Anandtech HD5870 E6 review

[Voo]

Could you really SEE the difference between 4000x1200 and 2500x1600?

Well 3x1920x1200 vs. 2560x1600 is rougly equal to the difference between 1920x1200 and 1280x1024.. you really can't see the difference between those two resolutions? And not sure how many have really used a 42 or 65" TV with 1080p resolution, but with the gigantic dot pitch the picture surely would look horrendous (well maybe I'm sensitive for that) and if I have to sit 7-8m away for the picture to look good I've won absolutely nothing against a normal LCD..

Other than that 3 monitors sound interesting, at least for games that work well with it, but even with smaller bezels 2x3 seems annoying and way too complicated to setup correctly..

 

[happy medium]

Well 3x1920x1200 vs. 2560x1600 is rougly equal to the difference between 1920x1200 and 1280x1024.. you really can't see the difference between those two resolutions? And not sure how many have really used a 42 or 65" TV with 1080p resolution, but with the gigantic dot pitch the picture surely would look horrendous (well maybe I'm sensitive for that) and if I have to sit 7-8m away for the picture to look good I've won absolutely nothing against a normal LCD..

Other than that 3 monitors sound interesting, at least for games that work well with it, but even with smaller bezels 2x3 seems annoying and way too complicated to setup correctly..

What? Your nuts, you cannot compare it like that.
After 2500x1600 you cant tell the difference. Well at least your eyes couldn't.
The normal human would have trouble telling between 1080p and 720p ,when watching a movie .

 

[Chaotic42]

What? Your nuts, you cannot compare it like that.
After 2500x1600 you cant tell the difference. Well at least your eyes couldn't.
The normal human would have trouble telling between 1080p and 720p ,when watching a movie .

Where did you get that from?

 

[NoQuarter]

What? Your nuts, you cannot compare it like that.
After 2500x1600 you cant tell the difference. Well at least your eyes couldn't.
The normal human would have trouble telling between 1080p and 720p ,when watching a movie .

Uhm, all that really matters is pixel density (dot pitch) for what your eyes can perceive. 2500x1600 at 26" diagonal would be much much different than 2500x1600 at 80" diagonal yet both are 2500x1600...

 

[happy medium]

Where did you get that from?

My 40 inch crt , 37 inch 1080p LCD , 720p LCD monitors.

Yea, with my own eyes, it's right in front of me. Can't get better proof for me then that.

Believe what you want ,but this 6 monitor crap is a gimmick.

 

[MJinZ]

It actually doesn't give peripheral vision yet. Games would have to implement a surround mode for that. As it stands the screens represent a flat plane window into the game world, they don't allow you to see beside yourself.

That's what peripheral vision is... did you think humans can see out of the side of our heads?

 

[splat_ed]

Imagine a decent Mechwarrior (et al) style game on this setup.
I mean, you've got left view, right view, centre. One screen for your status displays and another for enemy... Get yourself a comfy chair and one of those fancy joysticks and you'd be laughing... (as would the bank for the loan you just took out)

That was just the first thing that popped into my head reading the review. But of course you're not trying to use the screens as one big screen then which I suppose is the point of eyefinity.

 

[SolMiester]

What I found interesting is that the extra memory didnt do jack for the FPS with 1 monitor at 25x16, which means the 5xxx is not memory limited but GPU limited.....what a shame NV couldnt get the GTX4xx memory controller right....

 

[Apocalypse23]

Well I like the idea of 3 monitors in Eye-finity. But once again the bezels would come in the way...a Tri-crossfire setup of 5850s or 5870s would be sufficient to give about 60 fps in most games with 4x AA and 16 AF I think...

The following combos would work as well:

5850 tri cross
5870 tri cross
5970+5870+5870
5970+5850+5850
5970+5870+5850

I really don't think a dual CF setup will be sufficient to give you the type of frames with high settings with just 3 screens. I bought a BenQ 24" E2420HD 2ms 1920x1080 not too long ago, it comes with speakers as well and is a nice monitor for a good price as well...Would setting up 3 of these enable you to use Eyefinity? They don't have display ports however.. (now if we were to hook up a hdmi cable, and two dvi cables on the monitors, then would Eyefinity work?)

BenQ 24" E2420HD $209 CAD
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index...70&cid=MTR.863

 

[Daedalus685]

That's what peripheral vision is... did you think humans can see out of the side of our heads?

OK, fair enough.. but yes we can see to the side to a rather remarkable FoV. It extends 100degrees or so from our nose. You need a monitor beside you to see that... Granted there is certainly a case for "what angle is peripheral vision," as it can simply be defined as "not the centre" certainly much of it is not to the side... but you can't fill all of our FOV with a single plane. I mean by a certain definition any display that require you to move your eye to read text across it would be occupying peripheral vision at times.

