Eyefinity 6 Monitor Setup: The Hands-On Preview
Eyefinity 6 Monitor Setup: The Hands-On Preview
Posted 03/19/2010 at 2:57pm
| by Loyd Case
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When AMD announced Eyefinity, we were somewhat skeptical. At first blush, six displays seemed excessive, both in terms of cost and sheer physical space. After setting up and running a six-panel Eyefinity setup, we’re now a little less skeptical – cost turns out to be less of an issue than we imagined. But setup time and physical space requirements are still a bit beyond the pale.
Today, we’ll walk through what it took to get a six display rig going with just one graphics card and one high end PC. It turned out to be a tale full of twisty passages, no two of which were alike (apologies to Underground Kingdom.)
When AMD launched the Radeon HD 5830, they also announced the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity edition. This latest variant of the HD 5870 includes 2GB of video memory and six (yes, six) mini-DisplayPort adapters.
It’s still pretty early in the DisplayPort adoption cycle, so boxed versions of the Eyefinity board will ship with five adapters:
- 2 mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort adapters
- 2 passive mini-DisplayPort to DVI (single link) dongles
- Passive mini-DisplayPort to HDMI dongle.
While we laud AMD for thinking about user needs, this set of adapters doesn’t actually support six displays. Even if all your monitors are DisplayPort capable, you’ll still need additional mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort adapters, which cost around $24 each. (Note that should you happen to have six Apple 24-inch LED Cinema Displays, you’re good to go, as each Apple monitor comes with a mini-DisplayPort cable.) Should you have more than two DVI-equipped monitors, you’ll need active DisplayPort to DVI adapters, which currently cost over $100.
If you have a older 30-inch, 2560x1600 monitors, which connect via dual-link DVI, you’ll need additional adapters, since the included passive mini-DisplayPort to DVI adapters are single link. The price of glory is not insubstantial.
Assembly Required
Once you’ve got all the right cables, adapters and monitors, you should be good to go, right?
AMD contacted us and offered to loan us six 1080p LCD panels for testing. The monitors AMD loaned us consist of six Dell P2210H units, 21.5-inch, 1080p displays equipped with DisplayPort$. Alas, they don’t ship with DisplayPort cables in the box, so expect to pay an additional $10 or so for a stock DisplayPort cable. Still, that brings the total cost up to only about $240 per display. On the other hand, that equates to six 1080p displays for under $1,500 – or less than the cost of a single, high end 30-inch monitor.
Once you have six monitors, you need to mount them. You could, of course, create a “surround gaming” setup with five or six monitors in a single line. But if you want the video wall effect, nothing quite beats a 6 x 2 setup. For that, you’ll need purpose-built monitor stands. AMD also loaned us a pair of Visidec monitor stands – one quad and one dual display (stacked). Oops, the bumps the price up a bit, since the two sets of stands runs to about another $420.
Okay, now we’re up to about $1900, for a total of 5760x2160 pixels. It all makes for an impressive stack of hardware.
How're we going to set all this up? Read on to find out.
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Feroz
April 18, 2011 at 10:25pm
Specifications of paper pretty much in line with them, which are available in the standard AMD Radeon HD 5870 and Cypress GPU clocked at 850MHz. not bad either.
Job Descriptions
January 10, 2011 at 10:02pm
Awesome! Although I would never need something like that.
job description...
November 15, 2010 at 11:43pm
i see this as being more useful..and personally is i'd rather give a try...there's no harm in trying;)...thanks alot for the post..great article;)
Marissa
September 21, 2010 at 7:38pm
I didn't even know that this technology existed!
By the way, $1900 is more than my computer cost me! Are there better moniters that can seam together to give it a less "broken up" effect for the picture?
omen3330
April 24, 2010 at 12:19am
The plan is
1.Buy 6 50 inch screens
2.Eye-finity that Sh--
3.Cry with so much win.
bpstone
March 22, 2010 at 9:17pm
With the large cost to have that setup, wouldn't it be cheaper or better just to get a widescreen TV? I'd have to agree it'd be ideal as a workstation, but certainly not for gaming. Chances are, if you can afford or would even consider doing something like this, you either need it for work or you have deep pockets with no trouble throwing large amounts of cash at anything. lol You want a big screen that bad then get a HD LED TV. :P
M-ManLA
March 20, 2010 at 10:28pm
For gaming, I would just get one big monitor or HDTV and save some green for more games!
Electronically charged
mothrpe
March 20, 2010 at 8:57am
I assume this is mostly for gaming, that said, wouldn't six monitors be annoying or almost unplayable?
In an fps, your crosshairs would fall in the centre between screens, in a driving game wouldn't it obstruct whats going on right in front of you?
I could see 3 monitors, [ ][ ][ ], you would get expanded peripheral display, other than that, the only real use I could see would be for complex tasks like graphics design.
Having a monitor for each window in the hammer editor in source designing would be cool for example.
mikeart03a
March 20, 2010 at 7:03am
Well... I'm not sure about using a monster setup like this for gaming, but it would work great for other, more productive, purposes (ie. audio/video editiing, photoshop, network monitoring, CCTV monitors).
In my case, I could us a setup like this to monitor my whole server farm as well as keep an eye on my CCTV setup at home.
- mike_art03a
System Specs - AMD Athlon 64 x2 5400+ 2.8ghz (OC 3.2ghz), 4gb DDR2-800 RAM, ASUS M3N78-VM Mainboard, 500gb Seagate, HD, Lite-On BD/HD-DVD ROM DVD+/-RW, nVidia GeForce 8500GT 256mb, VixSys HDTV tuner card, Creative SB Audigy
Jewell Gonzalez
March 20, 2010 at 6:06am
So, Umm...Besides the resolution, what's the point? I agree with tehR0XX0Rz.. Bezeles just arent sexy. I think most people would perfer just to have a larger screen, but then again, thats just me..
PFC J. Gonzalez
Scootiep
March 20, 2010 at 3:02pm
Yeah, I'm waiting for some modders to rip the bezels off, construct their own non-bezel 6 monitor system and post some work logs.
To start press any key...ohh, where's the "Any" key. - Homer Simpson
nekollx
March 19, 2010 at 3:35pm
now that you have it set up I can't help but think a 3rd row atthe top would make it look better, seems to thin to me
------------------------------
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Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
Neufeldt2002
March 19, 2010 at 3:30pm
Now to get rid of the bezel.
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