Widescreen Gaming Forum

[quote]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

Much needed clarification, thanks!

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.

Well, I only joined recently as well! :)

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?

In what way mainstream? In terms of support, every product from the HD 5000 Series that we have announced so far has the capability to support Eyefinity, and bearing in mind that we already have products in the $130 range then the barrier for entry to triple-wide gaming as already been reduced.

In general terms, though, I think we can popularise the notion of this more and I think we can see the some early results of that already - especially with things like the Eyefinity Challenge with [H]ardOCP; we've already introduced the notion to a wider range of people. Its difficult to gauge how widespread it will become though.

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.

I think Mach1.9pants has covered many of the points fairly well already. However, bear in mind that an application such as Wide Screen Fixer is altering the game in some why - thats an area that we shouldn't go; you may ask how this is different from enabling control panel AA or AF, but even in those cases we are not altering the application, but altering what our driver is doing as the application code passes through it, so even in those cases we never actually alter the application.

Generally we are supporting of 3rd party, community driver apps though - frequently we reach out to GPU application developers, such as GPU-z or others, and provide them hardware and information in order for them to get support of our products with their apps.

On the game front, though, Mach is also correct in that where we are aiming for is the up front approach with the developer and evangelising Eyefinity to them in order to get more support with the app, this of course doesn't affect older titles and will have varying results, but at the very least we'll be raising its profile. Our engagements with developers are already bearing fruit though - we've already seen Bioware update Dragon Age for triple wide and our engagement with Codemasters with DiRT 2 has also yeilded good results so far.

...and our engagement with Codemasters with DiRT 2 has also yeilded good results so far.

I like that word "engagement", keeps the people with tin-foil hats busy. Kinda like how NV was "engaged" with Batman: AA.


Does ATi/AMD have any specific beef with the way Lucid Hydra tech operates? I know NV has a "Kill On Sight" mentality about that one. Do you see it as an "invasion" into the crossfire realms, or another way to sell more kit, since it's more of a "this will affect 1% of 1% of our bottom line"?

Obviously 5000 series card sales arn't hurting, hopefully TSMC gets their act together to get y'all much-needed market share!

BZ D.B!

I like that word "engagement", keeps the people with tin-foil hats busy. Kinda like how NV was "engaged" with Batman: AA.

Except that, I should hope, that TH2G users will see the friuts of our engagement as well; likewise when others bring out DX11 GPU's everything will still operate there. :)

Does ATi/AMD have any specific beef with the way Lucid Hydra tech operates? I know NV has a "Kill On Sight" mentality about that one. Do you see it as an "invasion" into the crossfire realms, or another way to sell more kit, since it's more of a "this will affect 1% of 1% of our bottom line"?

Not as far as I'm aware. Personally, I'm quite interested to see what the MSI board does / performs.

Dave, thank you and sunsp*t for your contributions, in my opinion you guys (& the rest of ati/amd) are single handidly saving pc gaming! You cannot get tripple screen on a console and the more people that see eyefinity in action, want it over the console experience!

Anyway, I was wondering if you guys made any headway on wheter or not portrait x landscape x portrait configurations will be implemented with eyefinity. I am currently running 4960x1600 resolution (one gateway 30" 2560x1600 monitor flanked on each side by two dell 2007fp 1600x1200s) and for me that is the ideal amount of screen action...not too wide and perfectly tall at 1600 pixels! However, since eyefinity is not supported, I am forced to use SoftTH for tripple screening which is less than ideal to say the least.

I have a xfx 5870 and was lucky enough to be able to purchase a sapphire 5970 on newegg yesterday (should arrive here today!) and I have plans to tri-fire them! I really really want to be able to push an eyefinity setup with them, but having three 30" monitors would be too much for my desk, my pocket book and my woman, and stepping down to smaller 24" monitors would be too narrow for my tastes. I love having a big 30" in the center flanked by smaller side monitors. Can I pay one of your programmers $1,000 to work some overtime and make this PLP happen for me because it would save me $2,400 which is the cost of two more 30"s :)

I had asked sunsp*t about a month ago about PLP and he said PLP setups are a possibility, so I wanted to check and see if any headway was made there.

Thank you so much for all your contributions!

I had asked sunsp*t about a month ago about PLP and he said PLP setups are a possibility, so I wanted to check and see if any headway was made there.

I would assume this,
crossfire and bezelmangement done early 2010, say dec-march timeframe.
and that PLP happens after that period which means 6 months to a year from now or they even save it for eyefinity 2 as it isnt functional either with tech or money to spend it on the 1 generation cards and eyefinity.

I dont know the technical difficulties but this sort of things takes a lot of time and money to work properly on all sorts of plattforms.

