Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition

ATI has been showing off its six-monitor behemoth for some time, and it's finally ready for consumption. Today, ATI released the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition. As a GPU, the card is pretty much a regular Radeon HD 5870 except with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and the ability to support six monitors simultaneously. The regular Radeon HD 5870 supports three monitors and has 1GB of RAM. ATI expects immediate availability and has priced the card at $479.

　　The Details

　　850MHz Core

　　1600 Stream Processors

　　2GB of GDDR5 RAM

　　1200MHz RAM

　　6 x Mini DisplayPort Outputs

　　The Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinty 6 Edition has six Mini DisplayPort connectors on the back, and like with previous Radeon HD 5000 series parts, you will need to connect a DisplayPort monitor somewhere in the mess, or at least purchase active DisplayPort adapters for DVI/HDMI/VGA monitors, which generally run for about $100 apiece. You can connect up to two monitors with passive adapters, then the rest have to be native DisplayPort or connected via active adapters. Included in the package are 2x Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort adapters, 2x passive link DisplayPort to DVI dongles, and one Mini DisplayPort to HDMI dongle.

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　　Boxes Six Legged Octopus Behind the madness

　　

Monitor Setup

When everything arrived it was as though our office had turned into a warehouse--boxes were everywhere. Six monitors and two monitor mounts require a lot of packaging. The monitors took a few hours to set up, and expect to spend even more time if you want to do the job with OCD levels of correctness. Monitor mounts require lots of adjustments to set up perfectly; otherwise you're left with minor gaps and imperfections rather unbefitting of such a costly beast.

　　

The Total

Speaking of price--if the video card has you trembling, we've only just begun to add up everything. ATI sent six Dell P2210H monitors, each of which costs $220. Then we need to factor in the mounts, because you will need something to put these things on. Also in the package were the Adtec V-FS-Q (a $300 quad monitor stand) and the Adtec V-FS-DV (a $140 dual monitor stand). The quad was an absolute pain the neck to set up. Adjusting and setting up the dual stand was far, far easier. Seeing as the cost is pretty much the same, if we had to do it over again, we'd go with three duals and live with two extra feet sticking out.

　　6 x $220 Dell P2210H Monitors + $300 Adtec V-FS-Q + $140 Adtec V-FS-DV + $480 Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition = $2240

　　

Software Setup

ATI has done a decent job of making six monitors play nicely, but the experience could definitely stand some improvement. The drivers make it easy to set up a single group of monitors, like one big six-monitor setup at 5760x2160. Putting together multiple groups is frustrating though. You'll have to disable monitors and then re-add them to groups. The only problem is that the monitor symbols don't translate to anything meaningful, which means you'll be doing some guesswork to select the right ones. Once that's done, you can save profiles to the desktop that let you quickly switch between groups of monitors (1x6, 2x3, and so on), but even there we encountered minor issues with incorrect loads and crashing. ATI is working relatively quickly to address issues, so we imagine that everything should get smoother as time goes on. The technology is quite young, so expect to encounter more than your fair share of bugs when it comes to launching games and adjusting settings.

　　

Gaming Experiences

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　　Dirt 2 Just Cause 2 HAWX Dragon Age

　　Sticker shock aside, six monitors is a doozy of an experience. We don't get nauseous when playing games, but when that much of your view is in motion you might want to keep a paper bag around. Playing Tom Clancy's HAWX was an absolute trip. You actually feel like you're looking out of the cockpit of a fighter plane, sans the g-forces. DiRT 2 also provided a fantastic experience. Playing in hood mode or even inside of the car gave us an immediate connection to the rallying world, mostly because the width of three monitors is pretty darn close to the width of a real car--we're talking over 60 inches wide here. A real Subaru Impreza WRX is roughly 68 inches wide.

　　Supreme Commander 2 also looked amazing, although we have to add that you need to increase the mouse sensitivity if you hope to move across the screen with any level of quickness. DEFCON: Everybody Dies, think of the movie WarGames brought to life, on a screen this large--you might as well be in NORAD slinging nukes across the world.

　　

First-Person Shooters

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　　Team Fortress 2 Shoot em between the bezels!

　　First-person shooters across six monitors simply do not work. The crosshairs on just about every game will line up perfectly with the bezel, which means you're constantly looking at a black bar and trying to aim with it. The effect is even worse when you turn on bezel compensation, which means you'll never even see your crosshair. Of course, there's nothing wrong with switching down to three monitors with games like these. The other three can still be used to run Web browsers, videos, and whatever else you want.

　　

Aspect Ratios

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　　Batman 5760x2160 Batman 5760x1080 Batman 1920x1080 Just Cause 2 5760x2160 Just Cause 2 5760x1080 Just Cause 2 1920x1080

　　With three and six monitors, aspect ratios get pretty far out from 1.78:1, or 16x9 as it's commonly known. With six monitors running at 5760x2160 we're at 2.67:1, and with three monitors at 5760x1080 we're at 5.33:1. The extra width does quite a bit to extend your field of view.

　　

Desktop Usage

Gaming is only one use for the setup. Daily computing is absolutely mind-boggling and probably the chief reason you'd want to get the entire setup. Why minimize windows when you can leave everything up and running? Use two monitors for Photoshop, another one for Web browsing and IM clients, another for videos, and do whatever else you want on the other two you still have empty.

　　

Bezel Compensation

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　　Bezel Compensation Disabled Bezel Compensation Enabled Hidden Dirt 2 Menu Hidden Alt TAB

　　Gaming across multiple monitors can be a bit jarring, with the picture simply picking up where it left off an inch over. To that end, ATI implemented bezel compensation technology, which actively removes the part of the picture where the bezel is. The effect is similar to looking through a multipane window, where you can't see what's behind the small area where the panes connect. From the games we tried, it's clear some work needs to be done on the game developer side to make visuals smoother, because we constantly encountered menus that got partially blocked out. On the desktop, it's pretty much a waste of time. You're bound to lose lose icons and we had quite a few program prompts disappear into the bezel region.

　　

Performance

System Setup:

　　Intel i7-965, Intel DX58S0, 3GB DDR3, 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows 7 64-bit. Graphics Card: Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition, beta Catalyst 10.3.

　　Older games run on the setup quite well, but it's clear you'll have to dial back detail settings on newer games like Just Cause 2 --which will destroy frame rates quite handily with all settings maxed out. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from getting two of these cards and configuring them in CrossFire to almost double performance.

　　

Conclusion

When it works, six-monitor gaming is flat-out awesome. When it doesn't, you'll probably wonder how you spent over $2,000 on stuff that needs to be babysat or switched down to three monitors. From a purely gaming standpoint, three monitors is probably a more reasonable limit and likely to work in the largest variety of situations at the moment. Should the added desktop space be of use, with gaming as an added side benefit, the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is probably one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get this many displays to function nicely.