 

[NoQuarter]

OK, fair enough.. but yes we can see to the side to a rather remarkable FoV. It extends 100degrees or so from our nose. You need a monitor beside you to see that... Granted there is certainly a case for "what angle is peripheral vision," as it can simply be defined as "not the centre" certainly much of it is not to the side... but you can't fill all of our FOV with a single plane.

You can if you wear glasses

 

[Dropmachine]

I am going to run 2x24" monitors. From what this review tells me, there is no difference between the 2gb card and the 1gb? Is that correct?

 

[Daedalus685]

You can if you wear glasses

lol... yes.. My eyes are about as bad as they come but I can still see a lot "around" them

The point is really that we can change the FoV on any old display.. the problems come up when the character FoV in a game is taking up a different FoV than the screens to our eyes... that is when it starts to look funny. In order to actually take up all of our FoV one needs to have a display that wraps around (at least partly) our head.

I realize the semantics of peripheral are a bit subjective... Lets just say that eyefinity can't take up ALL of it (It certainly takes up 'more' of it) unless the screens wrap around... which is currently not supported (you could do it but the image is still a single plane projection, it would look terrible).

 

[SolMiester]

3 x 1 in portrait would be okay, but i couldnt do landscape!

 

[1h4x4s3x]

The normal human would have trouble telling between 1080p and 720p ,when watching a movie .

I always knew I'm special. :sneaky:

 

[PM650]

(now if we were to hook up a hdmi cable, and two dvi cables on the monitors, then would Eyefinity work?)

Of course not, that would make too much sense
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk.../Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5870-specifications.aspx

Driver version 8.66 (Catalyst 9.10) or above is required to support ATI Eyefinity technology and to enable a third display you require one panel with a DisplayPort connector

 

[Udgnim]

The normal human would have trouble telling between 1080p and 720p ,when watching a movie .

don't mean to derail the thread, but the difference between 1080p and 720p depends on size of screen and seat distance

http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter

 

[Voo]

Uhm, all that really matters is pixel density (dot pitch) for what your eyes can perceive. 2500x1600 at 26" diagonal would be much much different than 2500x1600 at 80" diagonal yet both are 2500x1600...

Yeah clearly that we have to talk about the same real estate (and distance from screen) so that we can just compare the resolution and don't have to think about dot pitch (or even worse angle of view).. thought that'd be obvious. And anyways 3 24" monitors are not that much larger than one 65" TV so I thought that'd be ok

But ok we can do that a lot more exactly.

Pixel pinch of one 24" 1920x1200 monitor: 0.269mm (that doesn't change if you concatenate 2, 3 or 500 of them)
Pixel pinch of one 65" 1920x1080 TV: 0.749mm

Yeah you can sit further away from the TV, but that negates all the advantages of a bigger screen, since that means that the ratio of screen:rest shrinks and shrinks.. For exact calculations I'd have to remember how exactly you compute the angle of view, which seems too much effort for something that obvious


And well even if you can't see the difference between .427mm and .269mm (though I'd go see a doctor, you really need glasses xX), the difference between .75mm and .27mm is even larger - if you can't see THAT I fear gaming should be the least of your worries.

 

[nOOky]

I forget the maker, but someone is coming out with 2.40:1 widescreen t.v. monitors in response to many movies being filmed in that format. That might be a good alternative for lcd monitor users as a primary display. I'm a fan of using a single monitor also, bezels in my line of sight just irritate me.

 

[Insomniator]

I am going to run 2x24" monitors. From what this review tells me, there is no difference between the 2gb card and the 1gb? Is that correct?

Looks like there is no difference unless you turn on high AA/AF... which really isn't worth it at these resolutions imo. Not going to have playable frame rates for very long at those crazy resolutions anyway.

Also with the 5870 2GB really gaining no performance, SLI 480's are super dominant if you have a 1200W PSU and the airflow to handle it...

 

[yh125d]

For reference, I game at about 36-40" from a 52" DLP, I'd say more immersive than eyefinity

 

[NoQuarter]

For reference, I game at about 36-40" from a 52" DLP, I'd say more immersive than eyefinity

The point of Eyefinity isn't to make things bigger though, you could do that by just sitting 10" from your monitor if you wanted - it's to render more of the world. If you look at the screenshots posted on the first page, what you see on the middle monitor is what you will see on your 52" DLP no matter how big it is. The side monitors add more game world than you can get any other way.

 

[T2k]

Personally, I would rather play a game on 1 large screen at 1080p then 6 screens with Gazzion x million resolution.

I just fail to understand WHY.

Also keep in mind COST is important to me. Give me $700 42" over 6x (total 1000-1200 of monitors).

also since I play mostly FPS and racing games I think bezel thing would bug me to death.

No offense but do you understand the concept of resolution?