Widescreen Gaming Forum

I wanted to make a summary/log of my findings to the stuff you can and can not do with eyefinity and the 5000 series cards.

Mostly to cover the questions people do not know how to ask or to give you an answer to a question you didnt even know you had.

Example - A question I had before I bought my 5870 that nobody could answer, Can you use 4 displays on the card as long as you toggle off one of the active displays on the card since the only official information was "you cant use both of the DVI connections and HDMI at the same time.

The Answer is Yes, you can hook up 4 screens and use all 4 of them but only 3 at the same time and if you use 3 at the same time one of them must be the display port connection.

Also I can do a Q&A, if you have a question thats easy enough for me to test I'll answer it and add it to the main post.


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Test Setup

ATI 5870
2x Dell 2407WFP - DVI
1x Dell 2408WFP - Display Port
1x Westinghouse LVM37W3 - HDMI

Vista Ultimate x64
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Interesting Findings

[list]The 5870 has its own audio encoder built into it, when using a HDMI connection it will automatically change the windows sound playback device to HDMI, I wondered why I had no sound when playing a movie on the 37" and this is why. I had to change it manually back to my speaker out and restart the media player.

Using 3 or 4 monitors, as stated you can not use both DVI connections and the HDMI connection at the same time however via the ATI control panel you can replace an active display with a non active on to have one monitor turn on and the other go off. This inadvertently means to use 3 monitors at once both eyefinity OR just for 3 cloned/span monitors you must use the display port connection for the 3rd monitor. But this does mean you can have 4 connections to the card for a 4th monitor just never more than 3 at the same time and the 3rd one must always be display port.

Using a 2nd GPU to power more monitors. I have failed to use my old ATI 4850 card as a 2nd gpu with the 5870. No matter what I tried to do I could not get into windows after installing the new 5870 drivers. They atleast for now are not compatible with older cards. This means if you want more than 3 monitors at one time or have a reason to use more than one video card your out of luck, or could try generic drivers like the 9.9Cat drivers but not the 5000 series drivers (that you would need for eyefinity)

When changing active monitors from my 1920x1080 TV to a 1920x1200 monitor it always defaults all the monitors to 1920x1080 and you have to manually change every monitor back to its native resolution, sort of annoying.

Can not full screen a video with media player classic when in 5870x1200 eyefinity mode. Have not tested with other players yet.

When using eyefinity mode since all 3 monitors are one giant virtual monitor windows taskbar goes all the way across all 3 monitors and if you full screen something it will also go across all 3 monitors.

There is no bezel management option currently to offset the image between the space the bezels from the monitors occupy.

GPU uses 2x 6pin PCI-E connections for power, the HIS brand card came with the adapter for 2x Molex --> 1x 6pin and the card is very long the P182 case could not accommodate it without taking out the hard drive cage.

The ATI control panel can not "remember" your monitor order, so every time you turn off/on eyefinity you will have to set the monitor order again to get a proper picture.

If you ever disable all displays but one, the remaining one will become your primary display automatically, when you enable other displays again and try to make your normal monitor your primary monitor it keeps moving the virtual monitor order and making the wrong monitor the primary until you guess lucky and pick the right monitor based on identification number or name rather than where it appears on the gui.[/list:u]

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Can not full screen a video with media player classic when in 5870x1200 eyefinity mode. Have not tested with other players yet.

MPC has a setting to specifyy or force a resolution to run, have you tried forcing 5870x1200?

[quote]
Can not full screen a video with media player classic when in 5870x1200 eyefinity mode. Have not tested with other players yet.

MPC has a setting to specifyy or force a resolution to run, have you tried forcing 5870x1200?

No, no reason too I wouldnt want a full screen video of that res anyways, but currently it will just fill your screen with black and you get no video at default settings. I imagine if I forced 5870x1200 and did not change it back bad things will happen when I run 1920x1200 again.

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