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ATI was started 5000 as its graphics cards in September 2009, admire it more than just a performance, it resulted in a new technology, PC Gamer promises an experience like no other: true, no compromise, multi-monitor gaming.

Sure, some very serious PC-centric titles like Supreme Commander, with support for multiple monitors had tried in the past, but they offered limited attempts little more than a convenient way to separate the mini-map of the plot. Eyefinity, by comparison, promised multi-screen gaming on hundreds of titles that have never been optimized, they get support. This would turn out, both its greatest strength and its greatest obstacle. It was an ambitious and somewhat buggy company, when it again in 2009 revealed, but has about a year and a half the driver's foot, the situation improved?

Having now lived with Eyefinity setup for the past 12 months, I feel uniquely qualified not only about how technology has developed, to speak, but if it was worth the price.

Is multi-monitor gaming in 2011, finally living up to all the marketing hype? Hit the jump to find out.

Eyefinity in 2011. What's better, what's not.

AMD fans may not care to admit it, but the Catalyst driver suite has not always golden boy of the industry when it comes to reliability. ATI has a proud history of impressive hardware on the hump, but the software team has a lot to prove over the past years. If you 're one of the few still a grudge, let me assure you. Despite the odd hiccup here and there, I can now easily that a modern version of the Catalyst Control Center every bit of the feeling to be stable and capable as its competitors ForceWare.

Eyefinity support with the introduction of the 5000 series GPUs added in Catalyst 9.9, but flattened most of the reservations that have given back then complete as of today. Of the three biggest obstacles that we saw at the start, all but one of these drivers have been addressed by the team.

Crossfire support

If AMD Eyefinity started without native support for Crossfire, we were left shaking their heads. Given that older titles like Crysis still has the ability to bring our graphics cards to tears, as would keep a single GPU, while forced to pump three times as many pixels as before? The answer is not very good. The performance was acceptable in Source engine games, but let 's face it, just do not cut 15fps in Crysis.

Fortunately, with the release of Catalyst 9.12 in December 2009, this obstacle was overcome not only, but has improved dramatically since then. Virtually every other driver release has improved CrossFire scaling brought to the table, and nobody benefits from this more than a Eyefinity gamers. A 15% improvement in your favorite game might go unnoticed on a single display, but makes all the difference in the world if you 're trying to push over 6 million pixels at a time.

BEZEL COMPENSATION

AMD realized that this was a sticking point for many users took a fairly innovative in helping to fix Catalyst 10.3, the problem. Driver level bezel correction allows for the dead space between the LCD and turns a blind spot in this area, rather than to compensate for a hard stop. Before the introduction of the bezel textures correction would stop and start suddenly on a monitor on the second, resulting in a very disjointed image. The bezel fix works by creating a custom resolution for your configuration and broadcasting of such a native setting for all your applications.

Bezel correction is an optional step in the establishment of a new Eyefinity group in the Catalyst Control Center, so make sure you do not miss. Maybe not notice it running in a game if you grass or sky, but it will hold out like a sore thumb when you are in a face looking erroneously split in two by a 4-inch bezel.

DISPLAY PORT BLUES

If Eyefinity initially launched to monitor the demand for a DisplayPort ready drastically limits your options. In 2011, DisplayPort monitors still command a slight premium, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. With a little effort I was able to find several options from just $ 250. You may not be the best drives on the market, but it's a good way to get your feet wet. The alternative is to use an active DisplayPort adapter, and fortunately, these too have significant price erosion seen. Back in 2009 you could run these dongles $ 100 or more, now perfectly acceptable options are in the $ 25 - $ 30 range.

The Nvidia solution for 2D Surround requires users to buy two graphics cards in SLI. It is not as elegant a solution to be sure, but if you wanted to buy two tickets or so, it certainly no deal breaker.

Do I really need a multi-monitor gaming setup?

Eyefinity is truly luxury gaming-taken to excess. Does anyone really need to get their favorite games with a resolution 12 times higher than running an Xbox 360? Probably not. Is it worth every penny if you have the money to burn? Well, that really depends on your favorite genre.

First-Person Shooter

Have you ever considered buying a $60 mouse pad because a fancy display ad told you it would improve your accuracy? If you answered yes, and you haven't considered Eyefinity yet, you've been looking in all the wrong places. By increasing the number of pixels you can see at any given time, your advantage on the battlefield increases exponentially. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've seen foes blindly run past me in the distance, completely unaware of what's going on directly beside them.

Apart from the obvious competitive advantages, Eyefinity also creates a feeling of immersion, which is simply unmatched. Once I can monitor as much extra space on the screen a bit unnerving at first, especially for single-screen veterans, but over time you will eventually train your eyes to these monitors scan effortlessly with your peripheral vision. It takes a healthy dose of patience and practice, but once you get the speed out ask yourself how you'll ever without him.

On the other hand, some FPS titles suffer from a non-correctable phenomena often as fisheye, but we will touch it later.

