Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hello,

I have an Ati 5770. I am considering building myself a three monitor desktop. Currently I only use one monitor. Each monitor will be running at 1920x1080 for a total of 5760x1080.

I understand that in a 3D game this video card will not do well AT ALL at this resolution. I am fine with reducing my display to simply one monitor. Is this hard to do on the fly? Would it leave the other two screens displaying my Windows 7 desktop or would it black them out?

The most important question I have is whether or not the 5770 can handle 5760x1080 in basic Windows 7 applications. I will mostly be doing school/work on it and I could use the extra display real-estate while keeping the data on the same computer. I would be doing the following tasks:

Web Browsing (Chrome, Firefox)
Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, maybe others)
Multimedia (iTunes/Quicktime, Windows Media Player, VLC, Winamp)
Windows Explorer
Notepad
FileZilla

And other non-3d applications that are mostly CPU driven.

Does anyone with a 5770 in eyefinity or with a fair bit of knowledge be able to tell me if I would have performance issues?

Please tell me what to expect if I were to buy another two monitors and plug them in today.



My most gracious thanks for those who share their knowledge with me.

It will handle it with no problems :)
Even some games like WoW / CS:S, maybe even MW2 (not 100% sure on the MW2 tho!!) will be fine with a 5770 for eyefinity.

The way it works is that the card/drivers make Windows into seeing all displays as one single, large display. You do this by creating an Eyefintiy "Group" in CCC. Once you have that large resolution in Windows, then you can launch you game and select that high resolution, assuming your game will do it properly. Check the Master Games List for details on that.

I strongly suggest you use Bezel Management, which compensates for the frame around your monitors, which will give you a slightly wider res, but looks much better. I went from 5760x1200 to a compensated 6040x1200. (which those games should also see and be able to recognise)

As for the hardware itself, there's lots of info here on how to get it set up, and trouble-shooting issues. You NEED at one monitor to use the Display Port - Either by using a monitor that already has a DP connection on it, or using an ACTIVE DP-to-VGA/DVI/HDMI/whateveryouneed adapter. There's a big thread on which ones work well.

All screens have to be the same resolution, and it looks better if they match. More for the sake of color-matching than aesthetics. If you are unable to buy two more of the monitor you already have, then I'd suggest using the odd monitor out as the center.

As for performance, if you find any games running sluggish, you can can also run them in lower resolutions, like 5040x1050, or its' bezel managed counterpart - something like 5080x1050

On top of multi-display gaming sweetness, having extra monitors is REALLY handy. You can watch full-screen videos while gaming on single screen or surfing, etc., have multiple browser/document/whatever windows running and visible.. it's lovely, and you'll never go back to single.