AMD Eyefinity Users Come On In!!

[p_monks33]

Guys, I am currently using a 7970 crossfire setup in eyefinity at 5760x1080. I am a past user of eyefinity with the same resolution on a pair of 6950's, so I am not new to the game. I also have been a user of Nvidia surround with SLI 680's and before that SLI 560's . Sorry for the background, just want to let it be known I am not a fan of either side , just a user of whomever may bring me the best all around performance. That brings me to the main question's I have for you guys.

1: Catalyst Control Center, those three nasty words. Does anyone else lose presets in CCC on a weekly, sometimes daily basis, by that I mean, I set up 3 presets, 1 for Eyefinity, 1 for single screen, and the last for multi-screen desktop multi-tasking. I find myself selecting a preset and CCC crashing or becoming non-responsive, resulting in me having to restart the computer to get it to work. At other times I try to go from using eyefinity back to triple monitor desktop and the displays will be out of order. This has happened in numerous ways under numerous driver versions.

2: Displayport issues, Anyone else have displayport issues while using eyefinity ? I often lose one of my monitors and its always one of the two using displayport, no adapter , just a straight cable. This happens on both of my 7970 cards, I know its not the monitor either, its a voltage issue I have heard, and people say it has something to do with the memory clocks.

I am seriously considering going back to Nvidia to alleviate these issues, but don't want to give up the power and the memory bandwith of the 7970. Does anyone have any tips or advice, surely I am not the only person who has issues with eyefinity?

 

[Tempered81]

Try Radeon Pro, Vsync, Frame limiter, in-game frame cap, dxtory, or go back to your 680 SLI.

 

[lavaheadache]

I wonder if disabling ULPS will help


Come on .... fess up... You're a fanboy I know it =) Worse yet, A shill probably

 

[p_monks33]

Lava, just because I sent you the pictures of all my "The way its meant to be played" Tattoos doesn't mean im a fanboy. I have just the two tattoos of that and the one Nvidia fairy on my lower back. Tempered, I have tried radeon pro. I didn't mess with it alot, I don't mind the common complaint of microstutter as much as others, and that was the main points addressed by radeonpro. I need a full alternative to CCC ( Crapity Crap Craperson)

 

[lavaheadache]

dude, just go for a 30". You will be way happier. 2 months ago I got one of my friends to ditch 3x24's in favor of a U3011 and he couldn't be happier

 

[p_monks33]

Been there done that, I had an HP 30" it was great, but damn it put off alot of heat. I guess if it weren't 110 degrees F. throughout summer I wouldn't mind.

 

[lavaheadache]

The new Dell 27 is LED. Maybe you should do that. I used to think my old 3007 was hot too. Funny cause I haven't noticed heat being a problem with this U3011.

To be honest I actually consider picking up a new 27 all the time because it has higher PPI than the 30. Also 16:9 works better for movies. Decisions, Decisions.

 

[p_monks33]

Looking into dell 27 right..... Now. Thanks for making me want to waste money .

 

[p_monks33]

That 29" would be cool for some extra widescreen gaming, I bet it sucks for alot of applications though. Three monitors is really great for multi-tasking.

 

[lavaheadache]

=) glad I could help. If I didn't already have the u3011 I would pounce on the new 27 in a heart beat

 

[lavaheadache]

yeah, that 29 looks interesting but I don't think I would like the lack of vertical res compared to how wide it is.

 

[BrightCandle]

A1. Yes all the time, never found a solution. I often loose the profiles on driver install and I still don't understand why the eyefinity change of resolution is so flaky and needs direct testing from the profile it will go from and to. Regardless I have the same problem.

A2. I use an active adapter and I do occasionally have the monitor drop out and only a cold boot seems to solve it. Its better since I started using the adapter that came with my 7970 instead of there one I bought for my 5970 years ago. Neither less it still happens.

I switched to 2x 680s because of the microstutter I had with the 7970s, I personally didn't consider these particular issues all that bad compared to the others I had (the terrible power saving that sometimes failed to ramp up in games, the graphical performance issues in windows without forced clock speed, microstutter).

