Q&A to ATI's Dave Baumann and SunSp*t

[Kinesis]

Dave are the 5870 six port edition going to be called 5890 ? and are they just about ready to release?
I'm leaning toward picking up two of these instead of the Fermi's atm.

[Dave Baumann]

The full name of the 6 DP board is "ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition".

[Mach1.9pants]

"ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition".

Say that fast 5 times LOL

[Paradigm Shifter]

I think 5876 works better when you want to say it fast. ;) Or 5870-6, whatever... 8)

[Tamlin]

5876 is actually a pretty good name for it! :D

[Anprionsa]

5876 is actually a pretty good name for it! :D

Agreed!

[Sideeffect]

Nvidia's 3D Vision Surround is said to work over two cards in SLI with different monitors connected to each card and be backward compatible with their current generation. ATI said they couldn't do this because of some sort of synchronisation issue.

Are ATI still working on this or are their fundamental differences between SLI and crossfire that will always prevent such a setup?

[suiken_2mieu]

Nvidia's 3D Vision Surround is said to work over two cards in SLI with different monitors connected to each card and be backward compatible with their current generation. ATI said they couldn't do this because of some sort of synchronisation issue.

Are ATI still working on this or are their fundamental differences between SLI and crossfire that will always prevent such a setup?

just to comment a bit here. nVidia's solution looks more and more like SoftTH, it's likely that they made something similar to SoftTH and has got SLI to work with it. ATI's solution is all hardware based, so that's why (by theory anyway) eyefinity would have those sync issues.

Hell they had that issue at the unveiling of Eyefinity with there X-plane Demo wall where they we running 4 copies of Xplane at the same time and the top left quadrant would move first, than the others would follow.

[DmS]

Hi, first post :)
I'm wading through the jungle of dp-dvi adaptors for my first triple setup and stumbled over this:
http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx

On that list there are several passive adaptors asides from VGA variants, this makes me very curious since everything so far points toward that active dp-dvi adaptors are the only ones that work.

Can this list be verified or at least explained a bit?
Thanx/Dan

[whismerhill]

this page seems to reference any dongle available that has been verified by AMD independently of EF & triple monitor setups
a search through the forum will give you all the needed details on this front.

[DmS]

Oh I've read through these and other forums on this, I promise :)

That's why I was mildly surprised that the list contained a lot of passive adaptors under the title Eyefinity Validated... thought it might be useful to get the developers view on that list.

Personally I decided yesterday to skip the adaptors since it's basically impossible to find them in Sweden at this point in time. I went with 3 Dell P2310 screens with displayports instead.

Thanx/Dan

[BubTheZombie]

Hi Dave,

just a quickie for you. I just bought a 5870 and have been using it for a nice performance increase with softth (prev. 3870). I am jonseying a bit for some eyefinity action, however.

I use 3 crt monitors because I've had a crt PJ for the last ten years and have grown to love the picture they give. I bought a display port to vga adaptor and tried it out.

I had only just installed windows 7 on a spare partition and had not loaded the latest 9.12 drivers and just had the basic ati driver that W7 uses. At first the display port worked. 1280x1024x85 popped up. "Great!!", thought I, "It's going to work". 3840x1024 (similar to 2560x1600) would probably be a good resolution for modern games and the 5870 and I could always use 4800x1200@60hz for the games that handled well at 6MP.

I then loaded catalyst 9.12 and everything turned to mud. It now no longer recognised the displayport monitor and only would if I set the resolution down to 1024x768x85hz. Then it would hiccup and only recognise 640x480.

I know it's easy to blame the adaptor but it worked fine (OK, there were 'blinking' issues but we won't go there for now) with the standard windows driver and went to hell and back with CCC 9.12. I'm guessing it may be an edid problem but, hey, what do I know?

Is ATI aware of the problem and will it be resolved in a future driver revision or am I stuck with the gimped softth for the foreseeable future?

The other alternative is to get a sapphire dvi adaptor and connect something like HDFury to it to get back to analog. Can you think of any reason off the top of your head why this may be a no go?

