ATI EyeFinity thoughts

Details:
Price: From £120

Radeon HD 5870 required
Up to three screens supported
One DisplayPort screen required
Up to 7680 x 1600 supported
Identical resolution displays required

Getting hold of a Radeon 5870 might be harder than completing Far Cry blindfolded, but there’s no denying the technical prowess of ATI’s new flagship. As well as stonking frame rates and DirectX 11 support, the 5800 series brings an intriguing new feature to the table called Eyefinity. Allowing you to connect up to three screens to a single card, this technology allows you to play first-person shooters, driving games, flight simulators and just about any other suitable genre at ultra-wide resolutions; spanning the action across all three displays.

Before you rush out and buy two more monitors for your PC, you need to be aware of a couple of limitations with Eyefinity’s implementation. First, one of your screens must be DisplayPort rather than conventional DVI. This is because each DVI screen needs a dedicated clock source, and the 5870 (like all other mainstream video cards) only has two. DisplayPort is not so afflicted, so theoretically an unlimited number of displays can be run from each card – providing it has the outputs. While an adaptor can be used to convert the tertiary DisplayPort output to DVI, it needs to be of the active variety with its own discrete power source.

After patiently waiting a fortnight for our adaptor and third 20-inch screen to arrive, we were finally ready for some triple-screen action. Setting up an Eyefinity configuration is fairly simple, though (as with most brand new technologies) it isn’t without its problems. First, switching from the single ultra-wide Eyefinity desktop back to a ‘conventional’ extended-mode multi-monitor setup is one long epic fail. Almost every time we tried to complete this seemingly simple operation it would mess things up, setting a variety of clone modes or refusing to enable one of our screens. After a ten-minute battle with the drivers we usually ended up with the configuration we wanted, but this definitely needs to be fixed before Eyefinity is ready for anyone other than hardened PC enthusiasts.

The vast majority of games we tested support the widescreen resolutions right out of the box, and for the few that don’t you can normally find fixes over at the WSGF forum (www.widescreengamingforum.com). Playing Crysis Warhead at a resolution of 4800 x 1200 is simply breathtaking, and we could see 66 per cent more of Fallout 3’s post-apocalyptic landscape with Eyefinity enabled. The effect with driving games is even more pronounced, with Burnout Paradise and Need For Speed: Shift both correctly adjusting the cockpit viewpoint to a massive 180-degree, ultra-wide experience. To say the effect is impressive would be a shameful understatement, as it’s nothing short of spectacular. Once bitten by the multi-monitor gaming bug you’ll never want to go back to a single display again.

Even with its caveats we feel Eyefinity is a triumph, and easily the best new feature to come from PC graphics cards since SLI. PC gamers have been looking for an innovation to once again elevate the platform to a level consistently above our smug console-owning brethren, and Eyefinity could well achieve just that.
Ian Jackson