Radeon HD 5970 Single card and Crossfire review - ATI Eyefinity

ATI Eyefinity

An exciting feature for ATI Radeon series 5000 graphics cards is ATI's Eyefinity. ATI introduces Eyefinity technology on their entire Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards. Eyefinity simply put is creating a multi-monitor desktop and gaming solution.

You will have no problem connecting say, three 30" monitors at 3x 2560x1600. The graphics card can take that resolution and in fact combine the screen resolution and play in it.

We can explain this technology really simply though; you guys remember our Matrox Triplehead2Go reviews right? Well, ATI's Series 5000 graphics cards will be able to drive one to six monitors per graphics card. We've seen and tested this live in action, and it works really nicely. 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.

So some examples of what you can do here:

• Single monitor setup at 2560x1600 = 4 Mpixels
• Dual monitor setup at 2560x1600 per monitor = 8 MPixels
• Three monitors setup at 2560x1600 per monitor = 12 MPixels
• Six monitors setup at 1920x1080 per monitor = 12 MPixels

Guru3D's demographics show that most of you guys in the high-end range play your games at roughly 1920x1200. That's 2.3 Mpixels you guys.

Creating a resolution of 12 Mpixels obviously requires a lot of horsepower and this is where the Radeon HD 5970 is a great match. Now when we wrote our initial Eyefinity we reported that Crossfire was not working in Eyefinity mode, meaning you could utilize only one GPU. This has been fixed with the new drivers we have at hand. Both GPUs on the Radeon HD 5970 will kick in if supported, offering a luxurious gaming experience at perfectly fine frame rates and image quality.

Here’s a list of apps that will definitely work properly on 5970 (with two GPUs that is) in Eyefinity mode:

• Anno 1404 (aka Dawn of Discovery)
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• BattleForge
• Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare
• Call of Duty 5 – World at War
• Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
• Crysis
• Crysis Warhead
• Dawn of War 2 (Warhammer 40K)
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Enemy Territory – Quake Wars
• Fallout 3
• Far Cry 2
• GhostBusters
• Left 4 Dead
• Need for Speed: Shift
• RaceDriver: GRID
• STALKER Clear Sky
• Tom Clancy’s HAWX
• Unreal Tournament 3
• World of Warcraft (plus expansions)

Now this doesn’t mean the rest wouldn’t work – it’s just that ATI will need to create profiles for them. The Eyefinity desktop and game experience is breathtaking alright, and sure we also understand that 99% of you guys will never use more than two monitors. That other 1% definitely matches the Guru3D audience. Personally I like to game on three screens. It's really immersive.

Mind you that for six monitor support, a special edition (Eyefinity⁶) card will be launched with six display ports. Your average Radeon HD 5700/5800/5900 series card will have three or four monitor outputs. In fact the reference 5970 cards have two DVI, and one display port connector all on one card. If you are bold enough to go for a multi-monitor setup, it really is ideal to get three screens for flight sims, racing games, role paying games, real-time strategy, first-person shooters and sure, even multimedia apps.

It will be interesting to learn just what kind of living room you have if you were to employ such a configuration. Please post your setups in our forums. We see Eyefinity as a great feature for all kinds of simulations, the flight-sim community must be going wild for sure alright.

Check out a videoclip of Eyefinity at work when we tried it out with a Radeon HD 5870 (not 5970).

HAWX probably is the best title to show off. Mind you that if you watch the videos, make sure that the HD button is enabled. Check out Guru3D's full article on ATI Eyefinity right here.