Widescreen Gaming Forum

To celebrate forthcoming Christmas with WSGF fellows, starting from December 1st, 12:01am to December 19th, 12:59pm EST time, all WSGF members have a chance to WIN an award-winning HIS 6870 Turbo.

All you have to do is simply share your thoughts/ experience of Eyefinity (multi-display gaming) by replying to this forum thread, and then you will have the chance to win this awesome prize.

Enter this Giveaway to receive your HIS-Mass gift NOW! Merry Christmas!

Q: What's your thoughts/ experience of Eyefinity (Multi-Display Gaming)?

Terms and Conditions:[list]
[*]To sign up as a WSGF member, please click here. [/*:m]
[*]The prize winner will be picked from entries received by Midnight (EST) December 19th, 2010.[/*:m]
[*]The prize winner will be announced by 11:59 EST December 24th, 2010[/*:m][/list:u]

For More Information:[list]
[*]Eyefinity Technology[/*:m]
[*]The HIS Radeon HD 6870 Turbo Eyefinity4[/*:m][/list:u]

Awesome prize :rockout

nice piece of tech has the powers of awesome for sure

Yes I registered to be able to enter this contest.
But I followed the twitter for some time.

I'll try to find something in this forum where I'm able to contribute something. :searchplease

Considering that the 6870 is currently one of the fastest single core DX11 GPUs, and the fact that the 6870 is built on a now seasoned design it's hard to go wrong with this card.
Full HD single or multimonitor, Eyefinity or not, this card should be able to handle it all, time to enjoy some Tesselation I'd say. *laughs*

Thoughts and experiences on Eyefinity?

It's awesome. I'll never go back to single screen. Would there be any more to say?

Yes, it's a sweet prize.

I'm very pleased with the way Eyefinity has brought surround gaming further toward being mainstream. I had resigned myself to not upgrading my video card this year but I'd love to put the 6870 through its paces on my surround setup!

Not sure what is meant by starting from Dec. 1, 12:01am EST. Not quite there yet, but I'm going to assume whatever I post right now is still valid?

Anyway, my thoughts / experience with eyefinity and multi-display gaming:

When I built my new rig last September, I didn't even consider eyefinity. The 5800's were brand new at a non-inflated price point and provided very solid performance. I had vaguely read about 'eyefinity' prior to building my rig but was only mildly amused by it since pretty much all the publicity was based on the 6 screen version (which I think is both somewhat clunky and extravagant). It wasn't until the 5870's launched and I had already purchased one did I come to realize the power of simply using 3 monitors side by side. I watched videos and reviews (thanks a lot to [H]ardOcp) and decided I definitely wanted this. It took months for Dell's P2310H to come back in stock (eyefinity rush? It was pretty much the only 1080p DP monitor below $200).

When I got my monitors, eyefinity was hands down the biggest game changer I've ever experienced. I discovered WSGF through this when I searched for different FOV fixes for various games (WSGF just kept coming up on google for that).

It's important to note that this wasn't the first time multi-monitor gaming was available. But I think the fact that ATI was behind it and marketed it really brought it to a more mainstream crowd (even if not a whole lot of people actually have a multi-monitor setup, at least your average PC hobbiest now knows about it).

nVidia's surround was certainly a step forward for multi-monitor gaming. With both companies behind this technology, it encourages game developers to further support multi-monitor gaming. My roommate has a GTX 480 SLI surround setup and we both love gaming on three monitors.

I think in the future, multi-monitor gaming will certainly take off if it becomes more available to the average consumer. Nvidia surround has an SLI cost of entry while ATI has the DP limitation. If either camp rids themselves of those constraints, the ease / cost of entry will be greatly reduced especially as monitor costs drop at the same time. Cards are also becoming increasingly powerful relative to the games we're getting these days. Maybe monitor companies could somehow work with nvidia / ati on this (Dell certainly didn't expect their entire stock of DP monitors to get bought out weeks after the 5870 launch).

The 6870 in this giveaway is the perfect example of a very cost efficient entry card for eyefinity gaming. It's certainly powerful enough to run most games in triple wide for a very reasonable cost.

Personally since I have 5870 xfire already, the 6870 would be a novelty card for me (probably give it to a friend of mine and get him started with eyefinity). But I did want to share my experience with multi-monitor gaming.

There's no way I can comfortably game on a single screen in most games now. I'll use a single monitor if I HAVE to - but that's like running an old game at 800x600 windowed mode because I simply just have to.

