AMD announces six-monitor card
The Eyefinity technology allows six monitors to be connected in any configuration and treated as any combination of independent displays or single rendering surfaces.
According to AnandTech, the new Eyefinity technology - announced at a press conference yesterday by the company's ATI subsidiary - will give users the opportunity to drive up to six monitors from a single card.
The technology uses the increasingly popular DisplayPort specification for its six outputs, and was originally developed due to OEMs requesting notebook GPUs that could drive six different output devices at different times.
What makes Eyefinity interesting isn't that it is capable of driving so many displays, but rather that it treats the combined displays as a single surface for rendering purposes. What this translates to in reality is a demonstration of popular time-sink World of Warcraft running across six 30" monitors in a 3:2 configuration, each with a resolution of 2560x1600 - meaning an overall HD-busting resolution of 7680x3200, or 24 megapixels.
Despite the incredibly high resolution, the single GPU that powers Eyefinity seems to cope pretty well: a DirectX 11 part, the new chip was able to keep WoW ticking along at an impressive 80 frames per second with all detail settings cranked up to their maximum.
Actual specifications from the press conference are being kept under wraps, but it is known that the part - which will appear on cards from the Radeon HD5800 family - features 2.15 billion transitors and a total performance of 2.5 TFLOPS.
AMD also revealed that it is partnering with Samsung to produce a 3:2 ultra-high resolution display suitable for use with Eyefinity featuring six panels each with a slim bezel and no power LED in order to minimise distractions.
Pricing was, of course, not mentioned - but an official release announcement is expected at the end of the month.
Does Eyefinity have you drooling over the thought of ultra-high resolution gaming, or are you suspicious as to exactly how many games can be driven by a single GPU at playable framerates? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Previous Article
55 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyWill this work with Display Port only? They realize the multi screen via drivers, so this should work with the old 4870 as well?
I have always thought that monitors were not big enough. I have had dual and tri monitor setups, I am really looking forward to trying this out, and the no side bezel or led for power is a nice addition.
Yours in Super-Ultra-HD Plasma,
Star*Dagger
I may just have found a reason to turn my back on Nvidia now (unless they do something similar). Looks tasty, and +1 on no side-casing for monitors.
That would have a similar effect of being on the border of a heart attack with 6 naked curvy women standing round you.
:o
If i were still doing live VJ work, this would be perfect, run 2 stacks of 3 projectors from one system.
Crikey, live performances at large venues would be great too, grab a quad PCIe board and run 24 outs to 24 displays, ohh yes.
Anand explains why this is not true. The eyes are very very good a detail.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3635
N6Vf8R_gOec
Surely you jest? Check out details of rigs using Matrox triple head cards for gaming some time with up to 270 degree field of view being supported in many games. Same functionality here but a greater degree of freedom in how it's used.
WANT!
OMG I think i need to clean my pants after reading that...thanks damienVC, thanks a lot:o
Heh, I have 17 projectors at my disposal so double up these cards and we have one giant display and a rather large electricity bill. :)
4 30" NEC3090WUXis..
That'll put more than a dent in your pockets.
Response time isn't everything.
How about 6 Plasmas?
<-------- I had to use an Nvidia and two TH2G card for that. :D
card looks like it mite be an jump up in performance going from an 9800 to an gtx280 was nice but not as good as i thought it would of been, the new 5800 card looks intresting, Nvidia have been an little quite on this topic
Dream on. GT300 wont make it out this year.
[kidding!]
From what I've seen, this'll only work with the displayport output.
I wouldn't mind upgrading my dual 22" to some three way porn, but since my monitors only have VGA and DVI connectors, is that even gonna be possible?
I thought such a conversion would make adaptors complex and expensive. As long as you don't get a HP model they're actually fairly cheap