ATI Announces HD 5870 Eyefinity6

[ChristopherB]

This may sound trite and a little annoying to those that are eagerly awaiting this board, but I (for the time being) am going to wheel out the "when it's ready" response. Sorry.

In Scott's HD 5830 review over at Tech Report he did give some indication as to why the Eyefinity 6 Edition hasn't been here before now. We are still working through some things that are the ramifications of that at the moment and we want to make sure we get it right. I believe the end point is in sight though. :)

My reaction... :shock: :? :(

I'd really like to get the card. I'm just home from hunting in some B&M stores for XFX 5870s and unfortunately everyone seems to stock the cheaper Diamond-brand cards instead. I could pick one up from Newegg, but I've heard the 2GB of memory with the Eyefinity-edition makes a significant difference with Eyefinity. I have 3 P2310Hs sitting on my desk just waiting to go.

Are you able to say whether, during internal testing, the extra memory makes a substantial difference @ eyefinity resolutions? I'm not planning on running more than 3 monitors so all the displayports isn't really a selling point for me. So, I suppose my real question is...is it worth it to wait another 2 weeks/month?

[skipclarke]

Are you able to say whether, during internal testing, the extra memory makes a substantial difference @ eyefinity resolutions? I'm not planning on running more than 3 monitors so all the displayports isn't really a selling point for me. So, I suppose my real question is...is it worth it to wait another 2 weeks/month?

We've shown in some of our other internal testing that more VRAM helps at higher resolutions and higher AA settings. I can say that the higher VRAM is helping in some situations on a three monitor setup. However, I can't say any more than that for risk of breaking my NDA.

So far I have tested:
Radeon 5870 1GB
5870 Eyefinity6 2GB
5870 Eyefinity6 2GB CFX (essentially the same as the upcoming 5970 4GB cards)

The one thing I haven't tested is the existing 5970 (2 GPUs each with 1GB VRAM). I have confirmation from ATI that a 5970 will be arriving tomorrow. By the time the reviews can come out, I expect to have a solid Buyer's Guide ready for the Enthusiast (single 5870 and higher) segment. My goal is to help you get the card you need - not more, and not less. And to make sure you're not wasting money on overkill.

So far I have tested: Batman:AA, Battle Forge (DX11), Dirt 2 (DX11), Far Cry 2 (DX10), GTA IV, HAWX (DX10), Heaven (DX 9, 10 & 11), HL2, and STALKER Pripyat (DX11). I've tested at 1680x1050, 1920x1200, 3x1680x1050, and 3x1920x1200.

I plan on testing 3x1200x1920 (portrait mode), and 3x1920x1080 (to compare 16:10 to 16:9), and then 6x1920x1080. Hopefully it will be worth your wait.

[bahnzii]

Great news...
We are all eagerly awaiting your reviews!!
I'm tossing and turning about doing the 5870-2gb or the 5870-2gb CF or the 5970-4gb, so you can count me in for diving into the buyer's guide :cheers

[skipclarke]

Glad it will be of use. Hopefully the games I've got on tap will hit a genre that you play. I'd like to get World in Conflict back into the rotation, but I'm having trouble with the Steam version I re-bought. Also planning to do a benchmark in LOTRO to get some MMO flavor. Those expansive vistas can really churn a card.

[ChristopherB]

Just Cause 2 might make a good candidate for future testing. It seems to be up to date graphically and I believe the devs have commited to Eyefinity support. I've certainly been having lots of fun in the demo. :D

[bahnzii]

Glad it will be of use. Hopefully the games I've got on tap will hit a genre that you play...

All the games you mentioned I have in my game queue :D

[skipclarke]

Just Cause 2 might make a good candidate for future testing. It seems to be up to date graphically and I believe the devs have commited to Eyefinity support. I've certainly been having lots of fun in the demo. :D

I'll have to look at that. I have the demo, though I haven't had a chance to fire it up because of all the testing. Will need to see if I can find a benchmark run that is easily repeatable. Will look at that for the future.

[JohnnyBlaze]

Any chance if you could test Bad Company 2 along with Metro 2033, that would be great :)

[MobsterOO7]

I have the demo, though I haven't had a chance to fire it up because of all the testing. Will need to see if I can find a benchmark run that is easily repeatable.

It's not much of a benchmark but the short opening cutscene for the demo might count a little bit. At the default settings it managed to practically cripple my GTX 280.

[SakkBoi]

So far I have tested: Batman:AA, Battle Forge (DX11), Dirt 2 (DX11), Far Cry 2 (DX10), GTA IV, HAWX (DX10), Heaven (DX 9, 10 & 11), HL2, and STALKER Pripyat (DX11). I've tested at 1680x1050, 1920x1200, 3x1680x1050, and 3x1920x1200.

I plan on testing 3x1200x1920 (portrait mode), and 3x1920x1080 (to compare 16:10 to 16:9), and then 6x1920x1080. Hopefully it will be worth your wait.

