around for info and saw many comments about it supporting DVI, HDMI and DP of cause it came with 6 mini DP sockets but also came with 2x mini DP to DVI 2x mini DP to Full DP and 1x mini DP to HMDI. I could find much about who was running with what and all the testing was done with DP monitors with additional mention of the support for other hardware.

 

Well you can probably guess where this is going but I spent another 300$ on various additional passive adapters and cables @ 30$ a pop for the adapter and 30$ for the cable it adds up really fast and there is no money back on either if it does not work.

 

YOU STILL NEED ACTIVE adapters for every port but two. The card will only use any combination of two DVI, HDMI at a time on any of the ports the rest have to have true DP devices attached (which makes trouble shooting a little whacky i can tell you).

 

There is no mention in the manuals of this and its hard to find any mention on the web, until you really look specifically anyway :)

 

So I am about to spend 200 more dollars on two more active adapters from dell (i used dell for the first two and they work ok)

 

So the card cost me 500$ from newegg the cheapest i found, to run the card on non DP monitors you will need one Active DP adapter for each additional monitor past 2 so 4x 89$ so don't plan buying the card unless you plan to spend another 400$ on adapters (no crossfire for me for a while :()

 

Not to mention the $300 I blew on adapters and cables due to excitement and a lack of home work. New hardware the final frontier......

 

The game is awesome though. I hope this helps some one save some bucks. The card is awesome in all other ways, I do think vendors should be a little clearer about requirements though.

 

Would I have bought the card anyway YES.

Would i have wasted $300 on adapters and cables NO.

Would I have ordered Active DP adapters right of the bat YES.

Would I have wasted a week trying to fix what was not broken NO.

Would I have so over joyed and felt like giving my $300 to ATI for a second 5870 PROBABLY.

 

That raises a good question can you crossfire an eyefinity 6 5870 with a non eyefinity 6 5870 ?????

 

O no :)

 

Have a good one.

[robinhood]

eyefinity 3 round 1

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=47986&highlight=render

[Lava]

Thanks for the info, a lot of people are very interested in multi monitor setups.

[digital_steve]

I'm more interested in where you can get monitors with thin bezels so i can go with eyefinity, now that my new PC setup is being built.

[robinhood]

Thin Bezels

 

That's a tough one,

 

I always keep my eye out, but for the most part the larger the monitor the wider the Bezel by design. Also as the larger monitor or screen is more likely to be used for movie watching the wider the bezel as it improves immersion in the movie. But creates quite the opposite efffect when used in multi monitor setups.

 

The best practice I have found is monitor placement so that bezels stay out of the way or line up with natural obstructions on the screen/cockpit (usually easier in flight sims and impossible in FPS)

 

I also use TrackIR for head tracking so even good placement when starting of doesn't last long but I found good placement when centered goes a long way.

 

Another trick I found it to use industrial strength black velco between the monitors to stick them together helps. It does not allow light or background images to show through at the connecting pionts which is hard to do without velcro or some other way of removing the seem. I run a strip full height top to bottom of the screens at the connecting edges.

 

I hope some of this helps.

[robinhood]

Cheap Active Adapters

 

I just found out that there are active miniDP to VGA adapters at a local Computer Dealer in town I'm heading over there tomorrow.

 

I will keep you posted if this works they are half the price of the Dell adapters. $39 each we shall see.

[digital_steve]

Good info

I can't rep you again... but i would if i could!