Many thanks for your time.

[BubTheZombie]

Hi Dave,
Just to add to the above, I just flashed my bios to the new one with the better voltages for DP. It allowed me in W7 to select 1280x1024@85hz for the DP. No 'blinking' so far. I set all my screens to the same rez and tried to set up a group. Instant failure. The DP monitor ID went from Compaq p1210 to UnPnP Generic flat panel monitor with a max rez of 640x480@60hz and stopped working. Rebooted and now the blinking is back at 1280x1024. Grrrr!

My W7 and eyefinity experience so far can only be described (politely) as somewhat catastrophic. Fed up with this, I booted back into XP which, unlike W7, didn't immediately update the ATI drivers for the flashed (and what it saw as a new) card so I was back on generic VGA drivers. Guess what, the DP port was working like a charm at 1600x1200@85hz with zero blinking or flashing. I uninstalled everything ATI and loaded up 9.12 hotfix and the DP port went back to 1280x1024@85hz but blinking every second. I could only hold a solid picture at 1024x768@85hz.

This really does appear to be a driver problem (possibly EDID related). Can you help shed some light on why the DP port works like a charm with generic VGA drivers and terribly with the ATI ones and suggest a possible solution?

Many thanks Dave, I just want my W7/eyefinity experience to be a good one and it's far from that at the moment.

Cheers,

Rob


edit: Thinking about it, I can only use 2 monitors in XP regardless of connection. Does that mean that the DP port uses the proper RAMDACS in XP and not the voodoo displayport timings it uses in W7? That could be the answer.

[Tanshin]

My Asus EAH5870 recommended PSU is 500w with a 12V with a rating of 40A. What are common problems that occur with a current rating of 18A?

Will this effect the Stability of Eyefinity, and it it recommended that I upgrade my PSU before even attempting Eyefinity?



-Tanshin

[McKie]

Dave. would you be so kind as to give a synopsis of how these drivers are developed. How many and who is involved in the process. is it just a process of going through different teams Departments. do the various teams take into consideration things submitted in feedback . Who does the final ok

[spammeister]

So I see that Samsung finally released a date and a price for their thin bezel monitor setup. The date being in March and the MSRP being 1900US$. This is for 3 23" displays, not including a monitor mount. Saw it on HardOCP.

My actual question to Dave and/or Sunsp*t would be if this is what ATi was expecting from a major partner in the Eyefinity launch, and if the price would/should/could be lowered into the realm of reasonability?

[suiken_2mieu]

So I see that Samsung finally released a date and a price for their thin bezel monitor setup. The date being in March and the MSRP being 1900US$. This is for 3 23" displays, not including a monitor mount. Saw it on HardOCP.

My actual question to Dave and/or Sunsp*t would be if this is what ATi was expecting from a major partner in the Eyefinity launch, and if the price would/should/could be lowered into the realm of reasonability?

that's ridiculous, i got my 3 panels for $500 altogether. Unless those monitors have some decent specs and color reproduction.

[McKie]

MSRP being 1900US$. This is for 3 23" displays, not including a monitor mount.

That's Insane.

Going over to [H] right now to look for article

[Dick Hard]

Hi Dave,

I use Catalyst 10.1, and have NO major problems anymore!!! It kinda feels like Nvidia.No, just kiddin',respect!! The team has done a good job!! Thanx for listening to us, and finetune drivers,for even better performance!!
:bowdown

[StevenT]

when i reboot, my system doesnt recognize the EyeFinity.
I always have to go to CCC and re-group the monitors myself and press on "detect monitors".

Gets annoying :)

my system:
1x hd 5750
3x 17" (1x dvi, 1x vga, 1x vga with DP2vga adapter)
win7
Catalyst 10.1

PS: when ati releases bezel correction, please have an option (like a tickbox) to also disable bezel correction. Personnaly i like how it is now. Because with shooting games, i wouldnt like it if a tiny enemy was hidden under the bezel and it got "corrected away".
My brains and eyes are so adapted that bezels dont disturb, i got slim bezels anyways.