My roommate has been running 1x3 eyefinity for 6 months now, 5760X1200 using 3 IPS monitors its just jaw dropping. However there are a few things I found that I would have to "live with" when you have a desktop this wide. Web browsing is much eaiser for me in one single monitor, so I typically resize the page so it fits. Movies also get resized, as with any photo editing or word processing tasks.
When it comes to gaming "Wide Screen Fixer" :bowdown is the ticket if the correct aspect ratio and FoV are not supported by the game. The 5760 eats through most of the games @ max rez (-Black Ops, but thats 6 and one 1/2 dozen to the other..)
Finally, the one feature I would like to see implemented would be an easy way to switch to extended desktops, i.e. using the middle monitor as the primary and the right/left as extended. As it is implemented now, you need to "disable" the group to gain the extended desktop functionality. If the profile manager could do all of these changes for you I would typically work in this mode, then switch to 1x3 for gaming. Right now it takes too much effort to disable the group and set it all up again to run in extended mode.
Overall a fantastic technology which I pary is in its infancy and only see more support from software developers. Oh and an optional 3d mode would be sweet too. :rockout

Playing on one screen won't ever be enough again! I've had Eyefinity withdrawal symptoms even on a 30" monitor. Increasing playable field of vision is the next step to making gaming closer to reality. Seeing this much in an fps must be considered cheating. Eyefinity is succeeding and more games are capable of supporting high resolutions out of the box. It's no surprise that my surround monitor gaming setup awes even those familiar with high end rigs.
I will never go back.

It's the only way I can play, I can never go back to just one screen now. I need a better card, but I cannot afford one at the moment, hope I win!

Nice Video Card !!! :rockout

Well not gonna lie, i've only seen Eyefinity and don't personally own the ability too. However, when I did see it, i've been saving up and going in my mates house to have gaming sessions with him all the time. :P I can't even use single monitors for web browsing these days, always have to have atleast 2. :P Just wish I could afford or win a card to gaming multiscreen too. :D

Sound awsome but i never tried it.
one day ill have the chance to try it lol
-David

I have never used Eyefinity first hand, though I commend AMD/ATI for taking the leap to offer multi-monitor gaming technology directly as a feature on their graphics cards, and for their work with developers to support Eyefinity. Without them, I doubt NVIDIA would have even created NVIDIA surround, and we'd all probably still be using Matrox boxes today. So my hats off to Eyefinity, for bringing multi-monitor gaming out of the shadows and into the spotlight. Eyefinity made multi-monitor gaming rigs not only the pinnacle of high end systems today; but also helped make multi-monitor gaming rigs accessible to all users, regardless of their budget. Multi-monitor gaming is a truly fun and immersive experience that I hope one day will be supported in all games for everyone to enjoy.

And of course, hats off to HIS for their support of Eyefinity and the WSGF!

I love eyefinity! I can never feel comfortable gaming on one screen again, and like someone said above the increased FOV in FPS's is great!

To be honest I haven't really owned many ATI graphics cards recently. The only one I have is a HIS HD 4670. EyeFinity technology does intrigue me though, and it is something I would definitely like to try for myself one day. I currently have a single 22" monitor and would need to reconfigure my desk space in order to add more.

I have never owned an Eyefinity card or known anyone who has, but the technology excites me. I have been hoping for something of this nature to hit the market for years because dual monitors that don't both work while gaming is disappointing. Great product! I'd love to win.

Q: What's your thoughts/ experience of Eyefinity (Multi-Display Gaming)?

Every so often you get one of those technologies that completely changes the landscape. Eyefinity is one of those.

The march of progress
Multimonitor setups aren't exactly new, of course; I know (perhaps we all know) that guy who was playing Flight Simulator with a huge central monitor and two side monitors. Thing is, you usually had to jump through hoops and spend lots of money to make that happen. Eyefinity brings multimonitor gaming to the general public.

Ever run into that "chicken and egg" situation, where a new technology isn't embraced by the general public because it's not supported by hardware companies, and it's not supported by hardware companies because it's not being embraced by the general public? By enabling Eyefinity technology on their new, modestly-priced line of graphics cards, ATi has pulled that wall down. Not only is it possible to have a super wide screen, it's within reach. And (though exceptions are rampant) games can be played in the new style without a great deal of modification-- sometimes straight out of the box.

Eyefinity doesn't just make multimonitor play possible-- it brings it to the common person. And that means that game designers will be more apt to support it.

Three is better than one
Monitor prices are low, sure, but large screens are still costly. Eyefinity enables the use of lower-cost displays to produce a panorama, just right for first-person shooters and racing games alike. And a setup with three monitors-- which is, I think, the most common-- allows the right and left side monitors to mount at an angle, wrapping the user in video like surround sound wraps us in audio.

