3 x Dell 30" + ATI 5970 - a question.

[Purpleraine]

Hello people. Please forgive me if this has been discussed but I have used the searched function but only found limited return but not the answer I was looking for.

Basically I have one 30" Dell 3007 and I am looking to increase by buying two more 30" 3008s plus a ATI 5970. My question is does the 5970 Eyefinity support using 3 x 30" Dell monitors using its native resolution spread over 3 screens for games. Reason I am asking is my search has only returned people using 22" or 24".

Originally I was going to go 3 x 30" with triplehead2go but found out the max resolution support was 1920x1200 so i ditched that project.

Also is there anywhere on the forums which you talk about furniture i.e desk suitable for a 3 monitor setup.

Hope you all have a great christmas.

[fatlazyhomer]

Check anandtech's review. They needed some sorta adapter thing to plug it in.

[Dave Baumann]

You may want to take note of the image in this Eyefinity report:

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/17563

Yes, thats 6 Dell 3008's being powered by a single HD 5870 Eyefinity6 board.

The 5970 supported 2560x1600 on all the outputs, and as the 3008 has a native DisplayPort input you can run the 3007 on one DVI, one of the 3008's on the other DVI and the other 3008 on the DP.

[stangflyer]

Be carefull with this as at 3x30> your 1 gig framebuffer is going to get overrun. There are people on here that are having a heack of a time running 3x24 in monitors. I think 1680x1050 is the sweet spot for eyefinity. I think that the 5870 six port may run better than the 5970 because it has 2 gigs of ram. Most people are saying that the framebuffer or the amount of memory is the issue not the power of the card. I just got my 5970 last night but have not had time to set eyefinity yet. Will hopefully do that to night.

[Purpleraine]

Thank you for your feedback.

Does the 2GB on the 5970 not help the buffer problem you are mentioning as the 5870 is only 1GB?

[stangflyer]

Thank you for your feedback.

Does the 2GB on the 5970 not help the buffer problem you are mentioning as the 5870 is only 1GB?

No it does not. The 5970 cannot combine the 1gb from each core. The most memory you have available is 1gb.

[0utf0xZer0]

[quote]Thank you for your feedback.

Does the 2GB on the 5970 not help the buffer problem you are mentioning as the 5870 is only 1GB?

No it does not. The 5970 cannot combine the 1gb from each core. The most memory you have available is 1gb.

Just to give the reason behind this, SLI and Crossfire both require that each GPU have its own memory. So the 2GB on the 5970 is operationally equivalent to 1GB on a single GPU board..

[Purpleraine]

I think that the 5870 six port may run better than the 5970 because it has 2 gigs of ram.

So ultimately which setup do you recommend I should go for to obtain viewing eyefinity over 3 x 30" Dell monitors. This is something I will start after christmas as I want to improve my experiences in racing, flightsims and other games.

Currently I am running a XFX Nvidia 295 1796RAM card

[VRman]

Hi, I did exactly what you are planning to do recently. I had a PLP setup with a Dell 3007 and upgraded by adding two Dell 3008. I also switched from SoftTH to Eyefinity with the 5970. The new setup is impressive when everthing works, but it is still hit and miss for me. Games like Call of Duty: WaW, GRID and the Source titles run totally smooth at high settings, but I haven't had luck others like CoD4 or the Crysis games yet, which I got to run better with SoftTH and a GTX285. I must say it is still early days and I have a lot more experimenting to do.

The 1Gb framebuffer also worries me a bit. FarCry 2, for example, runs smooth as silk but occasionally freezes for a split second when I run or drive. Lowering the detail settings doesn't seem to help. This never happened with my GTX285 with 2Gb VRAM, although it is not as fast. For this reason I think that crossfiring a 5970 would be a suboptimal solution, and I'll wait for cards with more VRAM before I would upgrade again.

Overall I'm very happy with this setup and I certainly recommend it, as you can expect the drivers to improve.

[0utf0xZer0]

Hi, I did exactly what you are planning to do recently. I had a PLP setup with a Dell 3007 and upgraded by adding two Dell 3008. I also switched from SoftTH to Eyefinity with the 5970. The new setup is impressive when everthing works, but it is still hit and miss for me. Games like Call of Duty: WaW, GRID and the Source titles run totally smooth at high settings, but I haven't had luck others like CoD4 or the Crysis games yet, which I got to run better with SoftTH and a GTX285. I must say it is still early days and I have a lot more experimenting to do.

The 1Gb framebuffer also worries me a bit. FarCry 2, for example, runs smooth as silk but occasionally freezes for a split second when I run or drive. Lowering the detail settings doesn't seem to help. This never happened with my GTX285 with 2Gb VRAM, although it is not as fast. For this reason I think that crossfiring a 5970 would be a suboptimal solution, and I'll wait for cards with more VRAM before I would upgrade again.

Overall I'm very happy with this setup and I certainly recommend it, as you can expect the drivers to improve.

I would think the 2GB frame buffer explains why Crysis ran better on your GTX 285 at that res, since I've heard the game is fairly tough on the graphics memory.

When you say PLP setup, I assume you're talking 4960X1600 with a 30 inch and two 20s? What did you have to do to get Crysis to run on that with a GTX 285?
Although I'm surprised a GTX 285 had enough power to run the game well on a PLP setup

[Purpleraine]

Ok so with alittle reading I think I will settle with the 5870 Eyefinity6, does anyone have a release date for this yet?