Hi Flopper, thanks for your reply and great name lol!

Yea, I agree and understand that they have bigger fish to fry with having to get eyefinity working with crossfire on the 5850 & 5870 models and am pretty sure that they will be addressing that in Q1 2010.

I was hoping that when they have the time to address the bezel management issue that they could also address the PLP issue, so I was just checking to see if any headway was made for PLPs before I do something stupid like waste money on two more 30"s and then have my woman make me sleep on the couch for the rest of my days lol.

Hi Flopper, thanks for your reply and great name lol!

Yea, I agree and understand that they have bigger fish to fry with having to get eyefinity working with crossfire on the 5850 & 5870 models and am pretty sure that they will be addressing that in Q1 2010.

I was hoping that when they have the time to address the bezel management issue that they could also address the PLP issue, so I was just checking to see if any headway was made for PLPs before I do something stupid like waste money on two more 30"s and then have my woman make me sleep on the couch for the rest of my days lol.

then just wait. after all eyefinity is still in its early days and still needs some tweaking/fixing here and there.

take care of your wife in the mean time ;)

Yea, I think I will just pick up a third 2007fp for the time being as that is relatively cheap. I can go tripple screen on those and hopefully bring the 30" back if they support mixed PLP setups.

Yea, I think I will just pick up a third 2007fp for the time being as that is relatively cheap. I can go tripple screen on those and hopefully bring the 30" back if they support mixed PLP setups.

We just got to remember that eyefinity is still a little baby for ATI (remember I think sunspot said they started working on it this year!) and that we should see some great things done with it in the year to come. I'm excited to see it!

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

Yes.

In that case, will you be limited to an effective 1GB of the eyefinity6's memory?

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

Yes.

In that case, will you be limited to an effective 1GB of the eyefinity6's memory?

when using crossfire (whether the card is an X2 or there's two cards)
the total amount of memory of all crossfired cards is divided by the number of GPUs

so for 2 GPUs & 2GB of total memory you will get 1GB of available framebuffer (memory) because the other 1GB holds replicated data for the 2nd GPU

for 2 GPUs & 4GB of total memory (2GB per card if there's two cards , or 4GB for a single X2 type card), you will get 2GB of available framebuffer (memory) since the other 2GB will hold replicated data for the 2nd GPU

for 4GPUs & 4GB of total memory, you will get 1GB of available framebuffer since the other 3 GB will hold replicated data for the 3 others GPU (1GB for each)

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

Yes.

In that case, will you be limited to an effective 1GB of the eyefinity6's memory?

when using crossfire (whether the card is an X2 or there's two cards)
the total amount of memory of all crossfired cards is divided by the number of GPUs

so for 2 GPUs & 2GB of total memory you will get 1GB of available framebuffer (memory) because the other 1GB holds replicated data for the 2nd GPU

for 2 GPUs & 4GB of total memory (2GB per card if there's two cards , or 4GB for a single X2 type card), you will get 2GB of available framebuffer (memory) since the other 2GB will hold replicated data for the 2nd GPU

for 4GPUs & 4GB of total memory, you will get 1GB of available framebuffer since the other 3 GB will hold replicated data for the 3 others GPU (1GB for each)
This is a rule of thumb when using identical cards, but the eyefinity6 will have 2GB, and the 5870 will have 1GB. Your rule would imply that the 5870 will be able to reach across the PCIE&crossfire connection to access 512MB on the eyefinity6's pcb. My question is whether that is possible, and whether it will be a functional limitation.

This is a rule of thumb when using identical cards, but the eyefinity6 will have 2GB, and the 5870 will have 1GB. Your rule would imply that the 5870 will be able to reach across the PCIE&crossfire connection to access 512MB on the eyefinity6's pcb. My question is whether that is possible, and whether it will be a functional limitation.

ha ok didn't understand what you meant the first time

well still the answer is "nearly" in my bit of text
each and every GPU need to store a local copy of the first GPU's memory

if one GPU doesn't have enough local memory then each & every GPU is limited to the smallest amount of local memory available to any of the GPU's at hand.
Bandwidth & latency constraints are the reasons why it is like that. Storing data needed for GPU calculations on another card would cripple performance.

so with a 1GB card + 2GB card, in CF you'll get 1GB of usable memory/framebuffer

This may have been answered already, but what's the ETA on when 5040x1050 (or any other Triplehead resolution for that matter) will be supported on the 5700 - 5900 series cards? (Non-Eyefinity of course) IE: Using a Triplehead, MViewtech's Box, or Hell even that awesome Curved monitor that is 2880x900 (duelhead) from Alienware.

This may have been answered already, but what's the ETA on when 5040x1050 (or any other Triplehead resolution for that matter) will be supported on the 5700 - 5900 series cards? (Non-Eyefinity of course) IE: Using a Triplehead, MViewtech's Box, or Hell even that awesome Curved monitor that is 2880x900 (duelhead) from Alienware.

How odd, I just came to re-request this very same question.

I raised the issue some weeks back and Dave Baumann said he was going to speak to the 4800 series guys to find out what the story is (i.e. how they enabled support...)

Dave, did you manage to get any further with this problem?

Selfishly I have to re-ask this question as I have a time constraint of a few more weeks before I have to donate my current 4850 to my brothers new machine, so I must buy a new GPU. I'd love to make that GPU a 5800 series card but at this point I will have to stay with the 4800 series due to that elusive 5040x1050 support with TH2Go.

Help!

Hi there guys. Thanks again for this wonderful thing called Eyefinity - I have the greatest hopes for it for a specific non-gaming purpose that has confined me to XP for the last 7 years or so (due to the lack of horizontal spanning in Vista/Win7).

I use two IBM T221-DG5 ultra-high res monitors for my work. Each panel is 3840 x 2400, a resolution still unmatched in the sub $40,000 category, and takes two DVI-DL inputs. Each input gives a 1920x2400 vertical stripe at 48Hz, the max refresh of the monitor.

Under WinXP, Nvidia's drivers easily allowed me to do a horizontal span of the two 1920 x 2400 stripes @ 48Hz, creating a seamless desktop. However, XP is very long in the tooth and I was seriously looking forward to Eyefinity as a potential solution in Win7. I bought two 5750 cards to test this.

Here is my problem. So far I am only testing one of the T221 monitors, which as I mentioned takes 2 dual-link DVI inputs from one of the 5750 cards. From the EDID of each link, the possible resolutions for each link are:
1. 1920x2400 @ 48Hz (preferred, of course)
2. 3840x2400 @ 24Hz (refresh too slow)
3. 1920x1200 and a handful of lower resolutions like 1280x1024 all at 60Hz.

Now if I do duplicated desktops or extended displays, there is no problem. I can get 2 x 1920x2400 stripes @ 48Hz. BUT: and here is the problem, when I try to create an Eyefinity group spanning these two stripes, I only get THREE OPTIONS:
1. 7680x2400@24Hz (useless, this is trying to send 2 x 3840x2400 @ 24Hz to a panel that is only 3840x2400 physically)
2. 3200x1200@60Hz (this is 2x 1600x1200, of course again useless, only using a tiny bit of the panel)
3. 1600x600@60Hz (laughable, one of the highest resolution monitors ever made, running at 2 x 800x600)

I of course do not get the one I want, which is 3840x2400@48Hz (this is 2x 1920x2400@48Hz).

Question: Why are the Eyefinity group resolutions limited to only these 3 when the resolution I want is fully supported as a duplicate or extended desktop?
and 2. is there some registry tweak I can try to enable the resolutions I want in an Eyefinity group?

I tried playing with the "Alternate DVI operation" and "reduce DVI frequency for high resolution displays" which did not help.

The last time I tried an ATI card with the T221s was back in the X1900XT days. I remember having a lot of trouble even in XP getting them to span properly - the only (buggy) way was to use ATI Tray Tools and "enable large panel support". I went back to Nvidia since then.

Well, please - if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks again to everyone and to Dave and Sunsp*t for helping out in these forums!

Yeang

I've been reading the questions and really it all comes down to one thing, we all want non-standard resolutions supported in and out of eyefinity, and an ETA on when these issues will be fixed.

Also including mixed resolutions, Crossfire+Eyefinity, and Bezel Management.

I've been reading the questions and really it all comes down to one thing, we all want non-standard resolutions supported in and out of eyefinity, and an ETA on when these issues will be fixed.

Also including mixed resolutions, Crossfire+Eyefinity, and Bezel Management.

Lol you aren't asking for much... and "issues" sort of implies something is broken. I think we have delivered everything we said we would,so far, and we are working on many of the other things y'all have asked for. And some things you aren't aware of.

If $1000 would take care of PLP L88tbastard, I'da already paid for it out of my pocket! koawinter has it right, EF is still a baby. The universe of the desirable is much bigger than the reality of resource and time.

I know there are no answer in this, just wanted to let you all know I am still watching and reading.

[quote]I've been reading the questions and really it all comes down to one thing, we all want non-standard resolutions supported in and out of eyefinity, and an ETA on when these issues will be fixed.

Also including mixed resolutions, Crossfire+Eyefinity, and Bezel Management.

Lol you aren't asking for much... and "issues" sort of implies something is broken.

But SunSpo*t, I need my PLP, running on Crossfire with Bezel Management!

/s