Widescreen Gaming Forum

(regarding Eyefinity)

Is ATI even pursuing this avenue for an adapter to provide some (or rather "any") kind of support for the thousands of us that already have (3) DVI screens on our desks (or more pertinent, for anyone that frequently purchases hardware from Newegg or TigerDirect here the US)?

Or are we pretty much on our own here?

Not sure they will. They are betting that DP will become the next standard, and that people will start to buy DP monitors (especially those that have higher resolutions! No more Dual link DVI!)

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(regarding Eyefinity)

Is ATI even pursuing this avenue for an adapter to provide some (or rather "any") kind of support for the thousands of us that already have (3) DVI screens on our desks (or more pertinent, for anyone that frequently purchases hardware from Newegg or TigerDirect here the US)?

Or are we pretty much on our own here?

Don't know about ATI itself releasing one, but AMD is currently working with manufacturers to create a sort of Eyefinity displayport adapter certification which they say will let users know that it does indeed work with ATI's 5xx0 displayport equipped cards. This will supposedly bring prices down as well.

They didn't mention any timeframe for these certified adapters so don't hold your breath, but Eyefinity does seem to be quite the unique feature to ATI and appears to be capturing a good number of enthusiasts (e.g. it's probably a priority item for them).

Me, I'm having great luck with Apple's DVI displayport adapter so I'm not waiting on this.

Check out this page on HardForum for detailed instructions on the Apple route:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1461673&page=7

Hi, alx,

Okay, I bit the bullet (again), and picked up the Apple version of the adapter. I had previously purchased the mini-std cable a week ago or so anticipating this. Of course then I purchased the $30 dedicated plug for the USB adapter. So, $105 + $20 + $30.

It took me about 4 hours last night to finally get an Eyefinity desktop at 5760x1200 (3-28" LCD's). I have owned numerous high end video cards from both nVidia and ATI. I've rarely had driver issues with the nVidia stuff, but this Eyefinity situation (w/adapter) is a mess.

I don't know if it's the card, the driver, or the adapter, but there is virtually no consistency that I can find. In desperation, I finally set up two different profiles, one for the 5760x1200 desktop, and a second with (3)1920x1200 desktops with the primary screen center (my center screen is the DP->DVI screen).

The driver simply doesn't have a clue what's going on, and after a reboot, I head for and select the "Eyefinity" profile that I had created, and it simply didn't save the information, or only saved a portion of it. So at this point, every time I boot up the computer, I basically rebuild the group. And the system randomly decides what resolution and configuration to boot into, I've seen probably 4 different variations with no changes on my part, simply on reboot. Sometimes when I select profiles, it doesn't respond at all.

This is an Asus 5850 card. I dumped the Asus "smartdoctor" and just started monitoring temps and fan with the ATI Overdrive screen. Keep in mind this system used to have an 8800GTX furnace in it. I opened the side of the case and positioned a house fan on it. The idle temp with default clocks is 59 degrees C. When I step out of a simulation that pushes the card, it's frequently at 80-85 degrees C, with the autofan control pushing the fan at a mighty 30% (tops maybe).

This last month has been quite an ATI fiasco. Frustrated.

I'll end with this, once I finally did get the 5760x1200 running, in simulation, it's quite phenomenal, and even the 5850 has little shortage of horsepower. Regarding the minimal performance drop, I am amazed at how well this card scaled from (1) screen to (3) screens. That's a lot of extra pixels to push, but really wasn't much of a problem for this card. The classic ATI driver fiascos, though, sheesh.

The driver simply doesn't have a clue what's going on, and after a reboot, I head for and select the "Eyefinity" profile that I had created, and it simply didn't save the information, or only saved a portion of it. So at this point, every time I boot up the computer, I basically rebuild the group. And the system randomly decides what resolution and configuration to boot into, I've seen probably 4 different variations with no changes on my part, simply on reboot. Sometimes when I select profiles, it doesn't respond at all.

Setup hotkeys for those profiles. You will usually have to hit the hotkeys 2 - 3 times to get the profiles to correctly activate. ATI is said to be working to fix that bug.

Dude, is there a trick to getting the hotkeys to function, something that needs to be running? I have them setup and enabled (CTRL-Shift-Q and W for two different profiles). The profiles are preconfigured and hotkeys are bound to their respective key. Nothing happening when using the hotkeys, what part am I missing?

Only thing I can think of is to check to make sure hotkeys is enabled in hotkey manager.

Hi, alx,

Okay, I bit the bullet (again), and picked up the Apple version of the adapter. I had previously purchased the mini-std cable a week ago or so anticipating this. Of course then I purchased the $30 dedicated plug for the USB adapter. So, $105 + $20 + $30.

It took me about 4 hours last night to finally get an Eyefinity desktop at 5760x1200 (3-28" LCD's). I have owned numerous high end video cards from both nVidia and ATI. I've rarely had driver issues with the nVidia stuff, but this Eyefinity situation (w/adapter) is a mess.

Yeah, they could've planned this whole thing a little better. ATI's latest control panel layout, which they changed to about three months ago, is also confusing as hell. They tried to simplify the entire layout but just ended up hiding much needed options under layers of submenus.

But once Eyefinity's up and running, there's nothing like having that much game world in front of you. Racing and FPS games are phenomenal with so much side view. Even games like Torchlight benefit quite a bit, maybe not in practical terms, but the side views just pull you in that much more.

About the profiles, I haven't setup any hotkeys yet so I don't have any input on those. My setup's running Eyefinity full time.