If you quite fancy a multi-monitor setup but think that stopping at two - or even three - is weak, check out AMD's latest announcement: the Eyefinity.
According to AnandTech, the new Eyefinity technology - announced at a press conference yesterday by the company's ATI subsidiary - will give users the opportunity to drive up to six monitors from a single card.
The technology uses the increasingly popular DisplayPort specification for its six outputs, and was originally developed due to OEMs requesting notebook GPUs that could drive six different output devices at different times.
What makes Eyefinity interesting isn't that it is capable of driving so many displays, but rather that it treats the combined displays as a single surface for rendering purposes. What this translates to in reality is a demonstration of popular time-sink World of Warcraft running across six 30" monitors in a 3:2 configuration, each with a resolution of 2560x1600 - meaning an overall HD-busting resolution of 7680x3200, or 24 megapixels.
Despite the incredibly high resolution, the single GPU that powers Eyefinity seems to cope pretty well: a DirectX 11 part, the new chip was able to keep WoW ticking along at an impressive 80 frames per second with all detail settings cranked up to their maximum.
Actual specifications from the press conference are being kept under wraps, but it is known that the part - which will appear on cards from the Radeon HD5800 family - features 2.15 billion transitors and a total performance of 2.5 TFLOPS.
AMD also revealed that it is partnering with Samsung to produce a 3:2 ultra-high resolution display suitable for use with Eyefinity featuring six panels each with a slim bezel and no power LED in order to minimise distractions.
Pricing was, of course, not mentioned - but an official release announcement is expected at the end of the month.
Does Eyefinity have you drooling over the thought of ultra-high resolution gaming, or are you suspicious as to exactly how many games can be driven by a single GPU at playable framerates? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
According to AnandTech, the new Eyefinity technology - announced at a press conference yesterday by the company's ATI subsidiary - will give users the opportunity to drive up to six monitors from a single card.
The technology uses the increasingly popular DisplayPort specification for its six outputs, and was originally developed due to OEMs requesting notebook GPUs that could drive six different output devices at different times.
What makes Eyefinity interesting isn't that it is capable of driving so many displays, but rather that it treats the combined displays as a single surface for rendering purposes. What this translates to in reality is a demonstration of popular time-sink World of Warcraft running across six 30" monitors in a 3:2 configuration, each with a resolution of 2560x1600 - meaning an overall HD-busting resolution of 7680x3200, or 24 megapixels.
Despite the incredibly high resolution, the single GPU that powers Eyefinity seems to cope pretty well: a DirectX 11 part, the new chip was able to keep WoW ticking along at an impressive 80 frames per second with all detail settings cranked up to their maximum.
Actual specifications from the press conference are being kept under wraps, but it is known that the part - which will appear on cards from the Radeon HD5800 family - features 2.15 billion transitors and a total performance of 2.5 TFLOPS.
AMD also revealed that it is partnering with Samsung to produce a 3:2 ultra-high resolution display suitable for use with Eyefinity featuring six panels each with a slim bezel and no power LED in order to minimise distractions.
Pricing was, of course, not mentioned - but an official release announcement is expected at the end of the month.
Does Eyefinity have you drooling over the thought of ultra-high resolution gaming, or are you suspicious as to exactly how many games can be driven by a single GPU at playable framerates? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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