Eyefiity on a 7870

[kration]

I'm thinking of trying out Eyefinity for playing 'Elite : Dangerous' and other games. It's just something to experiment with rather than needing to be perfect.

I've got a "Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7870 OC Windforce 3X 2048MB GDDR5" card.

I understand that the outputs it has are:

1x DVI-I/1x HDMI/2x mini-Display port outputs with HDCP protection

Will this be OK at running Eyefinity?

And what interfaces/dongles do I need to run 3 monitors?

I've currently got 2 monitors (2x Acer X223W) and will be getting a third soon. Not necessarily the same type of monitor though. When getting a new monitor is there anything I need to lookout for re. connecting to the GPU card?

 

[Doogles]

You could run eyefinity on it with 3x1080p but don't expect much more than low-medium.

 

[MoodyB]

I've currently got 2 monitors (2x Acer X223W) and will be getting a third soon. Not necessarily the same type of monitor though. When getting a new monitor is there anything I need to lookout for re. connecting to the GPU card?

For a 7870 & Eyefinity afaik the 3 monitors should be of the same make / model. This will save on any hassles getting it to work properly.

And one needs to be connected to the display port.

 

[kration]

For a 7870 & Eyefinity afaik the 3 monitors should be of the same make / model. This will save on any hassles getting it to work properly.

And one needs to be connected to the display port.

I appreciate that this is a silly question, but what counts as the 'display port'?

 

[NightSt@lk3r]

I appreciate that this is a silly question, but what counts as the 'display port'?

Native DP monitor or an active DP adaptor

 

[MoodyB]

I appreciate that this is a silly question, but what counts as the 'display port'?

One of the 2 mini displayports the card has.

You need what NightSt@lk3r said connected to one of these ports.

Techy explation below why you have to use a displayport output :

"As is well known about the 7000 series, it was limited to 2 independent TMDS interface (DVI/HDMI) displays at once.
Unlike the packet based DisplayPort interface, which operates at a single clockspeed and can vary the number of packets sent to adjust the resulting bandwidth, TMDS style interfaces adjust the clockspeed of the interface itself to match the needs of the display.
As a result while you can drive a large number of DisplayPort interface monitors off of a single shared clock generator, you need a dedicated clock generator for each and every TMDS interface monitor.
AMD only put 2 clock generators for TMDS interfaces on their silicon, hence they could only drive 2 such monitors at once."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx/3


Going against what I said earlier, I think your new monitor could be a different make & size from your 22 inch monitors.
A 24" 1920x1080 one would make the most sense, as the vertical res of 1080 is close to the 1050 of your current Acers

You could have the 24" monitor, connected via mini display port, in the middle, and your 2 22" Acer monitors connected via dvi & hdmi at the sides for a 3 screen Eyefinity setuop.

Then you'd use the 'Expand' mode recently added to Eyefinity with Catalyst 14.6 to game across the 3 screens :

http://techreport.com/news/26516/wa...-enhancements-coming-in-catalyst-14-6-drivers