Eyefinity Thread

monoprice has adapters for DP to DVI

Are you saying that you have to spend another $120 on top of the graphics card to get 3 monitors to work?

Yes, not only do you have to spend another $120 for the adapter, but you also have to make sure you are running three monitors in the same resolution. Eyefinity is the biggest dissapointment since a wet fart.

I am running a 20" x 30" x 20" (portrait, landscape, portrait) monitor setup and the developer for ATI told me on the widescreen forums that my setup is irrelevant and that they really don't care about established customers with odd configured setups. Basically, he told me to sell my beloved 30" gateway xhd3000 and twin dell 2007fps and buy some crappy identical tri monitor setup. I told him that I will just buy Nvidia again as they are not offering me anything new if that was the case.

Here is my unsupported setup.

In the picture you speak of, they are using three same size monitors, the movie just does not stretch all the way over on the end two giving the illusion of two portrait monitors on the sides.

Here is what one of the developers said:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com...=asc&start=615

SunSp*t wrote:
VRman wrote:
If Eyefinity aims at lowering the entry barrier for triple screen gaming then the ability to mix and match resolutions and orientations is important I would think. At the SoftTH forum you can find people using all kinds of combinations of monitors, often simply because they had them sitting around anyway.

What I would like to know is if this feature is currently not available because AMD didn't have time or consider it important, or are there technical constraints preventing this as I think Mr Killebrew suggested previously?


At present there are technical reasons which all but obviate arbitrary constellations, orientations, and resolutions in SLS mode. SLS mode is preferable for high performance HD+ gaming. I will be frank with you all: I don't intend to offer it unless it meets my requirements for high performance gaming. I realize this may not be the answer that you desire, but it is co-incident with my vision for EF.

If some subset of your ask meets the requirements, it may be supported. If it is offered, later rather than sooner would be the outcome.

Hopefully this helps folks making decisions.

SunSp*t


My Response: Its not about the answer that I desire, simply put, if you don't support eyefinity for my 20"x30"x20" PLP monitor configuration, then I have no reason to buy ATI this round and will just stick with Nvidia's GT300.

If you wanna win me over, which is not hard to do, you gotta accomodate me and lucky for you I have a monitor setup that is pretty standard for hi end enthusiasts.

Why take a brilliant Idea such as Eyefinity to the goal line and then decide not to score? Makes no sense, but hey you gotta answer to your shareholders not me.

Ahh not a problem, I wish you were right and I was wrong, but unfortunately that is not the way it is.

It pisses me off because I love using my 30", but having 3 of em for eyefinity would be stupid, wasteful and expensive. Really, I cannot believe that they wouldn't support my style as the pixels match up 1200x1600 2560x1600 1200x1600 = 4960x1600. But they refuse to support different size monitors. Also, all of your monitors have to been in an all landscape style or an all portrait style configuration. They should really let you mix and match, because most people have oddball monitor configurations!

So until we get some real support for oddball triple screen playing I am just going to have to stick with using SoftTH. Here is my saweet setup with OFF!

I think PLP is the best multi monitor setup for most users. A combination of issues arise though in that no current equal to the 2007wfp exist in the market so you are dealing with vintage hardware. Also ATI and Nvidia refuse to adequately support multi monitor as do game devs. Realistically we don't need ATI or Nvidia to solve this for us Directx and game devs could step up and support these different configs better.

Sapphire 6950 Flex needs no adapters for 3 monitor Eyefinity.

Can anybody here confirm that Eyefinity will indeed work if your setup has 3 Landscape 1080p HDTVs side-by-side, even if they aren't all the same size?

My set-up is such that the top edge of all 3 of my screens are ALMOST all in a straight line. But my side two screens are considerably smaller than my middle one. My setup was originally designed (and is used) for Football viewing, but I am considering buying an HTPC (for more football viewing), and I'd pick one out that had Eyefinity if I had reason to believe that it would work for me without needing to purchase new screens (which I won't do).

Also, I found this thread while in search of answers for whether or not my mismatched screen sizes would work, but after reading I have concerns about not having Displayport. I was under the impression that DisplayPort-to-HDMI solutions were simple, but Tinker's post about requiring ACTIVE switches concerns me as well. Is this still an issue?

