Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi All!

I've been lurking for quite a while here, and this weekend I'm finally ready to set up 3 monitors and Eyefinity on my rig. I've got an HP Pavilion Elite machine with a Radeon 5770HD, 8gb ram, and the Phenom II X6 3.2ghz proc. It's a great system, I don't game a whole lot but got this because my dad is an ex-HP longtime employee and I still get his employee discount. So I was able to get this rig for way cheaper than building my own (which I usually do).

Anyway, I currently have 2 x Acer 24" monitors running at 1900x1200 on both DVI ports out of the 5770HD. I know there is an additional HDMI port on the card, as well as what I assume is the Display Port? I will be picking up one more monitor to put in between these two, and I think I'm going to grab a 27". I have a ton of gift cards at Sears for some reason, so was thinking of grabbing this (http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_SPM1856387801P?prdNo=7). So my questions are:

-Will eyefinity work with two 1920x1200 monitors on either side of a larger middle monitor that is 1920x1080? Not sure how the resolutions will scale here. I think I read that they will all be at the lowest common resolution, so does that mean the middle one will look stretched or wierd?

-Can I just use the new middle 3rd monitor with and HDMI cable? Or do I need this display port adapter I've been reading about? I don't understand how this works.

-Once connected, how do I enable eyefinity?

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the help in advance!

You can get a monitor of differsnt reaolution for the center. Just note all monitors will be running at (in this case) 1080p. The outside monitors will stretch vertically. It may bother you but I doubt it becauss outer monitors are mainly for periphery.

You will need to connect the third monitor to displaypodt. So an ACTIVE adapter iz needed. You can pickup an active single link adapter from newegg or tigerdirect for around $30.

Enabling eyefinity is pretty easy. I normaly clone all the monitors I'm going to use in the group through ccc then go to enable eyefinity. It gets rid of some issues that can pop up. After that it will make a new selectable rezolution and ask you to arrange your monitors if they are not in the right order.

Posted from an android device.

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System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

for the stretching i think you could find an option in your monitor that could keep the aspect ratio versus stretching to fit the screen, of course this will give you black bars though. check your manual for this(or just browse through it yourself), for i wouldn't know how to find it(or if it's even available) in your monitor options.

for the stretching i think you could find an option in your monitor that could keep the aspect ratio versus stretching to fit the screen, of course this will give you black bars though. check your manual for this(or just browse through it yourself), for i wouldn't know how to find it(or if it's even available) in your monitor options.

You need to the monitors osd to have an aspect ration override function, because with eyefinity, it will render 1080p for every screen then scale it up to the monitors native resolution (so the monitor see 1200p in this case).

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System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

You will need to connect the third monitor to displaypodt. So an ACTIVE adapter iz needed. You can pickup an active single link adapter from newegg or tigerdirect for around $30.

An Active Adapter might be ideal, but lots of people including me are using Passive Adapters and its just fine. Im using the XFX DP to DVI adapter (single link) and it cost about 1/3 of the price of an Active Adapter. The XFX one is the one many other EF users tried with the same success.

To the OP, I wouldnt use a diff size center personally (would look odd and as noted skew 2/3rds of your other screens). I also think its worth noting that the HD5770 is not a very fast card, pushing it to Eyefinity would be very painful IMO:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/01/05/amds_ati_radeon_eyefinity_performance_review/9


Those arent even recent games!

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[GTX1080 - 4.48GHz 4690k - planning projector mayhem]

Thanks everyone! I got everything working just fine, after initially grabbing the wrong DisplayPort adapter (passive). Went back to Fry's and grabbed the right active DP to DVI adapter and now things are working great.

However, my new middle monitor is a 27" 1920x1080, and my outer monitors are 24" 1900x1200 so the resolutions are starting to look a little weird. I think the outer monitors are adjusting to the resolution, and look a little off. So I'm going to sell the outer 24" monitors and get 2 more 27" 1080 monitors.

Thanks for all the help everyone!

[quote]
You will need to connect the third monitor to displaypodt. So an ACTIVE adapter iz needed. You can pickup an active single link adapter from newegg or tigerdirect for around $30.

An Active Adapter might be ideal, but lots of people including me are using Passive Adapters and its just fine. Im using the XFX DP to DVI adapter (single link) and it cost about 1/3 of the price of an Active Adapter. The XFX one is the one many other EF users tried with the same success.

To the OP, I wouldnt use a diff size center personally (would look odd and as noted skew 2/3rds of your other screens). I also think its worth noting that the HD5770 is not a very fast card, pushing it to Eyefinity would be very painful IMO:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/01/05/amds_ati_radeon_eyefinity_performance_review/9


Those arent even recent games!
Good sir. If you have 3 monitor running off of one card and they are using DVI connections and they are not FLEX cards (you would know as it's in their title) you're using an active adapter. Just because it's single link, doesn't mean that it's not an active adapter. Active Single Link adapters run around $30 where as Active Dual-Link adapters run $90-$100. I guess you got confused there.

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System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

I am going to get rid of the outside 1900x1200 monitors and replace them with 27" 1920x1080 screens. And I did have to get an active DP to DVI adapter, but it was only $29 from Fry's (ACCELL brand). It works great.

As for the HD5770 not being able to handle it...I'm not sure what you are talking about. I read your link too, but I disagree. I have played through most of my games and everything has played fine on max settings.

Good sir. If you have 3 monitor running off of one card and they are using DVI connections and they are not FLEX cards (you would know as it's in their title) you're using an active adapter. Just because it's single link, doesn't mean that it's not an active adapter. Active Single Link adapters run around $30 where as Active Dual-Link adapters run $90-$100. I guess you got confused there.

Lol, ok hands up, thats exactly what threw me, I only paid less than <$30 for my active adapter! :X

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[GTX1080 - 4.48GHz 4690k - planning projector mayhem]