Displayport-compatible screens needed for Eyefinity?

KryptoNyte · Post by **KryptoNyte** » 16 Oct 2009, 05:41

... That is why I'm glad they are here listening.

Good point.

rbjorn · Post by **rbjorn** » 16 Oct 2009, 10:04

Sorry about all the flak you are taking off some of the yahoos on this forum, going Displayport was a bold move and didn't take away from existing capabilities. If you can afford 3 monitors, you can afford the DPtoDVI adapter. Those kids don't know how the market works.

I´m neither a yahoo or an ignorant kid, but nice of you to resort to this lowly namecalling anyway Trueman... Being a customer rep is an ungrateful job in many cases but I am pretty sure both Dave Baumann and SunSp*t realizes, and in some cases appreciates, the fact that they aren´t just going to get roses thrown at them in forums like this. Without people questioning others decisions, ideas etc we wouldn´t be were we are today in many fields. You do understand that is a big reason they visit these forums, to get input from people, not just praise?

The 5800-series with Eyefinity is a GREAT product, it´s just not perfect. At least not yet.

ChainSOV · Post by **ChainSOV** » 16 Oct 2009, 12:23

If you can afford 3 monitors, you can afford the DPtoDVI adapter.

There are budget trippleheaders out there.
Like me.
I paid like 70Euro for my used 2nd and 3rd screens each.
No way I am gonna buy an adapter which costs more than the screen.
I can't upgrade just 1 screen to displayport either, they dont make 19" with displayport.

And tbh I dont want bigger screens, they take up too much deskspace already.

Mixed resolutions or pLp configurations would help with lowering vertical deskspace requirements.

But for now its just better to stay by my trusty TH2Go. No stupid DP reqs, bezel management, and I can drive 4 screens total off 2 dvi ports.

It would be awesome if 2 cards in crossfire could use their 4 legacy outputs to drive 4 or at least 3 legacy screens in eyefinity mode

Dave, SunSp*t, is something like this planned?

I would rather buy 2 cards than a stupid 100Euro adapter.

trueman832 · Post by **trueman832** » 16 Oct 2009, 14:45

@ Kryptonyte: No harm intended. But you have the ear of a major hardware developer, and some of the posts here are downright flaming. Some of their own responses point this out. Nobody singled you out, so don't worry. A few comments by others really rubbed me the wrong way, I thought we were supposed to play nice. Constructive criticism, right?

@ ChainSOV: Of course there are budget tripleheaders, I'm one too. Triplehead setups aren't the cheapest thing out there, you do have to spend some $$$ to keep up, it's not like going to a hockey game in a soup pot for a helmet and gardening gloves. How did you feel when PCI-E erupted onto the scene, and your shiny, blazingly fast AGP mobo was suddenly garbage because all the newest stuff was incompatible? I certainly couldn't afford a whole new rig at the time, but developers took that leap and here we are. It'll happen again and again, Displayport is no different than PCI-E, DDR3, Blu-Ray, SATA, or Windows 7. Look at the bright side, at least it's not 3 displayports on the back of the card! Then we'd really be screwed, and Dave & Sunsp*t would be lynched.

@ Dave & Sunsp*t: please read above; need ideas.

JKeefe · Post by **JKeefe** » 16 Oct 2009, 15:29

BH, I'm pretty sure that what we've really got going here is a commercial grade product, and the gaming community is more of a sideshow fringe income to simply help mature the technology into something more commercially attractive, a stepping stone if you will. Once you put it into perspective (where real cash comes from) the DP starts to make more sense for sure.

Matrox essentially said the same thing when they announced the TripleHead2Go DP Edition. It is a product designed first and foremost for the business world, and the entertainment side of things just gets to reap some of the fringe benefits.

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 16 Oct 2009, 15:58

BH, I'm pretty sure that what we've really got going here is a commercial grade product, and the gaming community is more of a sideshow fringe income to simply help mature the technology into something more commercially attractive, a stepping stone if you will. Once you put it into perspective (where real cash comes from) the DP starts to make more sense for sure.

You know, I do kind of take exception to this. I was a huge proponent for getting the 3 display capabilities on the initial configurations and there were considerable engineering challenges to it that put the team through many, many hoops - this configuration was difficult to achieve from the clock source perspective, from EMI concerns, supporting and fully qualifying the stacked DVI, the thermal considerations required to support the output, etc., etc. The team put a hell of a lot of effort into getting this display configuration running on the boards because it was clear to me that this is going to be one of the primary gaming configurations for Eyefinity, and gaming is the primary target for these initial boards.

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 16 Oct 2009, 16:01

It would be awesome if 2 cards in crossfire could use their 4 legacy outputs to drive 4 or at least 3 legacy screens in eyefinity mode

I'll humbly quote dave answer in another post which is related to this

[quote]Example, having 2x 5850's in Crossfire, have a SLS 3 monitor setup, and have 2 of the monitors connected to the DVI ports of the primary card, and the 3rd connected to a DVI port on the secondary card. 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.
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/11285t=15

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 16 Oct 2009, 16:06

[quote]on a sidenote I wonder if an ATI partner might do a redesign of the 5870 month later with 3x "working" DVI outputs, depends if they expect a market for it I guess ...

