How do you decide on portrait vs landscape (eyefinity)?

[007ELmO]

I heard landscape is good for racing games, but most everything else is great in portrait. How do/did you decide?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Portrait will give you less distortion at the edges, because there's less edges. (For instance, Minecraft actually has trouble calculating distance, and removes distance visual effects like fog as it fisheyes the landscape out at the sides. I can post screenshots if you want.) But if you're playing a game that properly renders those aspect ratios, then that's actually a bad thing.

MOAR VERTIKAL REZOLOOSHUN is also better for productivity applications, although I suppose that's not a consideration for most Eyefinity setups. (It was for mine, actually. But I'm weird.)

 

[007ELmO]

I'm a programmer, so I am a little worried that a portrait monitor will be difficult with visual studio, who knows. I shouldn't be writing long code.

What monitors did you go with? I'm still not understanding TN vs IPS, if I can/should go LED, etc. I want to go to microcenter today to get some.

Right now all I do is play quake live and star wars old republic.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

3 monitors in portrait will give you an aspect ratio very similar to a typical widescreen monitor: 15:8 vs 16:10. 3 monitors in landscape stretches off into infinity... not literally, of course, but it does seem to go on forever. It seems like more and more people are showing off setups where they have a 30" monitor in landscape as their primary monitor with two 24" monitors in portrait on either side for the surround setup. Seems like it would be the best of both worlds; a lot of real estate without bezels getting in the way for general office or photo work, but the benefit of extended field of view in gaming. It's not cheap though; near 2 grand for the 30" Dell and 2 24" Dell U2412Ms to flank it.

 

[KingFatty]

Let your usage dictate the configuration, but try both arrangements. Also, some games will give you more info when you get wider not taller, but other games will give more info if you get taller. Also, some games just won't use it (Starcraft 2) so in that situation you'd probably want a setup that will maximize use in Windows/internet browsing not just gaming.

Best overall would be using a setup where you can easily rotate each monitor as desired, instead of locking them down in one configuration only.