Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 review

ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 edition

So ATI introduced Eyefinity technology on their Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards six months ago. This literally boils down to multi monitor desktop and gaming nirvana. You will have no problem connecting say three 30" monitors at 2560x1600 per monitor -- combined to 7680x1600.

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 card however is a little weird, it's the freak nephew as it's capable of driving a total of six monitors over one card. And sure, it's clocked a little faster as well at 850 MHz on the core, as well as its 1600 shader processors.

Memory wise the card is clocked at 4800 MHz (gDDR5) much like the reference 5870, but here's one thing different. The ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 edition, at least the model we received, comes with a nice phat 2GB graphics memory. And that will help in uber-high resolutions with AA pretty decently. The TDP is slightly higher than the standard 5870 at 228W and 34W in idle.

Resolution wise you can drive up-to six monitors each capable of 2560x1600 (!)

So the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 edition will be able to drive up-to six monitors per graphics card. We'll test this live in action, and yes, it works very nice.

You can combine monitors and get your groove on up-to 7680x3200 pixels separated over several monitors -- multiple monitors to be used as a single display. I think the limit is even 8000x8000 pixels, but don't hold me to that.

Some examples what you can do where:

• Single Monitor setup in 2560x1600
• Dual Monitors setup in 2560x1600 per monitor
• Three monitors setup in 2560x1600 per monitor
• Six monitors setup in 1920x1080 per monitor

 Have a look at some examples:

You can arrange the monitors next to each other, above each other and really any combination you see fit for it.

And sure we also understand that 99% of you guys will never use more than two monitors. Perhaps not even 0.01% would use maybe even six monitors. Personally I like to game on three screens. It's really immersive, and especially on flight-simulators, racing games and strategy games (large field) you can enhance your visual experience, and obviously with more information thrown at you, you can game more precisely as well.

Keep in mind that for six monitor support the special edition (Eyefinity⁶) card is mandatory with six DisplayPort connectors.

Ehm dude CrossfireX ?

For those that are wondering, would it be possible to use two ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 edition cards driving six monitors ? So I can answer that with a yes, CrossfireX is now (though with limited game support) supported, it's actually something we'll tryout today. Especially with beastly resolutions like tested today, you'll need some serious rendering power. Now it is actually surprising to see how well performance with one card is. But two is obviously much much better.

Guru3D will be creating a test setup existing out of six Dell 22" monitors at 1680x1050  in 3x2 Landscape display mode, and that is a total staggering resolution of 5040x2100.

Considering the average enthusiast games has a resolution of 1920x1200 with his monitor, that's 2.3 Million pixels to fill preferably 40 times per second.

With our six monitors in 3x2 Landscape display mode at 5040x2100 we are pushing the limit further ... that's over 10 MPixels. You understand the dynamics now, right? You'll need a lot of RAW performance, and that's something two R5870 cards definitely can help out with.

It's now time to have a peek at some photos. First we'll show you the Eyefinity6 card up-close and personal, then the hardware setup, then the software setup and obviously we'll have a chat about the new functions like Bezel management that ATI introduced with the latest Catalyst 10.3 release.

First a photo shoot on the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 armed with 2GB memory.