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current state of eyefinity?

pgi947

pgi947

pgi947

Soldato
Joined
25 Jun 2011
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Aberdeen
Afternoon all

Think I've blagged the Mrs into letting me have 3 monitors, a simple tactic that involved showing the price of 3 monitors vs titan :o

Now recently I read some reports elsewhere that only a few games scale well to that resolution and the rest just tend to offer you a stretched image? Any truth in this?

Also what is support like when a new game is released? I take it the crossfire+eyefinity+x79 issues have been sorted too?

Eyeing up some of the asus or iilyama slim bezel monitors :)
 
Eyefinity isn't really a "thing" when it comes to games as such, it's more to do with the games themselves, and whether they support the ultrawide aspect.

Most games do, but a lot won't be "out of the box" so to speak. But I've found most games comply easily enough with a few ini tweaks.
 
They all stretch somewhat at the sides but that's because you're not supposed to look at the side screens directly more let the side screens settle into your periphery.

If you can become accustomed to that then it's pretty decent. Because they all plug into one monitor be prepared for some pretty nasty idle temperatures although if you're watercooling it shouldn't be a problem.

The one annoying thing - and I don't know if they've changed it yet - is that you can't manually set your bezel corrected resolution, i.e. 5800*1080 which would be 20 pixels each side.

For the games that don't work, there's an excellent program called Widescreen Fixer that I used which has profiles built into it to make the game look better at triple screen resolution. Skyrim, for example, is unplayable without it. Gets regularly updated profiles as well.

There's probably other alternatives but that was the one I used. In fact I was so impressed by the work that went into it that I gave a donation to the developer.

As spoffle says, support is game side rather than driver side so if the game doesn't support it upon release you're reliant on them patching it on or waiting for a profile on WSF.
 
Rusty0611 said:
They all stretch somewhat at the sides but that's because you're not supposed to look at the side screens directly more let the side screens settle into your periphery.....
Click to expand...

There shouldn't be any if support is implemented properly, i.e. the game gives you the option to render to each screen seperately. As I'm only playing racing simulations at the moment I don't know what support is like in other games, but iracing, Rfactor2 beta, Live for Speed, all offer this option with the game handling the bezel correction for you. This gives you a perfect image without distortion across all three screens provided you have your monitors correctly alinged, at the correct angle to each other and you're sitting the right distance away form them with your eye level at centre.

Obviously, rendering each screen seperately does impact performance compared to redendering one large image which is probably why not so many developers implement it. That and the surround/eyefinity user base is miniscule so why waste time on it if its not a key feature. Note this is seen as a key feature in racing simulations, which is why we're well catered for in this space.
 
Your likely to have the wife playing as once you go 3, then its hard to play on one.
issues will always happen with crossfire/sli and 3 screens.
normally it works really well and the idea is, if it works, dont change driver ;)
I use a single card for 3 screens, yes I lower the settings especially in fps games but most other game types you can play with higher settings.

if the game support 3 screens isnt often true, path of exile for example dont allow moving the UI as far and you can play it but then all UI stuff is on the sidescreens, diablo 3 however has pretty good UI for 3 screens and most fps games works well like bc2 or bf3.

when a new game comes out, always expect issues with it.
amd has however changed their driver delivery schedule so it now works better when new games comes out. beta drivers for the latest games even though far cry 3 seems hopeless. dont play it myself tho.

racing games is a pretty good along with fly sims as its allows immersion beyond most.
 
stephenb said:
There shouldn't be any if support is implemented properly, i.e. the game gives you the option to render to each screen seperately. As I'm only playing racing simulations at the moment I don't know what support is like in other games, but iracing, Rfactor2 beta, Live for Speed, all offer this option with the game handling the bezel correction for you. This gives you a perfect image without distortion across all three screens provided you have your monitors correctly alinged, at the correct angle to each other and you're sitting the right distance away form them with your eye level at centre.

Obviously, rendering each screen seperately does impact performance compared to redendering one large image which is probably why not so many developers implement it. That and the surround/eyefinity user base is miniscule so why waste time on it if its not a key feature. Note this is seen as a key feature in racing simulations, which is why we're well catered for in this space.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I was talking about big games :p.

I didn't know some games implemented the side angles as distinct displays but I see that not many do either. It's a shame but it would give a ridiculous advantage in say shooter games if that was the case.
 
Cheers guys, sounds quite positive :)

Is it easy enough to switch profiles between eyefinity ~5760x1080 and 3 x 1920x1080? As I have no problem having to drop down to a single screen should the wider resolution not yet be supported on the occasional game. It actually might be quite handy should I want to game and have the football or something on another monitor :)

I gave up on Far Cry 3 a while back, poorly coded junk I can do without the hassle of trying to get that to play on a single screen let alone three :p

whyscotty said:
Crossfire Eyefinity works very well with no issues on X79 since 12.11 drivers.
Click to expand...

That's good to know, I didn't look into the problem being resolved, though was aware some issue existed on this specific combination.

What monitors are all you guys using?
 
pgi947 said:
Cheers guys, sounds quite positive :)

Is it easy enough to switch profiles between eyefinity ~5760x1080 and 3 x 1920x1080? As I have no problem having to drop down to a single screen should the wider resolution not yet be supported on the occasional game. It actually might be quite handy should I want to game and have the football or something on another monitor :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's one button. Can hotkey it.