I don't thnk there is a large enough market for them to do that, or it would have been done in the first place.

hum I agree with the rest of your post but I'm not so sure about that bit...
why ? because there isn't a large enough market for AMD to put out a GFX card like that. Ho yes! that's probably the case.
But sometimes partners look at more niche markets than AMD & NVIDIA do, to differentiate themselves from other partners ...

(like 2GB GTX285 for example ... don't tell me this is not a niche market ... or worse : Asus MARS ...)

Post by **BHawthorne** » 17 Oct 2009, 02:28

[quote][quote]on a sidenote I wonder if an ATI partner might do a redesign of the 5870 month later with 3x "working" DVI outputs, depends if they expect a market for it I guess ...

I don't thnk there is a large enough market for them to do that, or it would have been done in the first place.

hum I agree with the rest of your post but I'm not so sure about that bit...
why ? because there isn't a large enough market for AMD to put out a GFX card like that. Ho yes! that's probably the case.
But sometimes partners look at more niche markets than AMD & NVIDIA do, to differentiate themselves from other partners ...

(like 2GB GTX285 for example ... don't tell me this is not a niche market ... or worse : Asus MARS ...)

IMHO, what was done, was done for several reasons and is targeted at the mainstream. AMD very deliberately designed this port out design for all of it's current cards on the market right now. Just look over Newegg and see the 5000-series line offerings. 100% of them use the same port out right now. Going 3 DVI would require a hardware redesign just get what you want. Just because you want something doesn't make it financially plausiable. Many of the things we want that AMD will listen to us are going to be software driver based suggestions. Those are a bit easier to modify than a hardware design, as they put out monthly software/driver updates. What you are suggesting takes much greater research and time (and budget) to pull off a hardware respin. What I am to understand out of all of this, the DP configuration was the only reason why this came about. They're probably not going to totally redesign the whole 5000-series port out configuration just because you want a 3rd "legacy" clock generator. They could explain it better though why it would require an expensive hardware redesign, as I'm a manufacturing engineer, not an electronics engineer.

Things like the ASUS Mars and EVGA Classified 285 occured because the manufacturer opened the design up to it's partners for custom designs. At this point in time AMD has been sticking to the reference designs only and to my knowledge has yet to license partners to modify the design. If you'll ever see a 3 legacy clock card, it would come out of AMD licensing the ability to open up custom variations of the cards to partners, most likely not from AMD. This late in the product development timeline, it makes no financial sense to respin a new 3rd "legacy" clock generator design. The most variation you might see at this moment is only custom heatsink or bios configurations. This would be a better request to target at AMD partners than at AMD themselves.

Would I want a 3 DVI 5000-series card? Yes. Would I buy one? Yes. Do I see it happening anytime soon? No. If it added a cost of....say....$30 premum to the card for a 3 DVI port card, that is still less than a $100 adapter. I fully understand that. It just doesn't mean it'll occur though. Just my 2 cents... :wink:

SunSp*t · Post by **SunSp*t** » 17 Oct 2009, 09:37

If ATI started development for this any time in the last 12 months, you can bet there were some heated meetings both before and after engineering launch, pressing the bean counters on how they plan to pay for this in the midst of a shaken World economy.

Development was started well before the economic crash last year. And yes, there were a number of people who regularly challenged the viability of EF post-crash. Folks who questioned the investment and the recurring costs. You already know which side prevailed. Debate is a good thing.

SunSp*t · Post by **SunSp*t** » 17 Oct 2009, 09:57

Hi Dave and Sunsp*t,
I am having one problem and I wanted your input. My centre monitor is on the Bizlink adapter, and from time to time it starts blinking ... interspersed with artifacts, patterns, and a lot of other loss of signal stuff.

My question to you, engineer to engineer, could this be a bad displayport? I realize it could just be a bad adapter, but Dell, where I got the Bizlink adapter, is horrible to deal with.

Thanks,
trueman832, Toronto

True,

I wish I could give you an answer, but the fact is that I don't know enough about potential problems to say anything useful. I would go to the lab and ask, but I am going to be OOO for the next two weeks for medical reasons.

From the symptoms, it could be anything from the graphics card to the adapter, to the cables, to the monitor. Have you tried moving the monitor to other outputs (not in EF modes) to see how it works? and checked the cable between the adapter and monitor on another monitor? Have you tried using freeze-spray on the card when the display is acting up? I can't offer you much more help than saying you should try to isolate or identify the component that is causing the problem. That will be somewhat difficult for the BizRate adapter (no solution springs to mind).

