AMD Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition: One Card, Six Screens

[nlfc4life]

Last week was a mad rush to get Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 480 and 470 tested in sufficient depth to draw some very real conclusions about how the new cards perform in today’s games, how they might fare in the future, and the power they’ll be sucking down in the meantime.


All the while, I knew AMD would be pulling back the curtain on its Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition today. This card stands in stark contrast to the GeForce GTX 480 as the worst-kept secret ever. AMD was showing it off back in September when it announced the first Radeon HD 5870. Company reps flew around the country last month, dropping six-display setups on tech press like high-res 5760x2160 pixel bombs. Pictures and videos of these jaw-dropping arrangements made their way online, and we got our first taste of what it’d be like to stack LCDs vertically, rather than just spanning horizontally, like most of us multi-monitor proponents do today.



The only thing embargoed up until now was performance data. Over the course of the past six months, AMD’s driver team has been working on the software backing Eyefinity 6. And while all of the kinks still aren’t worked out, setting up and using intricate display configurations is much easier now than it was a month ago when the first Catalyst build landed in our lab.


Eyefinity 6 Lands In The Lab


AMD’s PR team arrived at our SoCal test facility with not one, but two 2GB Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition boards.



At 11” long, the Eyefinity 6 card is the exact same length as AMD’s reference Radeon HD 5870 1GB. Because it sports a second gigabyte of GDDR5 memory, however, it requires one eight-pin and one six-pin auxiliary power connector (in comparison, the 1GB Radeon HD 5870 employs two six-pin connectors). Idle power creeps up from 27W on the 1GB card to 34W on the 2GB card (according to AMD), and maximum board power ramps up from 188W to 228W—a somewhat-surprising 40W increase.


Why the larger frame buffer? Well, as you likely already know, the Eyefinity 6 card sports six display outputs in the form of Mini DisplayPort connectors. Each output accommodates a resolution up to 2560x1600. Sling six of those together and you’re looking at a 7680x3200 surface—large enough to bring any 1GB card to its knees (and indeed, realistically big enough to drop even this 2GB board below the point of playability).

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[Naturecannon]

Not for me, cant handle the bezels, most action will take place where intersections are in the center.

[DarthVader]

I am with you NC if it was not for the bezels I say it is great but I think it be easier just to hook up your PC to a big 40 LCD TV or bigger to get rid of all those bezels if your just gaming..

Plus if the bezel where not so thick that be also better..

[nlfc4life]

These look alot better but i would still much rather use 3x1 for gaming.

[1921Photo]

Whats wrong with 6 40 inchers? for that bigger than life effect. hell I get lost on three monitors I never would find a darn thing on 6, but here's to getting lost....