Again, 3 HDTVs, all in landscape, all 1080p capable, with the "top" of the bezels all pretty close to in a straight line, but the left and right satellite screens being significantly smaller than the middle. My hope would be that Eyefinity would extend my view into the periphery on the sides (as far to the side as my smaller screens would reach) and line up perfectly with my middle screen, and I'd just lose the bottom foot or so because there's no "screen" there to view. Thoughts?

It should work as eyefinity requires all the displays to be same resolution. Size of the display isnt an issue as long their all native resolution is 1920x1080 (1080p). I have 22" lcd and 2 20" side lcd on my setup. For the displayport you need 1 activedisplay port cable as of the 3 ouputs on the card one is Displayport. The other two are hdmi and DVI usually. Heres a link to the DP to DVI cable. Its not that expensive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814999030

Another thing I forgot is you can pickup DVI to hdmi cable to connect to your hdtv's

Good to hear. What you're posting is what I felt like SHOULD be the answer. However, after posting, I found this statement over on the Eyefinity FAQ sheet:
"Note: Bezel compensation only works in Single Large Surface (SLS) mode with monitor groups that have a pixel resolution and density within a 5% tolerance of each other."
http://www.amd.com/us/products/techn...ages/faqs.aspx

If I'm interpretting that correctly, I may have a problem none-the-less, because although my screens are all the same resolution/orientation, the "pixel density" difference between the big center TV and the two satellite TVs is probably more than 5%... maybe not, but I would think when the difference in screen sizes is more than 5%, the difference in pixel density probably is too.

As for DVI, I'm pretty sure all 3 TVs have DVI-in. What they don't have is DisplayPort. I'm unfamiliar with DisplayPort... everything that I'm reading is saying I'll need an "active DisplayPort-to-HDMI" switch for at least one of the screens, where I'm guessing "active" means it's gotta be powered. That's annoying, but probably not a deal-breaker for me.

I copied this from the user i8urCookies over at engadget. He explains it pretty good.

"eyefinity requires an "active" cable, because the conversion from DP to DVI or HDMI requires additional power if you want to use larger resolutions. Most active cables had a separate usb plug that needed to be plugged into your pc for the cable to work. The new AMD adapters have a new decoder chip that doesn't require as much power, so no additional usb plug is necessary:

"Internally the new cable uses a single piece of silicon with a DispalyPort decode and a TMDS for the DVI output. This greatly reduces the power requirement (hence the reason no additional power is needed) and should also eliminate the flicker issue that is prominent with the powered Dual-Link adapters."

Here is a list of AMD certified adapters. Only buy the ones listed.
http://support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/...y-dongles.aspx

Its confusing I know. I faced the same confusion a couple months ago when I got tired of fighting with SoftTH(software based multiple monitor program). After all the researching on Eyefinity and graphic card upgrade, I am glad I went this route. Alot less configuring once its setup..it just works now.

Wow ok cool, that kind of makes sense. Thanks for the knowledge.

With regard to the link/comment I posted above regarding "pixel density" of dissimilar sized screens, what are your thoughts?

My size-disparity between screens is larger than yours. I have a 58" Plasma that is flanked by two 40" LCD's. I built it to be the "ultimate college football viewing experience". I'd be buying/building this HTPC primarily to expand upon that purpose, but with 3 nice big beautiful screens side-by-side already, I was immediately interested in Eyefinity as soon as I heard about it.

Hey psuKinger check your PMs, I sent you some more info.

I've got a triple-screen setup for racing games with 3 24'' monitors. I'm curious if anyone has used a similar setup to play battlefield? I believe I read that it supports eyeinfinity...

Thx,

tum

yeah I tried it last night it is eyefinity perfection just like BFBC2 was.

Hi there,

I wouldn't usually post here, but since I went to all lengths to get my 3rd panel working, I thought I'd share my experience.

I have an ATI Firepro 4800 card (the pro line not the gaming line), but probably won't make a diff.

Card has 1 x native DVI output, 2 x DisplayPort output.

