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

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 16 Oct 2009, 03:15

Would that be someone willing drop in around here every now and then? If not, where would be the best place to keep up to date on his EyeFinity press releases and communication? Does he blog like SunSp*t and you do?

He Tweets actually - @CatalystMaker. Thought I'll probably report here as well when something is ready to be said.

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 16 Oct 2009, 03:18

In the 4870x2 a feature called "sideport" was always shown on the slides and whatnot but never implemented, and it was widely believed that if sideport were to be enabled the 4870x2 could have surpassed Nvidia GTX295 (since the sideport was a direct interconnect between both GPU cores and may have helped performance greatly). Well, it's been ages since anyone has even spoken about it, but what will happen to Sideport? Will it be enabled on the 5870x2 and the 4870x2 at the same time?

I'll steal the same answer from the one I gave Guru3D:

This is simply a case of our software capabilities catching up to our hardware capabilities.
When the initial design of the RV770 was taking place and concepts such as Sideport were being kicked around our ATI CrossFireX™ software wasn't in the place it is right now, so there was a much higher reliance on inter-chip communication.

While having lots of bandwidth is rarely a bad thing, the ATI CrossFireX communication bandwidth between two discrete cards is less than local bandwidth - even though Sideport doubles the inter-GPU communication bandwidth on an X2 type solution it's still not significant enough to really change the disparity in local frame buffer and inter-GPU bandwidths.

The software work that occurred in the space of time between the RV770 design and product saw significant improvements in inter-GPU communication. Internal to the driver we now have a number of "alternate frame rendering" (AFR) profiles, with many parameters that can be tweaked in order to control how the rendering behaves over multiple GPU's and reduce the inter-GPU communication as much as possible. By the time we put two RV770's on a board and started testing Sideport, the current ATI CrossFireX software capabilities delivered more than enough bandwidth, obviating the need for Sideport.

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 16 Oct 2009, 03:36

If this feature was enabled, it would save alot of hassle and money in having to buy an active adaptor, which then could be spend on a 2nd ATI card for better performance, (CrossFire 5850's > 1x5870 + active adaptor)

To do this type of setup you'd need a genlock/framelock type connector that is typically a workstation feature. Without this it would make the timing/syncing of the panels between card particularly difficult and you'd be getting "panel" tearing.

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 16 Oct 2009, 15:45

[quote]If this feature was enabled, it would save alot of hassle and money in having to buy an active adaptor, which then could be spend on a 2nd ATI card for better performance, (CrossFire 5850's > 1x5870 + active adaptor)

To do this type of setup you'd need a genlock/framelock type connector that is typically a workstation feature. Without this it would make the timing/syncing of the panels between card particularly difficult and you'd be getting "panel" tearing.
I guess this would be the case even if the number of cards & number of screens were symmetrical ? (i.e. 2 identical gfx cards, 2 screens, one on each card or 3 cards , 3 screens & so on ... )

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 16 Oct 2009, 15:48

To do this type of setup you'd need a genlock/framelock type connector that is typically a workstation feature. Without this it would make the timing/syncing of the panels between card particularly difficult and you'd be getting "panel" tearing.

I guess this would be the case even if the number of cards & number of screens were symmetrical ? (i.e. 2 identical gfx cards, 2 screens, one on each card or 3 cards , 3 screens & so on ... )
Probably, because the rendering workloads would be different between the boards.

Xenos555 · Post by **Xenos555** » 17 Oct 2009, 19:43

With the new 58xx and 57xx cards, can you have separate colour profiles for each monitor? Is that a feature that is in the works?

If not, would I need to have 3 video cards and maybe 2 DVI switches if I wanted to switch to Eyefinity for gaming?

chineseleper · Post by **chineseleper** » 18 Oct 2009, 09:32

Question: Is ATI SurroundView still supported with the HD5xxx?

stangflyer · Post by **stangflyer** » 21 Oct 2009, 08:24

Dave can you confirm if the 5870x2 will be a 6 port card? Some people have said the 5870x2 will be just like the current 5870 with support for 3 monitors. What will be the 6 port card be then. I heard that there will be a 2 gig ram card also. I really want to be able to use 3x1 landscape and the 1 extended monitor to have teamspeak and temp monitors running and visible. I always host a 8 man lan on thursdays and it is so much easier when you can monitor teamspeak and hamachi on a visible monitor. That is why I stayed away from sli for the longest time. I think that the 2 gig ram card will help for the big resolutions but I also think it will not have the horsepower to run the image quality we would like on games. Almost all the people that are waiting for the 5870x2 are doing it because they think it will be a 6 port card and hoping it is 2 gigs ram per core. I am expecting and ready to pay $500to $600 for this card. I am a 45 yr old gamer and have been waiting for 4-5 years for some mulimonitor gaming but the matrox triplehead has not been the solution that I would want. It is to much work to configure for my tastes. Thanks for reading this long post and thank you for the reply!!!

sonofander · Post by **sonofander** » 22 Oct 2009, 01:55

Hey Dave,

do you know if we will be able to Xfire the eyefinity 6 version of the 5870 with a regular 5870?

Thanks

Post by **Tamlin** » 22 Oct 2009, 17:52

Thanks for previous answer Dave. :) Its good to see that AF have come that far.

I have another question:

Will ATI provide with an option to use our previous gen cards (4000 series) with the new 5000 series? I am thinking spesifically Havok and Bullet on Opencl, GPGPU related tasks etc.