I was using 3x XL2420Ts from my time with nVidia. 120 Hz across 3 screens was godly.
 
Yes run 2 modes, extended monitor and duplicate, all done via the windows key + P. I switch to eyefinity for gaming but keep extended all other times.
 
Rusty0611 said:
Sorry, I was talking about big games :p.

I didn't know some games implemented the side angles as distinct displays but I see that not many do either. It's a shame but it would give a ridiculous advantage in say shooter games if that was the case.
Click to expand...

Comes in handy seeing when another car's along side you :) You can see the iracing display options here. You put in all the measurements for your screens and how far away you are sitting and it calculates the correct field of view which when divided by three gives the angle at which you should have your side screens. Really adds to the imersion and sense of speed on some tracks where the scenery is rushing past in your peripheral vision. Would be really hard to go back to a single screen now.

Edit: and to answer the OP I'm using 3x Asus VE278Q. Edge lit LED-LCD 60hz pannels with DP/DVI/HDMI/VGA inputs giving maximun flexability. Been running them for 4 months now and very happy with them.
 
Last edited:
pgi947 said:
Cheers guys, sounds quite positive :)

Is it easy enough to switch profiles between eyefinity ~5760x1080 and 3 x 1920x1080? As I have no problem having to drop down to a single screen should the wider resolution not yet be supported on the occasional game. It actually might be quite handy should I want to game and have the football or something on another monitor :)

I gave up on Far Cry 3 a while back, poorly coded junk I can do without the hassle of trying to get that to play on a single screen let alone three :p



That's good to know, I didn't look into the problem being resolved, though was aware some issue existed on this specific combination.

What monitors are all you guys using?
Click to expand...

3 x BenQ XL2420T's connect by 1 x dvi-d and 2 x mini DP to DP
 
Cheers :)

120hz is out of the question due to price range, with so much viewing space I don't think I'll miss it that much, besides thin bezels, what's best to look for in eyefinity monitors? I've almost rounded it down to one of these four models:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus SonicMaster MX239H 23" Widescreen Ultra Slim Bezel LED Monitor - Black with Bang & Olufsen ICEpower Speakers £239.99
1 x Dell Studio S2440L 24" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black £199.99
1 x Asus VN247H 24"Widescreen Super Narrow Bezel LED Monitor - Black £179.99
1 x Iiyama Prolite E2481HS-B1 24" Widescreen LED Super Slim Bezel Monitor - Black £169.99
Total : £804.96 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
Not sure if those Sonicmasters just out at the bottom? Looks flush in some pics and juts out in others.

I had the Iiyama prolite and nothing wrong with them but a little bland in deep colours IMO.

You know what to expect with the VN247H monitors as you have the VG one.
 
So would the panel quality on the VG vs. VN be similar despite being 120 vs. 60 hz? As I really do like my current VG236H, its just the absolutely mahoosive bezels preventing me keeping it.

I'm genuinely clueless when it comes to monitors, my logic has always been bigger+more pixels+higher refresh = better :p
 
If you find the bezels too big, you could do what others do and place the side monitors behind the bezels of the center monitor. I did this with mine in my inital setup, as the bezels on the VG's are big but I did put them edge to edge and I much prefer that.

As you love a good mod, why not rip the bezels down?

 
Its a good video, though they guy needs to learn the difference between Vernier Callipers and a Micrometer :p

I think de-bezeling this monitor would leave so much exposed due to the shape of the bezel, the top and bottom taper off towards the rear behind the screen while still being part of the front bezel.

Asus VG236H or VG236HE (one comes with glasses the other doesn't) appear to be like gold dust too these days, Asus discontinued them shortly after I purchased my monitor, I'm not sure why as they didn't replace it with anything.

Perhaps I should sell it, I spotted some being sold on a certain yank auction site for $1200!!
 
whyscotty said:
Crossfire Eyefinity works very well with no issues on X79 since 12.11 drivers.
Click to expand...

I can confirm this too pgi, I've got an X79 set up with 2x 7950s and 3x monitors, no issues at all with it.

Also, a few tips that I noticed through the thread. The distortion that people have been talking about is actually normal, for anyone who knows what wideangle photography looks like, you'll know that barrel distortion to the right and left extremes are apparent in photos, which is the sort of extreme right and left distortion you get in games, firstly it's because the monitors are supposed to be at an angle to you and the middle monitor, and secondly it's because they are there to fill peripheral vision.

For example in this photo;

http://www.itanas.com/personal/2012-02-04 Area 51 Gathering/Wide angle distortion ).jpg

Also, you don't want to use Eyefinity mode (as in spanned) for anything other than games or full screen apps, because spanned is CRAP for desktop use and defeats the purpose of having multiple monitors.

For desktop use, always use extended, and set up a profile for Eyefinity, it's very quick and easy to do, I think you can even set up the profile to launch automatically when you launch a game.
 
Ah I see :)

I'm leaning towards 3 of the VN247H monitors, might be a few months until I get something purchased, I just didn't want to jump in with both feet and find a pile of issues :)
 
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