AMD's Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 31, 2010 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Completing the Eyefinity 6 Build
Just when we thought we were good to go with the first four panels, we heard a loud snap and a whole lot of bad ensued. The tape we applied earlier made it look like the panels were happily resting against one another but in reality it was just barely holding together a contraption that did not want to be contained any longer.
Apparently we hadn't adjusted all of the mounts properly and eventually the tape gave way (hence it not being magic sticky tape):
Here we have AMD's Chris Hook holding two panels together while I tighten the mounts to hopefully keep them in place. I believe I'm telling him a funny story at this point as well.
Setting up one of these Eyefinity 6 builds is definitely a two person job, and I wouldn't shy away from having a third join in. It definitely helped us.
Luckily Atdec's two display stand was much easier to assemble. You just adjust the vertical position of the arms that will hold your two displays, and with that done just clamp them into place. We lined up the two remaining displays to our slanty 4 monitor setup and things started to come together:
The whole process took a couple of hours. It would've taken more if we cared about trying to get all of the bezels to line up perfectly. If you've got a friend (or ten) who have great attention to detail and are extremely patient with assembling things, invite them over to help setup your $1500 Eyefinity 6 display (you should probably bake them a cake).
The finished product definitely had issues. The tape didn't keep the panels together forever. I will say that the gaps between the bezels didn't bother me that much, although the combined thickness of two bezels was annoying when actually using the system.
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Zstream - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Hmm, wonder if they have a snap to grid function in Windows 7 for each LCD. That would be nice...Taft12 - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Those of us with 6 or more screens have been using multiple low-end video cards (including PCI where necessary) for many years now. It's still much cheaper than this.Guspaz - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Perhaps because such solutions have been available for non-gaming uses for VERY many years. You could grab Matrox graphics cards (still hanging around in the business world), or use two GXM products to get six displays on a standard ATI/nVidia graphics card.There are also other solutions from other companies, or just the possibility of sticking three dual-head graphics cards in a system, which can be pretty cheap if you don't need powerful 3D performance.
In short, for productivity, this is old news; Eyefinity is really only of note for gaming, and it doesn't look very useful or practical for that either. Triple-head gaming has merit since it avoids many of the problems, and that can be done fairly easily (some graphics cards support three outputs, or you can use a GXM product).
lwatcdr - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
I could see this being used for Simulators and military systems as well.Maroon - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
I hope AMD didn't spend a lot of time on this because this is an unbelievably niche market they are after with this card.What needs to be done (if possible) is take the monitors apart and just piece together the screens and somehow relocate the hardware all behind everything.
sparkuss - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Anand wrote:The larger frame buffer did help raise minimum frame rates, but not enough to positively impact the average frame rates in our tests.
I thought there had been review comments before about the 5870 being memory limited in some tests. Does this mean that the added 1GB doesn't solve any of that without further hardware/software changes from ATI?
The 2GB cards, standard not eyefinity, are starting to list at manufactures sites. I was going to wait for them but maybe not worth it after all? I'm not interested in eyefinity, just CF for 1920 +above gaming.
Do you have any of the base 2GB cards planned for review shortly?
And P.S. the new comments system lose all adv editing?
poohbear - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
6 monitor support is good and all, but seriously how much demand is there for a card that can support 6 monitors? its a niche product, not sure what all the hoopla is about.:pnotty22 - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
From Review "It's worth mentioning that these power numbers were obtained in a benchmark that showed no real advantage to the extra 1GB of frame buffer. It is possible that under a more memory intensive workload (say for example, driving 6 displays) the 5870 E6 would draw much more power than a hypothetical 6-display 1GB 5870."I think a tester should run Furmark when in 3 way or 6 way eyefinity. I have a sinking feeling, this would break the card. The tests prove out that you need crossfire grunt of two 5870's to do any gaming. So the extra cost of this card , trying to do it all in one is a failure.
catalysts17TX - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
i have a 4870, great card but runs hot and sucks up a lot of wattage at idle power both the 5850 and 5870 due much better in heat and wattage, but at load the 5870 uses more wattage than my 4870 does. the 5870 card is NICE with the eyefinity 6 edition. MY question is will there be a 5850 Eyefinity 6 Edition? dont care about price just performance and wattageTaft12 - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Will Displayport ever start catching on as a monitor connector? The majority of displays still don't include a DP input and if it hasn't started by now, I wonder if it ever will...