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 22 Oct 2009, 21:35

With the new 58xx and 57xx cards, can you have separate colour profiles for each monitor? Is that a feature that is in the works?

At present Hue, Saturation and Tempurature can be contolled per panel in an Eyefinity group. Gamma, Brightness and Contrast applies to all panels in an Eyefinity Display Group (though can be separately controlled in extended mode).

I would say "stay tuned" though.

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 22 Oct 2009, 21:41

Question: Is ATI SurroundView still supported with the HD5xxx?

I believe it should be.

Cygone · Post by **Cygone** » 28 Oct 2009, 21:24

I have now purchased 2x5850's (but not a DVI-DP adaptor, due to the inability to actually get hold of one of these devices currently, i live in the UK)

I know that at present Eyefinity and Crossfire dont work together, and thats fine.

I currently have 1 display connected to my Primary card, and 2 Displays connected to my secondary card.

My question is:

I have set two profiles in CCC, 1st one is a single 1650x1080 display using CrossFireX on a single (middle)monitor

The 2nd profile i have is 3x1650x1050 non Eyefinity group, just for standard windows work. (using 3 DVI outputs accross both cards)

I have set the profiles to save "all Catalyst Control Center settings" in the profile manager and both profiles are listed. The problem is when i try to swap between these two profile is does not work.

Is there anyway or will there be to enable/disable CrossfireX using profiles. As at the moment i can only assume that profile swapping does not change the status of CrossFireX

thanks

flopper · Post by **flopper** » 17 Nov 2009, 14:40

does crossfire and eyefinity work on the 5970 and other cards as the 5850/5870 in crossfire also with the beta 9.12 catalyst?

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 18 Nov 2009, 18:34

do you know if we will be able to Xfire the eyefinity 6 version of the 5870 with a regular 5870?

Yes.

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 18 Nov 2009, 18:41

does crossfire and eyefinity work on the 5970 and other cards as the 5850/5870 in crossfire also with the beta 9.12 catalyst?

The driver for HD 5970 that was sent to press (that will also be made available to public as a Hotfix / beta) is a proof of concept for Crossfire X and Eyefinity; this driver will not have support for Crossfire X and Eyefinity on other boards as the environment is a little more controlled on the HD 5970 board. We are working on some changes to how we handle which titles are enabled and also some optimizations to improve scaling; we expect to have this ready and available in early 2010 and should enable it for all boards.

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 19 Nov 2009, 05:41

I don't know if this question can be answered by you guys but I'll ask it anyway.

I don't see much usage (if at all) of fur rendering in new games
is this still available ? is this hard to implement ?

Thanks.

Anprionsa · Post by **Anprionsa** » 19 Nov 2009, 05:51

[quote]does crossfire and eyefinity work on the 5970 and other cards as the 5850/5870 in crossfire also with the beta 9.12 catalyst?

The driver for HD 5970 that was sent to press (that will also be made available to public as a Hotfix / beta) is a proof of concept for Crossfire X and Eyefinity; this driver will not have support for Crossfire X and Eyefinity on other boards as the environment is a little more controlled on the HD 5970 board. We are working on some changes to how we handle which titles are enabled and also some optimizations to improve scaling; we expect to have this ready and available in early 2010 and should enable it for all boards.

Great news!

Just a quick comment. I would just like to thank you for all your support here, I know that my thoughts may be considered a little less important because I recently joined. But I have been a forum goer for some time and find your support and answering questions to be very good, so thanks.

Now just a quick question that may have been answered. But do you see Eyefinity going more mainstream? What is the ultimate goal for ATI in terms of Eyefinity?

Also there seems to be a program out that helps called "Wide Screen Fixer" that seems to do what the ATI drivers cannot do at this moment, just wanted to know your opinion on the subject.

Post by **Mach1.9pants** » 19 Nov 2009, 08:09

Also there seems to be a program out that helps called "Wide Screen Fixer" that seems to do what the ATI drivers cannot do at this moment, just wanted to know your opinion on the subject.

To be fair to ATi the WSF doesn't do what ATi should but what should be enabled in games. It is the games makers that are at fault. All IW need to do to get all their CoD games to work is to add 3x16:9 and 3x16:10 and 3x5:4 etc options into the game menu and Dopefish would be less employed (and I wouldn't have had to buy him a copy of MW2!)

It is not up to ATi to make games HOR+ (i.e. work properly at WS and MM resolutions) but the games makers themselves. Sometimes the fuss we make means it gets patched to work. Bioshock and Far Cry 2 are notable examples of big games where the WSGF has successfully campaigned for proper widescreen support. However CoD is bigger than any fuss WSGF can make, if IW can completely ignore their core PC demographic and do away with Dedi Servers, they can, and will, not include proper WS support. Even though it would take them literally 1 man day to implement in a patch. When you make 550 million in the first 5 days, we are small fry! Hell the PC is small fry, with less than 10% of tha money coming from PC sales.

However what ATi can do, and I am sure Dave is (especially as NV don't offer this ;)), is use ATi's leverage to ensure current and future games niclude this support in the game

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 19 Nov 2009, 09:32

...

To add to that, ATI would also need legal rights to do what dopefish does

the utilities are hacking the memory of said applications on a case by case basis. It's tolerated because it's not harmful and it's some individuals doing it....

Widescreen Gaming Forum