A back and forth we had in another thread lead me to setup my system for Eyefinity. I had the HD5830 GPU and enough monitors in the house (one with Displayport), but I had never tried Eyefinity.

Pretty awesome -- as those of you set up this way know. Heck even my wife was impressed -- got a little grin when she viewed it the first time Of course, maybe the grin was because she thought I spent a fortune -- but, I had spent nothing extra

Used 3 of my existing LCD monitors to setup a 5760x1200 Eyefinity arrangement (24", 26.5", 24") using the Dell provided Displayport cable and two DVI.

Setup was easy -- with an instruction PDF downloaded from AMD/ATI.

I found it interesting that the games I currently like best already support 5760x1200 in-game -- merely change the resolution under video options (the new resolution shows up as being available once Eyefinity is activated). But, not all games support 5760 natively -- including the "bigger budget" games I tried.

The wrap around effect is great. My entire eye field of view seems filled edge to edge (subjective feeling as, of course, the true eye FOV is nearly 180 degrees). By actual measurement, the Field of View from where I sit is 140 degrees. The side monitors are arranged at about 35 degrees to the center monitor -- they "wrap around". And the full distance across is about 56 inches. Wow -- really makes an impression.

Surprisingly to me, the HD5830 had no problem with 5760x1200 at maximum in-game settings -- including AA in one of them. These include: Neverwinter Nights 2, Two Worlds, Sacred 2, Drakensang, Titan Quest IT -- all big-environment role playing games which I am into currently while waiting for SoW:BoB. I did not try all my games (about 50 installed).

The new three monitor wide desktop is easy to use and practical, so far.

Probably no going back. I can see Christmas is going to be expensive -- matching monitors and the appropriate HD68xx card

Anyhow, this is not news to those of you using 3 monitors for months or years. Merely, my impressions FWIW.

PS: Heaven benchmark DX11 5760x1200 High Shaders, normal Tessellation, Anisotropy 4, AA off -- about 10FPS typical (12.4 average). Looks awesome -- to a geek like me Almost usable -- but not quite smooth to the eye. A reason to buy an HD68xx

Amen brother... No going back now after Eyefinity. Originally bought it (card and 2 additional monitors) for iRacing, but now i'm hooked on using it with Arma 2, DCS:BS and FSX. Best investment I've made my sim addiction yet (knocked TrackIR from the number one spot, although it's still a veeeery close second).

Welcome to the pack! You can also setup profiles for older games that don't like 2 or more monitors so you can switch. Personally I find desktop apps bothersome with three monitors, so I have a profile that just uses two (The one directly ahead and the one to the right) then for older games that act goofy with 2 or more monitors I have a profile that just uses the center monitor. Then of course many newer titles support the large resolutions, so when I'm about to launch one I press the hotkey for three.

Argon, can you tell us more about your hotkey system? I really like my Eyefinity setup (see the link in my signature) but do not like using it in 2D mode as maximizing a window opens it to the entire screen (and related issues with one large desktop space, such as the task bar). What resources (links?) do have you that might help?

thanks

David

I'll give a step by step when I return home... But basically I set up what I wanted how I wanted it, then created a profile in the ATI CCC Profile Manager using a key combo. I did that for each of my configurations. I've got Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E for Eyefinity (3 monitors), Ctrl + Shift + Alt + X for extended (Two monitors, one extended, 50 in plasma T.V. duplicated) and Ctrl + Shift + Alt + O (For One monitor, duplicated to my 50 in plasma)

Start with creating the Eyefinity three monitor profile first, then work your way down to the one monitor setup. I'm not using Eyefinity with the two monitor setup, just regular extended mode as you said I didn't want windows maximizing across both monitors.

Excellent! Thanks, I did not know that was possible. I will look into it when I get home.

David

Is anyone with this setup able to watch movies spanned across all three monitors? From what I've read online, it seems like both the ATI and NVIDIA triple-monitor gaming setups don't support watching videos (bluray) across all three monitors.

Sorry, I have never tried. The official AMD Eyefinity faq says "HD Video support depends on the player application." and points to a link by Arcsoft who is introducing HD support for ultra-wide resolutions:

http://www.arcsoft.com/en-us/press_detail.asp?prID=429

Why would you want to though, with the monitor bezels in the way? I've never tried because of that. Watching a movie from a distance, it would be very distracting...

To put together my Eyefinity, I used two LCD HDTV/monitor units from elsewhere in the house. They had to be replaced somehow -- or, better yet, returned to their original locations.

Today I found Hewlett-Packard LP2465 24" 1900x1200 refurbished (well used in an office environment I think) monitors with S-PVA panels at $210 each delivered (comparible new monitors are going at roughly $500 and up). These compare exactly to my Dell monitor ($550 when I bought it) for physical size, color, wide off axis viewing angle, height/tilt/swivel/pivot, etcetera. They're two or three years old. Write ups were very good (not the very best). Should be an improvement over the two HDTV/monitors I'm using -- and much cheaper.

Moreover, they are 1920x1200 -- new monitors are mostly 1920x1080 these days.

With fingers crossed, I ordered two -- as I really was not looking forward to spending over $1000 to get two monitors to match my Dell (which is mediocre anyhow).