[VRman]

[quote]Hi, I did exactly what you are planning to do recently. I had a PLP setup with a Dell 3007 and upgraded by adding two Dell 3008. I also switched from SoftTH to Eyefinity with the 5970. The new setup is impressive when everthing works, but it is still hit and miss for me. Games like Call of Duty: WaW, GRID and the Source titles run totally smooth at high settings, but I haven't had luck others like CoD4 or the Crysis games yet, which I got to run better with SoftTH and a GTX285. I must say it is still early days and I have a lot more experimenting to do.

The 1Gb framebuffer also worries me a bit. FarCry 2, for example, runs smooth as silk but occasionally freezes for a split second when I run or drive. Lowering the detail settings doesn't seem to help. This never happened with my GTX285 with 2Gb VRAM, although it is not as fast. For this reason I think that crossfiring a 5970 would be a suboptimal solution, and I'll wait for cards with more VRAM before I would upgrade again.

Overall I'm very happy with this setup and I certainly recommend it, as you can expect the drivers to improve.

I would think the 2GB frame buffer explains why Crysis ran better on your GTX 285 at that res, since I've heard the game is fairly tough on the graphics memory.

When you say PLP setup, I assume you're talking 4960X1600 with a 30 inch and two 20s? What did you have to do to get Crysis to run on that with a GTX 285?
Although I'm surprised a GTX 285 had enough power to run the game well on a PLP setup
Yes that was a 4960x1600 setup and Crysis was playable on medium settings using SoftTH v1.07 and a GTX 285. With my Eyefinity setup it is currently a slideshow. Maybe it has to do with the larger framebuffer but I've also read that Crysis is friendlier to Nvidia cards.

I've been testing a bunch of games and it is still a mixed bag. Many run perfectly on high settings, but others get totally stuck. You get the feeling that the Eyefinity hardware can definitely drive 7680x1600 with ease, but that the software is often holding it back. I sure hope ATI keeps working hard on those drivers and Crossfire profiles.

Ok so with alittle reading I think I will settle with the 5870 Eyefinity6, does anyone have a release date for this yet?

I saw it previewed early November already I also wonder what is holding it up. Maybe they want to launch it together with those thin-bezel Sammies. If you have the patience, apparently a 5890 is coming early next year that could be even more interesting.

[Dave Baumann]

Ok so with alittle reading I think I will settle with the 5870 Eyefinity6, does anyone have a release date for this yet?

I do. :lol: :wink:

[Paradigm Shifter]

Next question:

Can you share it? :mrgreen:

Edit: Retracted.

[Kinesis]

I do. :lol: :wink:

:doh

:nudgenudge

[Anprionsa]

Next question:

Can you share it? :mrgreen:

Edit: Retracted

Oh please don't do this...

[Paradigm Shifter]

OK. ;)

[VRman]

Update: after reading that NFS Shift runs better without Crossfire, I disabled Catalyst AI and tried the Crysis games again. They now run fine on medium settings at 7680x1600, impressive for a single GPU. I don't know how Crysis and Crysis Warhead got on the 5970 White list though as Crossfire obviously does not work in Eyefinity mode, at least not at this resolution. Most other games I tried run fine in Crossfire now, which is great.

Dave if you read this maybe you can highlight this issue to your people; I would love to engage the other GPU in Crysis so I can switch on some more eye candy. Thanks in advance!

Edit:
After some research it seems that Crossfire has always been an issue with Crysis so not just a problem with Eyefinity.

Some good news too though: the brief freezes that I experienced with FarCry 2 have disappeared after overclocking my 5970. The frame rate stays above 50 FPS while driving, this is with settings on Very High and no AA. I also do not experience any freezing with other games except for Stalker, which does that without Eyefinity too.

So it seems the 1Gb frame buffer is not that restrictive for gaming at this resolution, although I would love to see some comparison benchmarks at 7680x1600 once the 2Gb cards come out.

[MrCrowley]

I have a 3x30" too, using SoftTh + 285gtx + 8800u, and after some testing it´s true that most games doesn´t need more than 1GB (notable exception is GTA4, and FC2/CRYSIS in the edge of 1GB). That´s of course, without any AA.

But, if you want AA in some games, maybe you need larger framebuffer. For me, GPU power is the bottleneck, not vram. In your case, a 5970 (or better 2x5870) maybe has the raw power needed to move native res + AA in more games with good framerates.


Could you test some games at max res no AA, like Dead Space, Trine and CoD4?

[VRman]

AA is often not not worth the performance hit at 7680x1600 as it doesn't make much difference visually to me. I use AA if the framerate does not drop below around 40FPS, so it very much depends on how easy it is to drive the game in the first place. For example, the Source-based games run fine with high AA.

Of the ones you mention, I play Dead Space with everything maxed out including AA at 40-70 FPS. Trine on the other hand is not entirely smooth with AA so I don't use it, but everything else is maxed out including 8xAF at a very constant framerate in the higher 30s. CoD4 I play at 2xAA and everything else maxed out at 40-60FPS.

I guess I don't have to tell you that with 3x30" Eyefinity is a no-brainer. I used your setup for about a month but found that the number of games you can play comfortably at full res is fairly limited.