Eyefinity 6 Monitor Setup: The Hands-On Preview
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.