I don't expect you to put in more work now, but in the future please consider 3 x 2560x1600 for another resolution (I have 3 x Dell 3008wfp ready to go) and metro 2033 as an additional game. I definitely expect nothing more than you have time to do though. Thanks.

[ChristopherB]

[quote]Just Cause 2 might make a good candidate for future testing. It seems to be up to date graphically and I believe the devs have commited to Eyefinity support. I've certainly been having lots of fun in the demo. :D

I'll have to look at that. I have the demo, though I haven't had a chance to fire it up because of all the testing. Will need to see if I can find a benchmark run that is easily repeatable. Will look at that for the future.

I believe they just released a patch for the demo that should add a benchmarking utility. Other features include an alterable FOV setting and more...

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3617/

[Paradigm Shifter]

I don't expect you to put in more work now, but in the future please consider 3 x 2560x1600 for another resolution (I have 3 x Dell 3008wfp ready to go) and metro 2033 as an additional game. I definitely expect nothing more than you have time to do though. Thanks.

I don't think Ibrin has quite enough cash for three 2560x1600 panels...

[ChristopherB]

I didn't notice this before, but ATI had this chart of performance for 1GB vs 2GB. Now, as I always do with Nvidias charts, I have to take it with a grain of salt but if it were even half true, it indicates decent performance gains for the 2GB 5870 over the original 1GB at Eyefinity resolutions.

http://techreport.com/r.x/radeon-hd-5830/1gb-vs-2gb.gif

I am a little saddened to learn that the card is being held back due to....

Although AMD was able to present six displays to Windows Vista as a single, large surface ready for use in 3D accelerated games, making that happen in Windows 7 involved an additional technical hurdle. Win7 would allow for up to four 3D-accelerated displays, but not six.

It would be awesome for those of us (all of us?) intending to only use 3 displays if the card were to be released in it's current state, and 4+ monitor support were added later in a driver/BIOS update. :wink:

[Paradigm Shifter]

I suspect the 4 display limit in Windows 7 is an issue with Microsoft, not AMD, firmware, hardware or drivers. It wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft have changed the goalposts on something important. But I do find it interesting that WDDM1.1 has a limitation that WDDM1.0 doesn't, given how much Microsoft were shouting about the "improved" WDDM...

[Magic Man]

I suppose the question is though, why didn't they know about this 'limitation' sooner...

[Paradigm Shifter]

They've probably been busy trying to sort it out without worrying potential purchasers and financial analysts.

Very few businesses will come out and say, "Houston, we have a problem," until there is no possible way around it.

[skipclarke]

[quote]I don't expect you to put in more work now, but in the future please consider 3 x 2560x1600 for another resolution (I have 3 x Dell 3008wfp ready to go) and metro 2033 as an additional game. I definitely expect nothing more than you have time to do though. Thanks.

I don't think Ibrin has quite enough cash for three 2560x1600 panels...
This is the case. The WSGF has just gotten to where it brings in a little money every month (largely due to the fact that our hosting is now donated). Over the years, the WSGF has basically broke even or lost a bit of money. So, shelling out $4k on monitors isn't something that I can do.

Also, I really don't see 3x2560x1600 as a viable option (IMHO). I've seen how performance craters at 3x1920x1200 on newer more demanding games. Considering that the intermediate resolution on the 3x30" panels is 3x1680x1050, I'd figure you're most often left with sub-par performance or a lot of scaling.

My testing is at 4xAA and max settings, but I figure you'd have to drop quality settings quite a bit to get 3x2560x1600 to work well in most anything modern.

[Paradigm Shifter]

I suppose that "SuperSample" Antialiasing (the type that renders double, quad, octo the desired res then scales it down) wouldn't be an approximation for 2560x1600 performance?

Would someone with a 30"er run a game at 2560x1600 0xAA 16xAF, then 1280x800 2xSSAA 16xAF and report the numbers back? :)

[Magic Man]

They've probably been busy trying to sort it out without worrying potential purchasers and financial analysts.

Very few businesses will come out and say, "Houston, we have a problem," until there is no possible way around it.

Granted. But Windows 7 was out when Eyefinity was launched and they launched demo'ing the 6 model. Would have thought they'd have least thought, let's give it a go on 7. Hopefully they'll sort this otherwise I assume we're looking at going back to Vista...

Also, isn't there a Eyefinity 5 model out (already?, XFX? - not sure) - why did they do a 5 model and not a 6 by the way?

[Paradigm Shifter]

EyeFinity5 is a Sapphire model; it's not a reference board design from ATi, but a custom job by one of their partners.

...

And the EyeFinity6 demonstration was likely running on Vista - the 24 screen wonder was running on linux.

While I don't dislike Vista all that much, I far from Win 7, so there's no way I'm going back to the old OS.