I initially thought buying DP-DVI adaptors would be easy (isn't it always??).
Only when I found my 3rd panel not working (no display showing although windows 7 could see the "logical" screen there.)

I started to read all I could on Eyefinity. I understood that when going to a 3rd panel, you need an ACTIVE adaptor, otherwise the 3rd panel won't work.
I also called AMD support (who thankfully actually have a phone number which I got from the hardware vendor) who told me that they have a list of "verified adaptors" on their website. Support didn't want to know my problem unless I was using a "verified adaptor".

Webpage: support.amd.com/us/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity-dongles.aspx

NOTE: many makes of eyefinity adaptor on the market tell you that they are "eyefinity verified"; AMD's site only lists 3 or 4 makes of adaptor - be ware. AMD's list is growing.

There are two kinds of ACTIVE eyefinity adaptors: non-usb powered ACTIVE, and usb-powered ACTIVE. Theoretically the usb powered ones are only necessary when using a resolution beyond "1080". (I found I needed a USB powered adaptor anyway at a resolution of "1050".

I first tried an AMD Verified (Accell) non-usb ACTIVE adaptor (I couldn't find an Accell adaptor in the UK, found a shop in Holland!!). This adaptor MADE NO DIFF from the non-usb active one I had which wasn't listed as verified by AMD (XFX adaptor).

A note that my panel's symptom was that it hardly was able to show a display -- it was either totally blank, or intermittantly showed its display briefly. Looked to both AMD support & myself like it was a power issue - not enough power getting to the panel.

I next bit the bullet & bought a usb-powered ACTIVE adaptor (@ horrendous cost). This adaptor DID work - to a point. The 3rd panel now displayed _most of the time_. I called AMD support again.

AMD Support informed me that if 3 panels are used, then ALL adaptors NEED TO BE ACTIVE.

At this point I had

1 x native dvi,
1 x PAS adaptor (Bizrate (AMD verified & bundled w the card))
1 x usb-powered ACT adaptor (Accell) installed.

I replaced the PAS adaptor for NON-usb powered ACT adaptor so that my installation now is:

1 x native dvi
1 x non-usb powered ACTIVE adaptor (Accell)
1 usb-powered ACTIVE adaptor (Accell).

Setup finally Bl**dy works. I also have AMD's Catalyst Control Panel setup for GPU scaling - Maintain aspect ratio. (Catalyst: My Digital flat-panels -> Properties -> Image Scaling.) I'm using panels of 2 different native resolutions. Without 2 x ACT adaptors, this aspect ratio setting didn't work.

Hope this helps someone, was a nightmare experience for me!

Hey guys, need some help for my friend.

A buddy of mine runs Eyefinity. No issues for the most part. He has been running triple 4:3 monitors @ 1280x1024 each on an XFX 6870 for a few months. Anyway, no troubles with that (other than anything 16:9...lol) until now.

I gave him an older 16:10 monitor that I had at work (replaced for a newer 1080p) so he swapped out the middle monitor. This new monitor is native 1680x1050. He wants to know, his words, " if it's in any way possible to get the middle monitor to display at either 1680x1050 (most likely not, ever) or some way to get it to display 1680x1024 while in eyefinity so it doesn't look stretched".

I believe he would like a custom resolution to display for Windows and gaming EyeFinity to not have a stretched middle monitor res (he would not mind slight letterbox) so it just looks good.

Thanks in advance.

Nope. Eyefinity and NV surround both require all the monitors to be the same resolution.

BF3 crushed my Eyefinity dream world. I can't even run triple monitors at medium settings on my 5850. Considering picking up a Radeon HD 6950 2GB card but dont know if it will be enough. I wont touch crossfire with a 10ft pole as it seems more of pain than its worth. I just want medium BF3 Eyefinity as I have a hard time playin one display now..its a blessing and a curse tri monitors. lol

You should be pretty close with a 6950. A single 7970 would do it for sure

I can run Ultra with my 2 GTX 570, but can't even test it out with one card for you as Nvidia doesn't allow 3 monitors on a single card.

Yeah that would be the day I spend 600 on a videocard. lol