Some AMD Eyefinity and HD3D moments by Toms Hardware

[Jaskanwar Singh]

6990 running 5x1 eyefinity

Hands-on: Radeon HD 6990 Running Eyefinity 5x1

Rather than have them laid out in their normal 16:9 or 16:10 widescreen modes, the set up that we saw had the LCDs in portrait mode. This effectively gave the effect of both a wide peripheral view, as well as something with a bit more vertical coverage. (We also figure that having five monitors in landscape mode would give a far too extreme field-of-view.)

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Having the 5x1 setup with portrait monitors would also prove to be a more cost effective way of getting big, widescreen gaming without having to spring for an Eyefinity 3 setup composed of 30-inch LCDs that cost north of the four-digit range.

The setup we saw was running off the dual-Cayman Antilles Radeon HD 6990 card, which pumped pixels to the five displays quite smoothly in the demos we got to see of Dirt 3 and Dragon Age 2. (We'll clarify the total resolution with AMD and update this article.

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Eyes-on: AMD Shows 3D Capabilities With HD3D

AMD's 3D technology for its Radeon HD products conform to industry standards – most notably right now is HDMI 1.4a. Sadly, this doesn't include a lot of desktop monitors on the market today, but it does include essentially every new 3D HDTV in existence today.

For those who absolutely want to multitask even while wearing a pair of 3D glasses, you can watch a movie in 3D in a window while maintaining a 2D desktop for other tasks. All of this was achieved on a Samsung 3D HDTV, which used the bundled Samsung 3D glasses – another proof of AMD's use of industry standards.

Unlike Nvidia, AMD relies on the 3D profiling work of an outside company to make 3D magic happen. We were shown Dynamic Digital Depth's (DDD) TriDef 3D Experience software, which had tons of presets for games and applications. AMD claims that over 400 titles are supported right now through TriDef profiles, so that's comparable to what Nvidia is offering with 3D Vision.

A demonstration of Google Earth was fired up, and there was no better city on the continent to highlight 3D other than New York. The 3D effect worked well on Manhattan, showing off all the skyscrapers of the island. To more tranquil surroundings we virtually headed next, off to the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. There too it showed the terrain in full three dimensions.

There is, however, a limitation to this too. Because AMD utilizes the HDMI 1.4a specification, which boasts a maximum TMDS throughput of 10.2 Gb/s, you can either game in stereo at 720p maxing out at 60 frames per second per eye, or you can game at 1080p with up to 24 frames per second per eye. That's actually pretty severe, considering we've been playing around with 5760x1080 using 3D Vision Surround and dual-link DVI connectors (each display running at 1920x1080). AMD says it'll transcend the shackles of HDMI 1.4a later this year when more monitor vendors begin incorporating DisplayPort 1.2. A peak effective bandwidth of 17.28 Gb/s is enough to enable 1080p at 60 frames per eye.

With this information in hand, let’s consider costs. If you want to watch Blu-ray 3D, you’re going to have to pay for Blu-ray 3D playback software, regardless of the graphics card. With an Nvidia card, you need to purchase the $40 3DTV Play driver from Nvidia at least or a $149 3D Vision kit at most. The interesting part is that AMD has actually bypassed any proprietary expense, so Blu-ray 3D playback is that much cheaper on Radeon cards.

Having said that, Nvidia includes the stereoscopic game driver with 3DTV Play and 3D Vision, while AMD hardware requires a third party game driver from DDD or iZ3D. DDD now offers its TriDef gaming driver to Radeon 6000 series owners for $24.99, and iZ3D offers their driver to Radeon 6000 series owners for $19.99.

 

[vickybat]

Thats great info. Looking forward to this.

 

[MegaMind]

WOW great....

 

[coderunknown]

simply WOW.

BTW what game is that? Fable2?

 

[Gaurav Bhattacharjee]

AMD Eyefinity>>>>>Nvidia Surround

AMD supports upto 12 monitors or more while Nvidia is limited to 3.

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10-monitor DiRT 2 Gameplay
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6-monitor DiRT 2 Gameplay
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[Jaskanwar Singh]

sammy Dirt 3 and Dragon Age 2

gaurav awesome ones.

 

[Gaurav Bhattacharjee]

This is not done by Toms but atleast its Eyefinity.

[YOUTUBE]TIl6m0BGhkE[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Zangetsu]

Marvellous....AMD

& look which mobo they have used my favorate "Gigabyte"

PS:for us it wud take time to play on a multimonitor setup...looks awkward 2 play

 

[Gaurav Bhattacharjee]

PS:for us it wud take time to play on a multimonitor setup...looks awkward 2 play

I hate multimonitor setups...i mean, how big a screen do you need for playing a damned game??

 

[funkysourav]

I hate multimonitor setups...i mean, how big a screen do you need for playing a damned game??

one word
Immersion

 

[skeletor]

AMD Eyefinity>>>>>Nvidia Surround

AMD supports upto 12 monitors or more while Nvidia is limited to 3.

The real good thing is that AMD scales better than nVidia surround on 3 monitors as well. Much due to the fact htat AMD cards have more VRAM.

 

[vickybat]

The other real good thing is amd's use of open standards and i had to agree on this. Especially the 3d part which is not being limited to proprietary hardware.