Picking Monitors & Hardware

One of the most common questions people ask me about multi-monitor gaming is where to start. If you’ve got a Radeon 5000 or 6000 series GPU, or two GeForce 400 or 500 series boards, you’re already half way there.

PICKING THE GRAPHICS CARD

When picking from the AMD camp the most expensive single GPU you can afford will always be your best option. If you have any money left over, buy two. If you’re an Nvidia fan, simply buy a pair of whatever you can comfortably afford. This might sound like an overly simple answer to a complicated question, but trust me when I say you’ll need all the performance you can get.

Another important consideration is video memory. 1GB might sound like more than enough for a graphics card, but it disappears quickly at resolutions of 5760 x 1080 or higher. Always opt for a GPU with the most amount of onboard memory possible.

PICKING THE MONITORS

Picking the right monitors is one of the most difficult challenges, and leaves you with some tough choices. The natural temptation is to simply mix and match, and while you can certainly take this route to help keep the cost down, I’m going to list a few best practices.

Requirements:
All Monitors must be the same resolution, refresh rate, and at least one must have a DisplayPort (if you don’t have an active DisplayPort adapter when using Eyefinity).

RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Buy the same brand/model/year whenever possible.
   When I took the Eyefinity plunge over a year ago, I mixed a two-year-old Dell Ultrasharp 2407-WFP, with the closest match I could find at the time, the Dell U2410. This made financial sense back then but despite my best efforts I was never able to fully match the colors between the two models, since the newest Ultrasharp panels are all IPS. I lived with it for almost a year, before finally giving up and standardizing the U2410 for all three.
2. Stick with the same size.
   If you are going to mix and match old & new displays, stick with the same physical size if at all possible. If you have a 24” 1080p panel in the center, try your best to find a matching set. It's not required, but it's definitely ideal.
3. Three vs. six monitor setups.
   If you’re flush with cash you might be tempted to opt for the full six display Eyefinity experience (what Maximum PC reader wouldn’t?!). But trust me when I say diminishing returns sets in quickly after the first three. If you’re a typical user who sits less than three feet away from your displays, anything more than three monitors can be pretty overwhelming. In addition to the visual overload, you’re also forcing your system to crunch over 12 million pixels at once. The performance toll for a six-monitor configuration can be pretty extreme.
4. If you're mixing and matching old and new monitors, you’ll want to calibrate.
   Software solutions such as ColorWizzard ($50) work well, but hardware devices such as Datacolor’s Spyder 3 work best ($169). Mismatched colors might not be something you’ll notice on the desktop, but when the walls in your favorite game change color as your eyes scan across the screen, it can be pretty distracting.

HOW TO CONFIGURE MONITOR GROUPS

Setting up an Eyefinity group using the Catalyst Control Center has gotten much easier since launch, but it’s still not completely intuitive, even for advanced users. Rather than walk you through it step-by-step, I would encourage you to check out AMD's interactive tutorial.

Common Problems With Eyefinity

FISHEYE & FOV

When developers set to work on a modern game, they typically do so with the expectation that the vast majority of users will experience that content on a wide screen display. This generally means an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1080p, 720p) or one of the other generally accepted standards such as 4:3 or 16:10. Eyefinity takes these ratios and throws them right out the window. Once activated, three seperate 1080p displays in landscape mode are presented to the operating system as a single, massively wide panel with an aspect ratio of 16:3 - possibly lower if you’re using bezel correction.

The end result of such a hugely disproportionate aspect ratio varies greatly depending on the title, but first person shooters in particular are prone to suffering from image distortion the further you get from the center. You’ll often hear this refereed to as “Fisheye”, but I’ve also heard it called tunnel vision. Forward-thinking developers, such as Valve, have included the ability to adjust the FOV (Field of Vision) to help compensate for this problem, and it makes a huge difference if you’re sensitive to this type of distortion. If - like me - you only use the side displays for peripheral vision, not being able to adjust this setting isn’t a complete deal breaker, but is certainly nice to have.

When you lower the FOV you will stretch the appearance of objects further away from the center, as you increase it, images become more compressed. Valve makes this setting accessible with a handy slider under the graphics settings, but many other titles hide it in .cfg and .ini files. If you Google your favorite game and add the word “Eyefinity” to the end, you will typically get directed to the Wide Screen Gaming Forums. This community has done a fantastic job of rounding up fixes for almost every title, and is a great starting point when looking for fixes.

The WSGF community has also released an FOV calculation tool that is second to none.

STRETCHED MENUS & DISTORTED CUT SCENES

Eyefinity works in an impressively large percentage of games - both older and modern titles - however, you’ll need to come to terms with the fact that some will never stretch out properly no matter how hard you try. High profile games such as the Witcher or Mass Effect 1 & 2 are great examples of titles where the developer made engine level design decisions that make trying to run Eyefinity a complete nightmare.

The most common mistake I’ve seen so far is when developers code the size of the main menu options to scale with the width of the display. Best-case scenario is an ugly UI, more often than not however, it renders the interface completely unusable. Another common Eyefinity issue is when cut scenes or in-game scripted sequences render incorrectly. Bulletstorm, for example, allows for the adjustment of the FOV by binding a key in the .cfg files which works great. Scripted sequences however, ignore this override, leading to an abnormally high number of unintended crotch shots between missions, which works...not so great.

Final Impressions

Multi-monitor gaming in 2011 is not only alive and well, but is more affordable than ever before. It’s easy to go overboard once you start looking high-end displays with AMD’s latest and greatest in Crossfire, but don’t feel pressured. Even a modest investment in a pair of matching side monitors will drastically improve the sense of immersion you derive from your gaming sessions. Assuming you already have a modern GPU, a $500 investment is about all it takes to get started.

This might sound like a hands down ringing endorsement, and while I do firmly believe multiple-monitors is a worthwhile upgrade for any hardcore gamer, it still isn’t for the faint of heart. If rooting through the file system in search of .ini files, or researching FOV fixes for hours on end doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time, then this might not be for you. An impressively large percentage of titles work with next to no effort at all, but you’ll only remember the ones that don’t. Once you’ve sampled true ultra wide-screen gaming, it can be painful being forced back down to a single display to play one of the more stubborn titles.

Wide Screen Gaming Resources

AMD Eyefinity Tech Demo & More Information
Delphium's Field of View & Aspect Ratio Calculator
Widescreen Fixer (Unofficial Eyefinity patch for all COD titles + Bioshock, Battlefield 2, Halo, Unreal 3, and more)
Widescreen Gaming Forum