The ATI Radeon 5XXX Thread

[cegras]

Cost is not the only issue, its practicality too.

Here are some issues.
Even with the power of the 5870, a game running at 6 million pixels, is going to need some serious power to run, especially a direct 11 title. Turn on stuff like AA and add some detail and watch the fps drop like a rock.

Who wants to game with screen borders all over the place. Not me.

Drivers issues. I can imagine alot of driver issues popping up because multimonitor stuff can get messy.

Need. When you sit a good foot and a half away from your computer monitor how important is it to see your peripheral when a 30" monitor already dominates your field of view, hell a 24" monitor does a pretty good job of that.

Don't be stupid, what gonna make 58xx sell well is its performance and that it is direct x11, which will coincide well with the influx of windows 7 pc ready to be sold. Not eyefinity.

Cost is NOT really an issue. I can buy two additional 19" monitors with good specs and good reviews for maybe another 2-300 dollars. That's not a lot comparatively. Furthermore, the eye sees more horizontally than vertically, and adding two monitors to my peripheral vision is going to do a lot more than adding a few inches to my vertical vision for about the same price, as we all know (and apparently claim) prices go up exponentially with monitor size.

If you read around, you'd see that this feature is clearly for older games where the new 58xx series is seriously overpowered for the graphical horsepower they require.

The screen borders become invisible if you are adding periphery space around the central monitor. Try it; it is a well known, researched fact that the more you stare at one thing, the more it appears to disappear from your vision. Your eye is much more sensitive to dynamic objects as opposed to static objects.

There should not be any driver issues. Again, if you read, you would have known that the whole idea is to treat the setup of monitors as a single monitor, not like individual entities like Windows traditionally (?) handles them. Thus, when you select a resolution in game (they even showed screenshots of eyefinity resolutions in Crysis) it appears as one giant resolution.

Who says you have to sit far away? If I'm adding monitors to expand my periphery I will still be sitting at the exact same distance, but the 'dead space' that was there before will now be filled with information I can pick up on a subconscious level.

Eyefinity is definitely a nice feature and if it continues to be passed on to future generations, I might consider a multimonitor setup.

Also, to those people who complain the other monitors would suffer from poor viewing angle, all I have to say is: adjust them until they are OK (e.g. angle them). The rationale behind this, especially for FPS, is that the game probably (I'm not sure?) renders what you see based upon a circle field of view. Setting >100 degree FOV ingame (Q3, Source games) and actually having monitors capable of displaying that without the crazy distortion you see in a planar panel would be ... impressive.

I don't think that many people in a gaming environment(not work as I mentioned earlier), have multimonitor set up. Too much space, too much money. (how alive is the flight sim market today) and no real impact on gaming experience.

More people use multimonitors for gaming than overclock, surely you jest. If what you said is true, than companies like thermalright would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

Not taking a performance hit, now your just talking out of your ass. More pixels... ....forget about it, you should know this already.

Most card can do dual monitors now(especially the cards that have the power to push this resolution), its the triple monitor audience that eyefiniti matters and this market is alot alot alot smaller than the overclocking market.

The 5870 was running 80 fps playing WOW with 6 30" monitors with max details. Any other game with max details is going to be unplayable as WOW is a crazy old game.

They don't have multimonitor setup. After this card is released, that number may increase significantly.

Your second sentence makes no logical sense.

Of course it will take a performance hit. But if it remains above a certain threshold, you will most likely not be able to feel it unless it dips under 30 in chaotic situations.

Again, you should have read before you said anything; the monitors are merged into one large resolution, instead of being split and handled separately.

The 5870 was also running Left 4 Dead, Flight Sims, and I assume should be able to run RTS' with ease.

[saaya]

im sure there will be some driver or game glitches... its a new thing, barely anybody plays games with 2 or even more displays... but it should work alright for most games seeing as it merges the screens into one big display virtually...

the menu being partly hidden by the borders between the displays is the biggest problem i can think of... and the crossbar being centered and thus hidden or shown cut in half on both screens is annoying too...

there are bezel less displays, its really not that dificult from a technical point of view... so i dont get why there arent more displays without bezels....
i think the display makers think it doesnt matter and its not worth the 10-20% higher cost... i hope we will see some propper displaus without bezel soon... those samsung displays are a joke... there already are displaus with such a small and even smaller bezels afaik...

[cegras]

im sure there will be some driver or game glitches... its a new thing, barely anybody plays games with 2 or even more displays... but it should work alright for most games seeing as it merges the screens into one big display virtually...

the menu being partly hidden by the borders between the displays is the biggest problem i can think of... and the crossbar being centered and thus hidden or shown cut in half on both screens is annoying too...

there are bezel less displays, its really not that dificult from a technical point of view... so i dont get why there arent more displays without bezels....
i think the display makers think it doesnt matter and its not worth the 10-20% higher cost... i hope we will see some propper displaus without bezel soon... those samsung displays are a joke... there already are displaus with such a small and even smaller bezels afaik...

Even with bezel-less monitors, if you had a 6 monitor setup there would always be some sort of seam at your crosshair - and this you don't want. The easy and obvious solution is to go with an odd number of monitors both horizontally and vertically.

[3Deye]

Well said Cegras, totally agree with u.

[Rhys]

Even with bezel-less monitors, if you had a 6 monitor setup there would always be some sort of seam at your crosshair - and this you don't want. The easy and obvious solution is to go with an odd number of monitors both horizontally and vertically.

Well you probably want one of these! Just needs to be affordable!

Or this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq52x6LmUew

Or this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWivZEtH6-c&NR=1

[Hell Hound]

This is what you want here -->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K39zHXI8MPs

[To(V)bo Co(V)bo]

You guys need to think BIGGER. How about 3 1080 52" screen tv's, or 3 LCD projectors running. With the projectors there is no seem, you could really just run 2 if you wanted. You could get the screens to line up perfect then.

[Rhys]

You guys need to think BIGGER. How about 3 1080 52" screen tv's, or 3 LCD projectors running. With the projectors there is no seem, you could really just run 2 if you wanted. You could get the screens to line up perfect then.

Yes 2 or more projectors would probably be the best solution.

[Helloworld_98]

You guys need to think BIGGER. How about 3 1080 52" screen tv's, or 3 LCD projectors running. With the projectors there is no seem, you could really just run 2 if you wanted. You could get the screens to line up perfect then.

because a HD projector costs about the same as what 10x 19 to 23" screens would cost.

and 10240x2340 (5x 23" on the horizontal, 2 on the vertical) just can't be passed up, admittedly you'd need 2 or 3 5870's and all that would run you $2500 but the experience would be awesome.

[cegras]

You guys need to think BIGGER. How about 3 1080 52" screen tv's, or 3 LCD projectors running. With the projectors there is no seem, you could really just run 2 if you wanted. You could get the screens to line up perfect then.

That's not the point. Those large screen TV's have much lower actual resolutions, and you would have to sit very far away to get the same effect. But the promise of this technology is different - it's more actual space, and it's up close.

[tajoh111]

Cost is NOT really an issue. I can buy two additional 19" monitors with good specs and good reviews for maybe another 2-300 dollars. That's not a lot comparatively. Furthermore, the eye sees more horizontally than vertically, and adding two monitors to my peripheral vision is going to do a lot more than adding a few inches to my vertical vision for about the same price, as we all know (and apparently claim) prices go up exponentially with monitor size.

If you read around, you'd see that this feature is clearly for older games where the new 58xx series is seriously overpowered for the graphical horsepower they require.

The screen borders become invisible if you are adding periphery space around the central monitor. Try it; it is a well known, researched fact that the more you stare at one thing, the more it appears to disappear from your vision. Your eye is much more sensitive to dynamic objects as opposed to static objects.

There should not be any driver issues. Again, if you read, you would have known that the whole idea is to treat the setup of monitors as a single monitor, not like individual entities like Windows traditionally (?) handles them. Thus, when you select a resolution in game (they even showed screenshots of eyefinity resolutions in Crysis) it appears as one giant resolution.

Who says you have to sit far away? If I'm adding monitors to expand my periphery I will still be sitting at the exact same distance, but the 'dead space' that was there before will now be filled with information I can pick up on a subconscious level.

Eyefinity is definitely a nice feature and if it continues to be passed on to future generations, I might consider a multimonitor setup.

Also, to those people who complain the other monitors would suffer from poor viewing angle, all I have to say is: adjust them until they are OK (e.g. angle them). The rationale behind this, especially for FPS, is that the game probably (I'm not sure?) renders what you see based upon a circle field of view. Setting >100 degree FOV ingame (Q3, Source games) and actually having monitors capable of displaying that without the crazy distortion you see in a planar panel would be ... impressive.



They don't have multimonitor setup. After this card is released, that number may increase significantly.

Your second sentence makes no logical sense.

Of course it will take a performance hit. But if it remains above a certain threshold, you will most likely not be able to feel it unless it dips under 30 in chaotic situations.

Again, you should have read before you said anything; the monitors are merged into one large resolution, instead of being split and handled separately.

The 5870 was also running Left 4 Dead, Flight Sims, and I assume should be able to run RTS' with ease.

If someone has the money to purchase a 5870, then they are likely gaming on a 23"-24" monitor to begin with.

From what I have seen, the price of 23" monitor has stabilized and to get something not completely crappy, its still 300 dollars. Thats 600 dollars on monitors or 900 if you starting from scratch. Thats alot of money for most people and is as much as some peoples computer budgets.

Do you know how much desk space 3 monitors that takes up? Most desk's I have seen can barely fit a 24 inch monitor and a tower. Now your talking about 3, 24" monitors.

I have a multimonitor setup. I like using it for 2 work surfaces, where I can focus my attention at one screen at a time. I can still not ignore the bezel because they are simply too big on monitors. Even if its in my peripheral, I can still notice it, and if its one gigantic image distributed across multiple displays, I defintely notice the bezel and its fricken distracting. Hence when i do game once in a while, I do it on a single monitor.

Drivers issue, no company wants driver issues, but they all pop up anyway. To get playable frame rates on newer games, your going to need crossfire. I already have crossfire issues on a single monitor with 3 videocards on multiples games(crysis and crysis warhead) on a single monitor. I can imagine only imagine the havok type of technology will involve.

AMD and good drivers just don't seem mix for me.

If you read the other post I replied to it would make sense.

Someone said more people use multimonitor setups than overclock. I said that bull, as overclocking is close to free and look at the market for it. Look at all the companies that make products strictly for overclocking. Look at all the forums and website dedicated strictly to overclocking. Look at all the budget builds that people suggest, because the processor is supposed to be a good overclocker. It took AMD until now to come up with this eyefinity thing(and the technology behind it), if it was really that important AMD or some other videocard company would have come up with it a long long time ago. It wasn't until last year, that NV added driver support for dual monitor, so I don't think it was that big of a priority.

Who says the number of people will go up significantly? This could be a feature that fails very easily. The reason being, people don't want to take the risk of buying monitors(some free features already go into obscurity).

Your also trying to predict the future, which is really uncertain at this points and is difficult to judge in this economy. Something about 3 monitor is more of a luxury than a mid high end videocard.

[cegras]

If someone has the money to purchase a 5870, then they are likely gaming on a 23"-24" monitor to begin with.

From what I have seen, the price of 23" monitor has stabilized and to get something not completely crappy, its still 300 dollars. Thats 600 dollars on monitors or 900 if you starting from scratch. Thats alot of money for most people and is as much as some peoples computer budgets.

Do you know how much desk space 3 monitors that takes up? Most desk's I have seen can barely fit a 24 inch monitor and a tower. Now your talking about 3, 24" monitors.

I have a multimonitor setup. I like using it for 2 work surfaces, where I can focus my attention at one screen at a time. I can still not ignore the bezel because they are simply too big on monitors. Even if its in my peripheral, I can still notice it, and if its one gigantic image distributed across multiple displays, I defintely notice the bezel and its fricken distracting. Hence when i do game once in a while, I do it on a single monitor.

Drivers issue, no company wants driver issues, but they all pop up anyway. To get playable frame rates on newer games, your going to need crossfire. I already have crossfire issues on a single monitor with 3 videocards on multiples games(crysis and crysis warhead) on a single monitor. I can imagine only imagine the havok type of technology will involve.

AMD and good drivers just don't seem mix for me.

If you read the other post I replied to it would make sense.

Someone said more people use multimonitor setups than overclock. I said that bull, as overclocking is close to free and look at the market for it. Look at all the companies that make products strictly for overclocking. Look at all the forums and website dedicated strictly to overclocking. Look at all the budget builds that people suggest, because the processor is supposed to be a good overclocker. It took AMD until now to come up with this eyefinity thing(and the technology behind it), if it was really that important AMD or some other videocard company would have come up with it a long long time ago. It wasn't until last year, that NV added driver support for dual monitor, so I don't think it was that big of a priority.

Who says the number of people will go up significantly? This could be a feature that fails very easily. The reason being, people don't want to take the risk of buying monitors(some free features already go into obscurity).

Your also trying to predict the future, which is really uncertain at this points and is difficult to judge in this economy. Something about 3 monitor is more of a luxury than a mid high end videocard.

Your 'opinion' is as good as anyone else's. Read: it's not.

Don't try and spread FUD, therefore, based on your anecdotes and personal experience.

You use poor logic throughout. Just because an invention has not been conceived yet does not make it unworthy of attention. Perhaps with a bit of thought you would have realized how silly eyefinity would have been if it was introduced in the era of CRT of the when LCD's were first being introduced.

I will repeat myself: eyefinity is useful for games where the 58xx is clearly overpowered. This is what has been said and will be stated. No one expects you to be able to run eyefinity on recent games at that kind of resolution, unless some surprises are afoot.

I'm not even talking about 23, 24" monitors. 19" monitors that are good are cheap and available everywhere. Nowadays the push is for widescreen, and this is exactly what it lets you do - get widescreen without paying an exponential price for screen space.

I can see, however, that you will never be convinced, most likely because you are either a staunch critic of new technology (!) or you don't like ATI (!). My crusade is to prevent people from taking what you say seriously.

[Helloworld_98]

The future of electronics is certain (to about 5 years), The future of consumers is not.

[tajoh111]

Your 'opinion' is as good as anyone else's. Read: it's not.

Don't try and spread FUD, therefore, based on your anecdotes and personal experience.

You use poor logic throughout. Just because an invention has not been conceived yet does not make it unworthy of attention. Perhaps with a bit of thought you would have realized how silly eyefinity would have been if it was introduced in the era of CRT of the when LCD's were first being introduced.

I will repeat myself: eyefinity is useful for games where the 58xx is clearly overpowered. This is what has been said and will be stated. No one expects you to be able to run eyefinity on recent games at that kind of resolution, unless some surprises are afoot.

I'm not even talking about 23, 24" monitors. 19" monitors that are good are cheap and available everywhere. Nowadays the push is for widescreen, and this is exactly what it lets you do - get widescreen without paying an exponential price for screen space.

I can see, however, that you will never be convinced, most likely because you are either a staunch critic of new technology (!) or you don't like ATI (!). My crusade is to prevent people from taking what you say seriously.

I never said it was not worthy of attention. Don't twist my words.

Simply because you say it is bad logic, doesn't make it so. I already had other people agree with me. I think your ridiculous to think that people that are buying a card like the 5870 or 5850 to game on 19" monitors.

To assume cost will not prevent people from buying multimonitors is a fact, especially in this bad economy.

Your overextending your own beliefs thinking they are reality. I mentioned nothing of crts and multidisplay technology has been around for a long long time. Its never taken off because it is not practical for gaming, the technology has alway been there for dual screen atleast for a while, but it just has not taken off because

I have three AMD videocards in my computer. Hell I even posted pictures on here to prove it. Look for my posts.

I even have one of the highest 3dmarks in Canada using amd cards, so I already proven I don't mind AMD. I have no current benches with NV, so I am not an NV fanboy.

http://hwbot.org/listResults.do?user...plicationId=12

I have praised new technology in the past in this very forum so I already proven you wrong completely.

[Olivon]

Cry Engine 3 and Eyefinity Video

Impressive !!!

[Cybercat]

Your 'opinion' is as good as anyone else's. Read: it's not.

Don't try and spread FUD, therefore, based on your anecdotes and personal experience.

I guess people should keep their personal experiences to themselves, for risk of spreading fud. I mean if we're not all avid supporters of everything, what would the world come to?? People might actually be critical of poor experiences and force companies to change!

[Gautam]

I locked the other threads and renamed this one. Hopefully you guys will find this satisfactory.

[Hornet331]

Also, to those people who complain the other monitors would suffer from poor viewing angle, all I have to say is: adjust them until they are OK (e.g. angle them). The rationale behind this, especially for FPS, is that the game probably (I'm not sure?) renders what you see based upon a circle field of view. Setting >100 degree FOV ingame (Q3, Source games) and actually having monitors capable of displaying that without the crazy distortion you see in a planar panel would be ... impressive.

Wont happen in multiplayer games, its cause a high POV usually gives you certain advantages, depending on the game.
In HL1/2 a high FOV practically negates bobbing and also makes recoil far better controllable. Thats why most HL1/2 games have hardlocked fov to <=90°C. Same goes for Q3A.

Also a big are is not always an advantage, especial in fps. It might look cool but thats all -> Foveal vision>>Peripheral Vision

[Sly Fox]

I locked the other threads and renamed this one. Hopefully you guys will find this satisfactory.

Good decision if you ask me!

It was getting kind of annoying having to read three threads everytime I pop over to see the latest updates.

[Tim]

FINALLY!!! One thread, excellent.

Thanks Gautam.

[Telperion]

I sure wouldn't mind seeing that Spy decloaking off to my right and trying to stab me before I can deploy an Uber though.

[Sadasius]

I locked the other threads and renamed this one. Hopefully you guys will find this satisfactory.

Thank you very much! My clicking and scrolling finger was getting sore.

[zalbard]

Thanks God... er Gautam! You heard our prayers!

[cegras]

I never said it was not worthy of attention. Don't twist my words.

Simply because you say it is bad logic, doesn't make it so. I already had other people agree with me. I think your ridiculous to think that people that are buying a card like the 5870 or 5850 to game on 19" monitors.

To assume cost will not prevent people from buying multimonitors is a fact, especially in this bad economy.

Your overextending your own beliefs thinking they are reality. I mentioned nothing of crts and multidisplay technology has been around for a long long time. Its never taken off because it is not practical for gaming, the technology has alway been there for dual screen atleast for a while, but it just has not taken off because

I have three AMD videocards in my computer. Hell I even posted pictures on here to prove it. Look for my posts.

I even have one of the highest 3dmarks in Canada using amd cards, so I already proven I don't mind AMD. I have no current benches with NV, so I am not an NV fanboy.

http://hwbot.org/listResults.do?user...plicationId=12

I have praised new technology in the past in this very forum so I already proven you wrong completely.

You say dual monitors have no taken off because (blank?). Yet it's pretty obvious why it wouldn't have, which is why you need an odd number of monitors in row and column. Hint: It places the crosshair in one monitor instead of splitting it. That's what Eyefinity allows. Hm.

I have a 4870 1 GB for a 19". Benchmarks give you a decent story but most people fail to pay attention to the most important metric; minimum FPS. A 4850 or a 4770 may be 'adequate' for a 19", but once a game gets busy (and it'll get busy all the time in multiplayer) the situation from your timedemo FRAPS captures starts to dramatically change. This is why it's always important to be overpowered for any given resolution, unless you play single player only. I have went through a 9800 GTX+, 4770, 9600GT all in the quest for ALWAYS smooth performance in multiplayer FPS before finally deciding to overpower my resolution.

A good example is left4dead, a incredibly dynamic game. You cannot decide the candidacy of it based on 'just good enough'; it's much safer to overpower and forget.

I'm sure you have proven me wrong completely, since I alluded to none of the points that you apparently took me apart on. You are surprisingly hurt about me (apparently?) insinuating you're an nvidia fanboy, which I have not stated at all. I merely hinted that you either do not like new technology or you are skeptical about something you haven't even had a chance to try.

I guess people should keep their personal experiences to themselves, for risk of spreading fud. I mean if we're not all avid supporters of everything, what would the world come to?? People might actually be critical of poor experiences and force companies to change!

Yeah, totally, I mean, let's be critical of a product we haven't even had a chance to test when all the people who have laid their hands on it have said it's awesome ([H], Anand, etc).

[Hornet331]

FINALLY!!! One thread, excellent.

Thanks Gautam.

Indeed, so much topics concerning the same theme was kinda annyoing.

Btw. i anyone know something about idle consumption (power play)?