SunSp*t

SunSp*t · Post by **SunSp*t** » 17 Oct 2009, 10:34

I don't thnk there is a large enough market for them to do that, or it would have been done in the first place. I think EyeFinity occured because they were looking at new ways to use that third active port DP allowed, not to accomodate people who already had 3 DVI displays. It came about with different reasoning than how most of us arrived at triple-head. This is also why there is a bit of friction here, because both this community and EyeFinity do triple-head, but came about in different ways. For 99% of the population, our concerns are largely irrelevant to the 5000-series line. We do bring some new perspective to the table that AMD is listening though with at least 2 people here. Many things we are seasoned veterans at AMD is only now just having to troubleshoot. That is why I'm glad they are here listening. I would hope our perspective is useful in prioritizing EyeFinity feature implementation.

Very perceptive and nearly 100% correct.

It isn't as if we completely dissed those who happen to own three DIV monitors. We did try (and are still trying) to make the 3rd DVI less painful. But we also realized that the market of folks who don't have three monitors is (almost infinitely) larger than those who do. For those folks, the purchase of a third or even a second and third monitor carried no legacy considerations. We also very carefully and thoroughly examined the economics and usage cases. Going down the path of more than two DVI's with native support was too expensive throughout the ecosystem than going down the path of favoring DP (not to mention DVI has resolutions limits that I would not accept).

If native support for more than two DVIs had been a requirement, I can tell you authoritatively EF would never have happened. What a lost oportunity that would have been!

chineseleper · Post by **chineseleper** » 17 Oct 2009, 16:35

i've been using 3 screens for office use mainly, 2 via dvi with a 2600xt and 1 via dvi with surroundview (xpress 1250). now after updating to Windows 7 x64 with the latest drivers, surroundview stopped working (I can only use 2 screens now), so I wanted to buy myself a HD 5770, but unluckily, it seems that a clockgen is missing (for 3xdvi). So my question is wether the new HD 5770 works with Surroundview? So ppl like me don't need to buy an active adapter because they already have a "spare one" on their board which worked perfectly in Vista?

KryptoNyte · Post by **KryptoNyte** » 17 Oct 2009, 17:45

If native support for more than two DVIs had been a requirement, I can tell you authoritatively EF would never have happened. What a lost oportunity that would have been!

Okay, I give. I called Dell and ordered the adapter. We do appreciate the work involved in getting the 3-screen audience taken care of during development.

Are there any cost effective LCD solutions out there that are larger than 24" that have the DP ports natively?

Sunspot, Dave, thanks for your in-depth info here in the forum. It's been very helpful in making purchasing decisions, and hopefully as this works itself out over the coming months, I can successfully sell my customers on these hardware solutions.

Dave Baumann · Post by **Dave Baumann** » 17 Oct 2009, 19:01

There's a thread tracking DP panels here:

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16909

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 17 Oct 2009, 19:19

...

well... in fact you just said in extreme details my thoughts on the subject when I wrote my first post, I'm actually scratching my head right now wondering why the discussion went that route :lol:
just one clarification though, I don't want/desire/wish 3xDVI because by the time I have enough desk space & budget to buy 3 screens, DP equipped screens will probably occupy a good percent of the screens market ...
not even considering the fact that I'm not ready to triple my screen power consumption...

Summoner · Post by **Summoner** » 17 Oct 2009, 20:35

You've made it clear that 3xDVI support on a single GPU isn't going to happen for cost reasons related to the additional hardware needed; but that's not the only way to get 3+ DVI clocks in a single system. Could EF support 3+x DVI when combined with crossfire, or is there a requirement that all the outputs be driven by the same GPU?

Post by **Mach1.9pants** » 17 Oct 2009, 20:41

You've made it clear that 3xDVI support on a single GPU isn't going to happen for cost reasons related to the additional hardware needed; but that's not the only way to get 3+ DVI clocks in a single system. Could EF support 3+x DVI when combined with crossfire, or is there a requirement that all the outputs be driven by the same GPU?

There is a quote from Dave B, but basically (I don't understand the tech) yes.... only the output from one card will be used in CF.

Bummer after the X-Plane demo I was hoping to run 3 5870s, in non CF, on my non-CF mobo. One for each screen :(

KryptoNyte · Post by **KryptoNyte** » 17 Oct 2009, 21:20

Of course it depends on the scenario, but in one particular simulation, Eyefinity has basically maxed out the capabilities of the remaining hardware. Even the 5850 cards in 3screen are seeing slowdowns due to CPU's that are only capable of 3 to 4 ghz. Depends on the game I suppose.

whismerhill · Post by **whismerhill** » 18 Oct 2009, 03:01

You've made it clear that 3xDVI support on a single GPU isn't going to happen for cost reasons related to the additional hardware needed; but that's not the only way to get 3+ DVI clocks in a single system. Could EF support 3+x DVI when combined with crossfire, or is there a requirement that all the outputs be driven by the same GPU?

previous page search for "Dave Baumann" ... :roll:

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