Portrait or Landscape? LANDSCAPE
Best examples Battlefield Bad Company 2, Dead Space, Including Source Engine Games: Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, Left for Dead 2.

Third Person Action & GAMES massive multiplayer online role-playing

Most of the advantages I listed above for the first-person shooter junkies also apply here, but with one exception. The third person perspective is ideally suited for Eyefinity, without exception. Instead, the extra is a source of distraction, it just works. Open world games like Just Cause 2 provides a slightly better experience on indoor titles like Batman Arkham Asylum - but only because the walls of a maximum security prison a little less captivating than a tropical wonderland.

The vast majority of the MMOs I tested also looked great in Eyefinity. The extra screen real estate comes in super handy when you want to leave your window open status. Eve Online, for example, is a beautiful game, but on a single monitor, it is sometimes difficult to find, even under the sea, your ship the needed scanner window.

Portrait or landscape? LANDSCAPE
Best examples (Action) Assassin's Creed and Brother Hood, Batman Arkham Asylum, Just Cause 2, Splinter Cell Conviction
Best examples (RPG / MMO) World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Rift, Dragon Age

TOP DOWN STRATEGY GAMES

Each player is a decent strategy to tell you that the awareness of your surroundings always priority No. 1 was, so with this logic, should offer more pixels a decisive advantage, does not it? The answer is an undeniable and yes, some developers know this, and have spared no effort to even the playing field.

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Blizzard aside, I would describe the strategy genre embrace wide-screen gaming as mixed at best. If it works, the extra screen real estate is invaluable for the early warning of an incoming enemy attack, but since most strategy games use some variation of fog of war, this is not always an advantage, even if the game natively supports .

Another important example would be Civilization V. While the game looks simply fantastic in Eyefinity, with multiple monitors really do not add much to the experience beyond the wow factor. Since the vast majority of your attention to the center of the screen is aligned, multiple monitors can actually somewhat annoying as you turn your head to want to see locked the controls on the far left and far right or monitored. If you love strategy games, you're probably better off taking your hard earned money on a single 30 "monitor with a native 2560 x 1600 resolution. If you use Eyefinity not, however, I would recommend you contact a portrait configuration. If She makes a habit of building your bases in the middle of the map that you usually do not need so far to the east or west to see. Worse still, if you end up building on the edge of a map, you can end up wasting an entire screen, put us into a black abyss gets. Eyefinity portrait mode a little concerned with the civilization above mentioned problem with the controls, placed so far from your normal visible spectrum.

Portrait or landscape?   PORTRAIT
Best examples : Dawn of War II & Retribution, Shogun Total War 2, Civilization V

RACING & Simulation Games

If you show off AMD Eyefinity field to find more often than not, you're likely to see, they have a racing or flight simulation. The reason is simple. People who drive cars to whip used in the position to ensure the side windows and see the landscape through.

One could argue that Eyefinity was designed with simulation games, but it's also a genre that is next to no benefit from the extra real estate capital gains tax. Eyefinity to almost every race simulation in an immersive experience that you are to see to believe, but the benefits end. At the end of the day the road is all that matters, producing a Eyefinity setup is less helpful to your game as a set of fancy wheels. It is certainly a lot of added bling, but do not expect that it will help you to win the race.

Portrait or landscape? LANDSCAPE
Best examples : Need for Speed, Burnout Paradise, Dirt 2, HAWX 1 & 2

Picking Monitors & Hardware

One of the most common questions people ask me about multi-monitor gaming, is where to start. If you have a Radeon 5000 or 6000 series GPU, or have two GeForce 400 or 500 series boards, you can already half way there.

PICKING THE GRAPHICS CARD

When picking from the AMD camp the most expensive single GPU you can afford will always be your best option. If you have any money left over, buy two. If you're an Nvidia fan, simply buy a pair of whatever you can comfortably afford. This might sound like an overly simple answer to a complicated question, but trust me when I say you'll need all the performance you can get.

Another important aspect is the video memory. 1GB might sound like more than enough for a graphics card, but it disappears quickly at a resolution of 5760 x 1080 or higher. Always opt for a GPU possible with the amount of onboard memory.

Picking The MONITORS

Choosing the right monitor is one of the most difficult challenges, and leaves you with some difficult decisions. The natural temptation is to simply mix and match, and while we can certainly help this way to keep the price low, I'll list a few best practices.

Requirements:
All monitors have the same resolution, refresh rate, and at least one must have a DisplayPort (if you do not have an active DisplayPort adapter when using Eyefinity).

RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Buy the same brand / model / year, whenever possible .
   When I took the plunge Eyefinity a year ago, I mixed a two-year-old Dell Ultra Sharp 2407-WFP, with the closest match I at the time, could not find the Dell U2410. This made financial sense at the time but despite my best efforts I was never able to fully match the colors between the two models because the latest Ultra Sharp are all IPS panels. I lived with him for almost a year before he finally gives up and standardizing the U2410 for all three.
2. Stick with the same size.
   If you are looking to mix and match old and new displays are the same physical size, if held at all possible. If you have a 24 "1080p panel in the center, try your best to find a matching set. It 's not necessary, but it' s ideal in any case.
3. Three vs. six monitor setup.
   If you flush with cash, you might be tempted, for the full six display Eyefinity experience (as Maximum PC readers would not?) Decisions. But believe me, if I say declining rates in quickly after the first three. If you are a typical user, which sits less than three feet away from your ads, you little more than three monitors pretty overwhelming. In addition to the visual overload, you're also force you to crunch your system for more than 12 million pixels at a time. The toll for a six-performance-monitor configuration can be quite extreme.
4. If you mix 's and matching old and new monitors, you will want to calibrate.
   Software solutions such as ColorWizzard ($ 50) works well, but hardware devices such as Datacolor Spyder 3 best ($ 169). Mismatched colors may not interfere with something you will notice on the desktop, but if the walls change color in your favorite game, if you scan your eyes across the screen, it can be pretty.

HOW TO Configure Monitor GROUPS

Setting up a Eyefinity group with the Catalyst Control Center has received a lot easier since the launch, but it is still not completely intuitive, even for advanced users. Rather than go through the step-by-step, I encourage you to check out AMD 's interactive tutorial.

Common problems with Eyefinity

FISHEYE & FOV

If the developers on a modern game to your work, they usually do so with the expectation that to experience the vast majority of users, content on a widescreen display. This usually means an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1080p, 720p) or the other generally recognized standards such as 4:3 or 16:10. Eyefinity accepts these conditions and throws them right out the window. Once activated, three separate 1080p displays are in landscape format, presented by the operating system as a single, solid panel with wide aspect ratio of 16.03 - possibly less if you are correct with bezel.

The end result of such an enormously disproportionate ratio varies greatly depending on the title, but first person shooters are especially prone to suffer from image distortion, depending on to get to the center. You will hear often refereed to as "fisheye", but I've also heard it called tunnel vision. Future-oriented developers, as Valve has the ability, the FOV (Field of Vision) to adjust to compensate for this problem included, and it makes a huge difference if you are prone to this type of distortion. If - like me - you just show the page for the peripheral vision, not in a position, this setting is not a complete deal breaker match, but it's certainly nice to have.

When you expand the FOV to the appearance of objects farther away from the center, as you gain less, the images are more compressed. Valve makes this option available with a handy slider below the graphic settings, but many other titles, and Cfg hide in.. Ini files. If your favorite game Google and add the word "Eyefinity" to the end, you are usually on the Wide Screen Gaming Forum aimed to get. This community has done a fantastic job of rounding up fixes for almost every title, and is an ideal starting point when searching for updates.

The community also has a FOV WSGF calculation tool to none is released.

STRETCHED MENUS & DISTORTED Cut Scenes

Eyefinity works in an amazingly large percentage of games - both old and modern titles - but you have to deal with the fact that some never really reach out, no matter how hard you try to come. High profile games like The Witcher or Mass Effect 1 & 2 are great examples of titles where the developers make design decisions made motor level, try to run the Eyefinity a complete nightmare.

The most common mistake I've ever seen is if the developers code the size of the main menu options to proceed with the width of the display scale. Best-case scenario is an ugly UI, more often than not, however, the interface makes it completely unusable. Another common problem Eyefinity, if cutscenes or in-game scripted sequences do wrong. Bullet Storm, for example, allows you to adjust the FOV by binding a key in the. Cfg files, which works great. Scripted sequences ignore this override, resulting in an unusually high number of unintended step shots in between missions, the ... does not work so great.

Final Impressions

Multi-monitor gaming in 2011 is not only alive and well, but more affordable than ever before. It is easy to go overboard when you are looking high-end displays with AMD's latest and greatest to run in Crossfire, but not feel pressured. Even a modest investment in a pair of matching side is monitored dramatically improve the sense of immersion that you get from your gaming sessions. Assuming you already have a modern GPU is a $ 500 investment over everything you need to get started.

This may seem like a ringing endorsement sound hands down, and while I firmly believe, multiple monitors is a worthwhile upgrade for hardcore gamers, it's not for the faint of heart. If after digging through the file system in search. Ini files, or searching FOV fixes for hours on end does not sound like your idea of ??a good time, then this may not be for you. An impressively large part of the title of the paper with almost no effort at all, but you are only given to those who do not. Who sampled the true ultra-wide-screen gaming, it can be painful, forced to play again on a single ad on one of the most stubborn title.

Wide Screen Gaming Resources

AMD Eyefinity tech demo & More Information
Delphium 's Field of View & Aspect Ratio Calculator
Widescreen Fixer (Eyefinity Unofficial patch for all COD titles + Bioshock, Battlefield 2, Halo, Unreal 3 and more)
Widescreen Gaming Forum