I have no issues on a pair of 680s its actually quite refreshing after so many years with AMD cards and their little faults (and big ones). I kind of wish triple screen gaming worked a bit differently so that I still had 2 monitors when I was only using 1 but Nvidia does allow a forth utility screen for that purpose, its just not quite the same. But otherwise I prefer the way the cards work, they just don't seem to have any obvious bugs that you run into every day. I almost never see a graphical glitch in a game, the sli profile is already there when a game is released. Its the way its meant to be played and I wish AMD could just do the same as their cards are right now cheaper and faster.

 

[p_monks33]

Thanks bright candle, I too have seen games open in crossfire and the clocks hover around 500 MHz and won't ramp up. Also the three screen desktop issue with temperatures erks me. A stock 7970 at 59c idle is crap. Glad I have water which alleviates some of that. I am likely to go back green next go around.

 

[lavaheadache]

I'm pretty sure nvidia cards don't down clock when you have more than 1 monitor attached. For certain my 580 stayed at higher clocks with multi monitors, I don't know if that changed with Kepler.

Buy me a new 27 and I'll give you a smoking deal on my U3011 and rid yourself of annoying bezels =)

 

[p_monks33]

If someone would just release a nice 48:9 monitor lol.

 

[lavaheadache]

Don't you find that turning your head for surround is a bit obnoxious? Obviously having the ability to see more is nice but I just found it to be impractical.

 

[SirPauly]

I would think that would be a strength of bigger resolutions and screen area -- where peripheral vision may come into play a bit.

If anything, desire more innovation with head movement with TrackIR and the Oculus Rift to name some examples:

http://www.oculusvr.com/

http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

 

[BrightCandle]

Surround is mainly about peripheral vision. The side screens are actually stretched somewhat so looking at them directly in most games looks odd. Instead what it gives you is the full range of vision you would have in real life. In Battlefield for example I often see movement from one of the surround screens which alerts me to someone that had I not had the additional monitors I might not have noticed.

In Arma 2 I use it partially as a replacement for TrackIR. TrackIR is great but a pain in the backside to use and I never got all that comfortable with it. But with 3 monitors about 70% of what I use trackIR for is replaced with those additional monitors.

The downside is that it costs quite a lot of performance, so you can't always use it. Some games just plain don't support it. Despite all reviews to the contrary I have 680 SLI + surround to be quite a lot better than 7970 Xfire + eyefinity. Performance at these resolutions is meant to be better on AMD due to the additional memory bandwidth but because these resolutions require dual cards the microstutter destroys the advantage they have and actually makes them unplayable.

As to NVidia cards downclocking and upclocking I have to say it just works. They clock lower in Windows when you are not doing anything, increase as you do something that is accelerated and ramp up in games fully if the game is utilising them. The option in the control panel to go full speed seems to work as well although I have never found I need it. It works like I always wanted the power control on the 7970's to.

 

[p_monks33]

I am saying farewell AMD, I love your 7850 , but for multi-monitor , I feel like Kenny Powers, AMD your Bleeping out!

 

[KingFatty]

Don't you find that turning your head for surround is a bit obnoxious? Obviously having the ability to see more is nice but I just found it to be impractical.

I don't use it that way. It's more of a peripheral vision thing, allowing you to see things you aren't specifically focused on, so you can rotate the mouse to get that thing on your center screen.

 

[Stu @ MSD]

Most of thes eissues were ironed out in CCC 12.11 Beta11 and 12.11 Cap 2
(The caps being the most important part as they specifically deal with the crossfire issues)

Ref the DP issues, are your DP cables DEFINATELY to the correct spec? There are a hell of a lot of cables out there firing residual voltage back down pin 20 and it freaks the cards out in numerous ways. (There are 2 types of DP cable, and even PC shops arent aware of it in my experience. Type 1 is for card to monitor, type to is from monitor to another monitor) The only difference is pin 20.
(From memory, dont take my word for it though, google it)

 

[Skurge]

I haven't had any of my monitors cut out on my 6990 when I used eyefinity. I used the DP adapters that came in the box.