AMD's Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 31, 2010 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Setting Up Six Displays
Getting three displays lined up and perfect is enough trouble, setting up six is beyond frustrating. Ahead of its visit to me in NC, AMD shipped down six Dell P2210H 1080p displays and a pair of stands from Atdec. One stand supports four monitors, while the other supports two.
AMD had been flying around the country setting these Eyefinity 6 systems up for reviewers and thus had a bit of experience in doing this. I yielded to their expertise, which recommended putting double sided foam mounting tape along the edges of the monitors. We did so on the first four displays:
Meanwhile, we assembled the mount for the four displays. While this might sound simple, it's not. You have to figure out the right distance each display will be from one another as well as the right height. Adjusting these variables is easier said than done. Each display mount has two opposite facing hex screws that must be loosened and tightened by the same amount. There's one adjustable mount per arm that holds two displays, and then one mount per display. Oh and each of the four display mounts is on a ball that can be loosened and adjusted to make sure the displays are all square with the user.
Each one of these variables must be adjusted independently. Incorrectly positioning even one of these mounts will prevent your Eyefinity 6 setup from looking flawless (and at this point, you should just conceded that it is going to be flawed).
At this point AMD recommended sticking the four panels together before mounting them to the arms:
By sticking them together first, it would make the mounting process a bit easier...at least that was the hope. Next we mounted these four displays to the first stand and assembled it:
And we have 2/3 of our Eyefinity 6 setup complete:
Er...so maybe it's sort of slanted, and has a handful of gaps in between the panels. The sticky tape did help, but it's not magical sticky tape. According to AMD, this was one of their better achievements on the trip and believe me when I say that this wasn't rushed. Setting up a cohesive group of six displays takes a great deal of patience and precision. If you get frustrated easily, you may want to just buy a projector instead to fulfill your large gaming needs.
With four setup, it was on to the next two.
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cfaalm - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Why don't AMD go talk to display manufactureres to thin out or even totally forego any bezels on Eyefinity compatible displays? In other dual/multiple screen situations than Eyefinity it can still be desirable to have real thin or no bezels, so it won't be that far out.Aclough - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
They're working on them now, but they aren't out yet. Be warned that they'll probably cost more than normal monitors though.cfaalm - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
I expected they would cost a bit more. Though I don't have any figures on the premium I guess it would be worth it compared to what gains can be had it these special situations where you'd be spending a small fortune anyway.mjrpes3 - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
It's greatly in their interest to develop this technology: lowering the barrier and increasing the incentive to buy 3x or 6x quantity of a product.Calin - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
Sell more cheap monitors instead of fewer expensive monitors? I don't think so.Calin - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
The bezels are there with a purpose (strength, if nothing else).There are monitors with thin bezels - what we might need now could be pre-built monitors in 6x configuration, reducing as much as possible the bezel size (they could do it better in the factory). Maybe some boutique industry could spring from this? Something like the tuning shops in the auto industry
behrouz - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Hi Anand.this is very beautiful and the logo at top of page is better than previous logo.
good luck.
Manuel1975 - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Does anybody know if there will be any mac drivers? This would be a formidable beast in combination with MacPro and Mediaserver Software...erple2 - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
I think that this tech would be wasted on a Media Server implementation. Unless you're talking about something different than what I'm thinking of. Streaming media to these devices would be essentially pointless, as few, if any, media is available at any resolution beyond 1080p.Putting it on a Mac makes even less sense, given that what makes this unique is the ability to run solid 3D games titles. And last I checked, there were few, if any, 3D games available on the Mac Platform.
While Apple does offer multiple graphics cards in their MacPro systems, they're generally very low-end graphics products (currently NVidia GeForce GT 120 based), meant to drive CAD or other non-3D gaming applications. Those can easily handle any Media server load you could throw at it. I suppose you could make the argument that it could upscale the video to 2160p (doubling 1080p), but that seems to be pointless to me - just run a larger 1080p projector.
Manuel1975 - Tuesday, August 3, 2010 - link
Hi Erple,The media I use to drive multiple dipslays normaly reqiure something along the range of 640x480 to a 4k type of resolution. Although these high resolutions are not mainstream, Youtube for instance does alow you to upload videos in 4k resolution. The future of HD+ video is very very near.
And nowadays OSX ships with something called quartz composer. This something you can compare with prosessing. Its OpenGL bases image synthesis. Truely amazing stuf: 4k+ resolutions rendered at 60hz. Eazely.
Tip for your next post: try to think outside your box before posting.