Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi

A little history first.

I am an owner of a matrox tripplehead2go digital edition. The truth is that if you go widescreen you can't go back. I have three 24'' monitors with 1920x1080 native resolution but with tripplehead maximum resolution couldn't exceed 1680x1050x3.

Apart from this I had some other (minor) problems:

1. Games couldn't run fullscreen
2. Whatever I tried, I couldn't get 2 monitors to work at 1920x1080x2 (dualhead)
3. Had noticable lag in monitors during gameplay.

( http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/11022 )

So I read here about eyefinity and started hoping that it would be possible at last to get 1920x1080x3 with better performance. To be honest I was afraid to go immediately to windows 7 and since eyefinity would be implemented for the first time in ati cards I was afraid that many things would go wrong... Another thing was the active dp to dvi adapter. Since I live in Europe I had to buy it from U.S (was out of stock but luckily they restocked fast) and finally got it (I also placed an order in the European shop but I am still waiting for the adapter....).

Finally the 22nd arrived and I bought the 64bit Ultimate edition of Windows 7.

From that point on everything went fast and smoothly. Windows were installed very fast without any problems. Ati drivers v.9.10 were installed and the monitor connected with the adapter worked. I grouped the monitors and yes I got 5760x1200 (It worked immediately and out fo the box unlike tripplehead. I have lost count of the reboots and tricks I had to do to get it to work the way it worked).

I installed Lord of the rings online, Age of Conan, Aion and Eve-Online and Google Earth.

The difference is amazing and significant. I play a lot Lotro and it was like playing a much impoved version. At 5760x1200 it's just unbelievable beutiful. No lag. First time that I was able to have every option in advanced graphics at full.

Desktop experience is equally wonderful. Clear, crisp, cinematic, detailed and beautiful.

Sorry for the long post but I am really excited. It is everything I was hoping and more.

Ati has created an amazing card and amazing technology (eyefinity). I don't know if they have fully realized how amazing eyefinity is and what the possibilities are...

Also windows 7 are really good and nice and so far (though it's early to say) seem rock solid.

The experience is amazing and for me at least works flawlessly. If you love the widescreen experience eyefinity is the road to go.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's always nice to hear something positive rather than the endless complaints you usually get. It shows the tech does work, it just needs to mature a bit (like anything really).

Glad its all working nicely for you :onethumb

Do you have a game that isn't Massively Multiplayer ? :P

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Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's always nice to hear something positive rather than the endless complaints you usually get. It shows the tech does work, it just needs to mature a bit (like anything really).

Glad its all working nicely for you :onethumb

That's pretty much the nature of the beast when it comes to help forums though. You get to see all the issues and very little of the good side of things. It can skew your perspective a bit reading forums that are nothing but issues though. That's just one side of the coin. The other side is all the people with it working perfectly fine without issues to post about. By looking at forums you'd think every piece of tech hardware and software out there was high maintenance trouble, but once you realize the most vocal minority of computer users are the ones with problems it's not so much of a problem anymore.

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Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

I think that it is equally important to know that something works well as it is important to know what you may face...

Hopefull there is a solution to most of the problems, there will always be that itch that makes us dig to find what makes things tick....

People will share their knowledge, agony, problems, I have learnt many things and I am greatful for that.

Truly we usually emphasize what troubles us but when something (finally) works or when it works amazingly well without effort out of the box (as in my case) this can be equally helpful as it may help decide what to do or choose.

For me eyefinity and Windows 7 were easy to set and worked without a problem. I only hope Ati will help somehow those acrive dp adapters to be easier to get as it will make it easier for more people to set widescreen enviroments...

For me widescreen gaming has increased the entertainment factor a lot.

As for the MMORPGs, well actually I do play a lot Lotro (and it was a Lotro youtube video that made known to me that widescreen gaming existed).

Apart from the other mmos that I mentioned the only other game that I played last year was Fallout 3 which will install again today to see how it looks...

I am also impatient with Dragon Age Origins. I am very glad that I will play it with my current setup.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. :D

A couple of photos (bad lighting in room though and I am not very skilled in photography...) of my setup.

hi
nice setup!

what active dp adapter do you use and is there spontaneous turn offs of the monitor connected to that dp-adapter ?

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i7 860 @ 4.01 / 8gb g.skill @ 1910 / 5870 gigabyte / eyefinity triple dell 30"

Hi

I am using the Accell UltraAV DisplayPort / DVI-D Dual-Link Adapter. Graphics card I got the Sapphire 5870 and I am using the 9.10 drivers.

Absolutely no turn off (till now) it works as it should be.

Since the dp adapter is powered from usb, if for some reason your monitor connected to the dp adapter turns off, you could try to connect the usb in another usb port in your pc. If you connect it to a usb hub I would suggest to connect it directly to your pc.

Sorry I haven't been dropping in - had three major operations last week (prostate and two inguinal hernias) and have been a little indisposed.

Ghallion,

I built my personal EF system last week end and installed W7 as well. Once it was up and running my first software installation was LOTRO. Admittedly I am biased. My experiences playing LOTRO in 3x1P (not 3x1L like you) was that I was amazed at how much I was missing on a single screen. I have switched to playing mostly in 1st person view because I see so much more stuff now. A lot of the artwork and special effects are lost in distant 3rd person view. The game is very different now.

Which server are you on? I am on Silverlode.

I also have discovered how pixel greedy I currently am. I want more. And I will never go back. AMD needs to give me a bonus so I can go buy monitors larger than the three Dell P2310Hs (they have DVI & DP inputs) that I bought to try this out personally. :D

Oh yeah L4D is much more immersive now.

SunSp*t

I also have discovered how pixel greedy I currently am. I want more. And I will never go back. AMD needs to give me a bonus so I can go buy monitors larger than the three Dell P2310Hs (they have DVI & DP inputs) that I bought to try this out personally. :D

Or you could totally lose your mind and go triple head 1080p projector. :lol:

_________________
Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com