Widescreen Gaming Forum

Eyefinity 6, with benchmarks for 5970, 5870 and E6 in CFX.

5850 & 5830, with benchmarks for 5870 and 5770 as well.

5770 & 5750, with benchmarks for the 5830 and 5670.

5670, 5550, 5450 with benchmarks for the 5750.

5870 E6, 5870, 5850 & 5770 - all in CFX.

wow awesome information, i got the information i wanted from the ati side of graphics. thanks for the great review!, now i got to find a 480gtx sli 5040x1050 resolution review so i could compare. :bowdown

With the issues we have had on this site running 2x3 setups do you really think they will be able to fix the crosshair settings and make it not on a bezel? Don't you think it will look a bit distorted always having the bottom monitors looking straight ahead and the top monitors always looking up? I just don't see this eyefinity 6 taking off so well. Even on their site, it just shows a rendered "pop out of the screen" image that doesn't represent any game because if they showed the crosshair on the bezel, everyone wouldn't want to buy it. That's just my 2 cents. Until they get that fixed...

Excellent review, thank you for that. Very well done.
It must have been an arduous task.

It's really cool to see how these cards scale across the demands of AA and EyeFinity.

I have been looking far and wide for a 5870 E6 review with CrossfireX, and here it is.
It's all I needed to convince me to pick up two E6 cards today!

Now to sell my original 5870s. :mrgreen:

Thanks for the review it was very interesting.

With the issues we have had on this site running 2x3 setups do you really think they will be able to fix the crosshair settings and make it not on a bezel? Don't you think it will look a bit distorted always having the bottom monitors looking straight ahead and the top monitors always looking up? I just don't see this eyefinity 6 taking off so well. Even on their site, it just shows a rendered "pop out of the screen" image that doesn't represent any game because if they showed the crosshair on the bezel, everyone wouldn't want to buy it. That's just my 2 cents. Until they get that fixed...

I think that would have to be adapted by the game creators on a per game basis to move the crosshair. I don't see that likely to happen for a niche market like 6 screens in many games. Perhaps ATI could use something similar to Bezel Management to adjust the viewable centre area but it would mean rendering even more pixels and lowering performance. Also it would cause problems with the HUD being lowered or raised so I don't see that happening either. I think 5 screens in portrait will be the popular choice for people who want more than 3 monitors.

Great review, it kinda solidified my plans. I was stuck between 3x2 and 5x1. I'm going to go 5x1.

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System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

Awesome work.

I've been working with the folks at Ergotech about a stand for 5x1-Landscape. They sent me a longer center bar, so that I could fit all three middle monitors on the flat surface. From there, the outer monitors sit on the wings and angle toward the center. There are a few more details I'd like to look at, but I think we have something cool in the works. Once we get it all put together, Ergotech has said this will be their first WSGF-branded SKU. Cool, eh?

This is particularly sweet. :D

You've got a typo in that last ErgoTech, however. "Erogotech". ;)

As soon as there is a functioning 5x1 driver, I'm there. Oh, and as soon as I have money coming in again, too...

wow awesome information, i got the information i wanted from the ati side of graphics. thanks for the great review!, now i got to find a 480gtx sli 5040x1050 resolution review so i could compare. :bowdown

I'm not sure when you'll find that. I've been under NDA with NVIDIA for a couple months but haven't heard anything about the 3D Surround support being available yet. The NVIDIA solution for Surround is not hardware based, it is software like SoftTH. There will be somewhat of a performance hit, no one knows how much. And, the NVIDIA Surround solution will require two cards.

Considering that a single 5870 will hit 40-60fps in most of our test at 5040x1050 @ 4xAA, I'm not sure there is any case to be made for a solution that requires two cards (no matter the vendor). A 5850 or 5830 would still provide playable rates (albeit at slightly reduced settings) at 5040x1050.

From what I would deduce, the SLI Fermi setup would leave you with horsepower to burn and not provide a good return for the investment. Now, if you are interested in the 3D aspect, that would change the cost/benefit.

An "GX2" card from NVIDIA that offered three connections on one card would provide support at a lower cost, but my tests with ATI cards show that multi-GPU isn't really needed at 5040x1050. There were big gains in moving to SLI or "GX2" at 5040x1050 under the TripleHead2Go, but the current generation of video cards seem to have plenty of horsepower.

The benefits of multi-GPU become more apparent (and a better investment) at 5760x1200 and above. Again, I haven't tested Fermi in Surround and I haven't seen any benchmarks for it. But I am still steering you towards a single card solution for ATI as well, and would even advise you to consider the 5850 or 5830 for the best "bang for your buck."

Great review!! Your review gave me the info I needed to see if CF would be worth the extra cost, you convinced me.
I hope ATI and Dell are giving you some free goodies because you have helped to sell U2410's and now CF 5870/2gb's :cheers

The 5x1-P comments were the most interesting to me. That is the setup I think I will upgrade to in the future when bezels are even smaller, that and I think I will need a bigger desk :shock:

Thanks for the review Ibrin. Your comments about the 2GB 5870 versus the 2x1GB 5970 have cemented even more my plan to wait for the 2x2GB 5970. Given ATI's admission that the crossfire bridge isn't up to the demands of extremely high resolutions, I think that the 2x2GB 5970 is going to be a much smarter buy than two 5870 2GB cards. And it will be the same cost as well.

Edit: To the people who will say that 5970 is already crossfire: Yes it is, but there has been some indirect evidence that the internal crossfire on the 5970 is not as limited as the external connector-based crossfire between two different cards. ATI was able to release drivers for simultaneous crossfire and eyefinity for the 5970 well before the ones that enabled this in other cards. And their comments regarding that were very telling. Something along the lines of them being in complete control of the internal crossfire hardware environment on the 5970 versus not being in control when the motherboard is involved between two different cards (two different PCI-E connectors I guess that would mean). Sounds like a load of bull to me and probably means that the delay was really due to them needing to implement the PCI-E based communications as a workaround where that wasn't needed for the 5970 (because its internal crossfire bandwidth is much greater than the external solution).