It's the same idea as Cinemascope and other wide-screen movie theater technologies. Finally your computer can play Lawrence of Arabia the way it was meant to be seen! And if Imax is more of your thing, go with a vertically stacked monitor group.

Clem's goals in life
One of my wishes is to have a bathtub long enough so that I can get my shoulders and knees wet at the same time. But since it isn't a bathtub that's being given away, let us go to Goal #2: Immersive World Of Warcraft.

I've been playing role-playing games (RPGs) since the three-beige-book Dungeons & Dragons set came out. Naturally I jumped on the computer RPG bandwagon, and fell for World of Warcraft after some Sony-related missteps. It's not perfect, but it's as close as it's going to get. And the developers actually seem to like their game and their players, most of the time! But with quest trackers, minimaps, chat windows, and actionbars, the screen was getting a little cluttered.

Having one enormously wide viewport lets me handle all of the user interface elements, and at the same time lets the beauty of Azeroth come through. It helps that my 5850 allows respectable frame rates while still having everything set to "beautiful."

But I enjoy other games too-- world building, casual, and first-person shooters (FPSes) as well. And guess what? Most of those are enhanced by Eyefinity.

The irony? I'm visually impaired. Blind in one eye, low vision in the other-- and yet I want this beautiful graphic setup. (I also want others to share it. If I win, my old graphics card is going to a friend.) Whereas most people are looking to decrease font size to the most miniscule possible, I seek to get larger text and better colors. But guess what? A wide screen setup lets me expand things larger than would be tenable on a single monitor.

It's a game changer
Literally. So many products have been touted as that: 3D, force feedback, those silly motion sensors. But Eyefinity is a technology that will make things better for everyone in the coming years. And that's what progress is all about.

My Experience with Multimon Gaming:

Oh about 2 - 3 years ago. I was rolling in consoles. I was perfectly happy with consoles because they were cheaper and I could have a lan party any time i wanted with a few xboxes that I amassed. Then one day browsing the internet I saw someone playing Unreal Tournament 2004 over 3 monitors on this very site. My first reaction was, "I gotta do this." So I went crazy buying and selling things (mostly TV's and 360's) and I bought my friends old rig (Athlon 64 with a like a nvidia 6800 i think). Either way, I started playing UT2004 and loved it. But my goal was to buy the TH2Go. So again with more buying and selling crap and I finally built myself a decent rig. I bought 3 x hp 1907w's over the course of a year. Then one glorious day in the summer I got a TH2Go and my life was forever changed. I played some 64 Games for the test. For a while I was rocking the TH2Go on my 4870, then i wanted to go bigger. I couldn't find any 1680x1050 monitors for cheap so I bought 3x1080p monitors (Dell 2309w) and I was like "HOLY F---ING SH-T... This is obnoxious." At the size of those monitors. The first thing I played was mirrors edge using racer s's tools. But I wasn't happy, because I couldn't play in my native resolution. So I got a crappy little x300 card from my buddy and tried my hand at SoftTH. The only game I got working was UT2004. The was lag on the side monitors, so I went back to the TH2Go. At that time, eyefinity was starting to be show cased. I followed it all the way to release. I had decided I had to get 2GB of VRAM and I bought an E6 card. Then I went crazy. I wanted to do 3x2, but a party came up before I had enough money to buy all 3 (more) so I bought 2 more monitors. Then someone gave me the idea to do 5x1 portrait. I bought some cheap mounts and went for it. Again I had the, "HOLY F---ING SH-T... This is obnoxious." feeling again. Loved it. But then I learned about panel types, as they were TN's they had issues in portrait, and the bezels were too big for my taste. I couldn't figure out how to get the bezels off.

I was on craigslist and I found a Dell 3007wfp-hc for $450. It was close, and I just came into some money. So I thought, why the hell not? and I bought it. The 30" was dwarfed by my 5x1 setup, and I could only use it at 1280x800 because I didn't have a DL adapter. So I got one of the apple one's because they were cheap. Once I plugged it it, I was like "I need 3 of these." So I sold the 5x1 setup, bought an apple 30" and then sold the apple, because the dell has better everything. And soon I got another dell 3007wfp-hc. Now I'm sitting happily at the setup and wondering what to do next. I've done HDTV setups, I've done mixed monitor setups. So far I'm thinking of doing 5x1 30"rs, but that's a lot of money to through at a setup. I think I'm going to build a gaming / media pc for a living room where I'll have 2 projectors powered by eyefinity.

Well that's my experience with not only multimon gaming, but PC gaming in general. You can take a look at my setups that I have done below. It's crazy to think I started with a single 1907w. I know I owe this all the WSGF. Thanks All.

My Setups So Far Chronologically Backward: