Go play some games .. on six LCD screens
Think about this for a second, can you even grasp the idea that it has only been six months ago when ATI released its first DX11 class products ... six months (!) Not a month went by with ATI not releasing a new product in that Radeon Series 5000 range.The cycle is complete though, ATI filled every little and foreseeable gap in the DX11 class graphics card market. As such they will now focus on respins, future products and the more niche gear with somewhat lower priority.
Niche is the word that I like to label today's test product with. Extravagant, extraordinary, yes ATI finally released it's Eyefinity6 SKU officially. Though we believe this will be one tough puppy to find on the market one fact remains .. there will be small market for this product. And sure, not so much the gamer, but the professional end user and corporate entities can save a lot of dough with a product like shown today. Imagine presentations on a couple on say a monitor or four, an instruction video on the other and so on. What am I talking about ? Eyefinity6 .. a high-end Radeon HD 5870 based graphics card with no less than six display port output connectors that can drive six monitors simultaneously for you to wither work, present or play games at an insane and nearly ridiculous monitor resolution.
And gaming, yep .. it is exactly that last option what we'll be looking at today. We know .. we understand, there's 0.01% chance that any of you would purchase and replicate a similar setup as shown in this article it certainly is fun to read up on. It's x-factor hardware, Top Gear stuff for computer geeks and gamers.
So yes, we'll look at Eyefinity6, we'll build a nice frame that can hold the six Dell monitors we are using in this review and then will get our groove on. Now we'll also show some performance numbers as we'll not only use one, but two Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 cards, which we'll setup in CrossfireX, but more overly I like this article to be a show case. As such we'll record some high-definition footage and show you videos of a gaming in a MASSIVE monitor resolution of 5040x2100.
Hot damn .. this is going to be fun ! But first meet the product empowering it all ...
So ATI introduced Eyefinity technology on their Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards six months ago. This literally boils down to multi monitor desktop and gaming nirvana. You will have no problem connecting say three 30" monitors at 2560x1600 per monitor -- combined to 7680x1600.
The ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 card however is a little weird, it's the freak nephew as it's capable of driving a total of six monitors over one card. And sure, it's clocked a little faster as well at 850 MHz on the core, as well as its 1600 shader processors.
Memory wise the card is clocked at 4800 MHz (gDDR5) much like the reference 5870, but here's one thing different. The ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 edition, at least the model we received, comes with a nice phat 2GB graphics memory. And that will help in uber-high resolutions with AA pretty decently. The TDP is slightly higher than the standard 5870 at 228W and 34W in idle.
Resolution wise you can drive up-to six monitors each capable of 2560x1600 (!)
Battlefield Bad Company 2
What a great game title this is. Check out the video. We have totally fine framerates and the game is very playable. Bezel correction is active here as you can see. Now here's where Eyefinity with six monitors disappoints, in the center middle of your screen, the crosshair and thus your focus is located. Here the Bezel creates a gap, and that is just annoying.
Your only option then is to disable Bezel management, but then the crosshair is split over two screens. s
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
VERY impressive, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is looking great on Eyefinity. But much like Battlefield, the crosshair in the middle is smack down bull's-eye under the bezel. Absolutely annoying. The game itself obviously runs great, even at such an uber resolution. This was the one title that would not work properly in CrossfireX. But a single card at the highest settings with 4xAA still manages to produce an average framerate of roughly 40 FPS in this resolution.
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