Widescreen Gaming Forum

You didn't offend me necessarilly, you just seem like you spent money on the setup without actually putting much thought into it. I feel blessed in this awful economy to be doing well enough to have been able to build my computer. It's frustrating to see someone blow money on a setup without really thinking it through.

i built my comp from scratch over 6 months, it wasnt blown at all i saved for it.

but how can you really try something like this without buying it first? im the only person i know who games on pc`s and i work in the I.T field ! most are into consoles, let alone having three screens.

your being overly harsh to me TBH and i didnt expect it on this forum, perhaps your a bad apple? :?


again you always see the plus side on the internet about a new technology or some crazy way to do something, lots of people speaking almost religiously about it, because they feel they have to justify the purchase, there is hardly any talk of using the screens for 2D productivity and very little scope within the software to accomodate both. all im doing is being honest, all your doing is being defensive and rude


cheers :doh



(btw im running full landscape now, i needed to toe my monitors in a lot more (and i need a deeper desk) but with the profiles i run extended desktop in windows and use 'windowed mode' in some games to stretch wide than one screen.. i just dont use all of either screen as there too wide and too hungry for power for some games. of course for older games i shall use full eyefinity :))

Off topic, but phill1978; Capitalization and punctuation, man.

My whole point was essentially this: If you were simply looking for more productivity with extended desktops, there are cheaper ways to achieve this than building an eyefinity setup. If you do build an eyefinity setup, there's hardly anyway to justify using a 3x1 portrait setup when a larger monitor or tv will have nearly the same aspect ratio and most likely be cheaper. In fact, the only real way I could justify turning my monitors to portrait would be if the game was vert- and didn't scale correctly, however at that point, I'm not very likely to buy it anyways. Welcome to the forum, and I'm sorry for frustrating you. It's just annoying that all of my friends can't even afford to run new games, and some people who can take what they have for granted. You have what is in my opinion, the future of gaming on your desk and you're electing to use it in ways that defeat the purpose in even buying it.

ok BRPunk no worries :) i intend to be on here often so i dont want to piss anyone off tbh..

ok so..
Ive updated to ati 10.6 driver today and oddly my performance has increased? i cant remember what my gfx card shipped with but im getting into my setup a bit better now (apart from some 2D issues)
my main problem is that a 775/1125 5850 saphire whilst powerfull can only just run Dirt2 in ultra on 2048 x1152p on the benchmark at 57-65fps (only 2x mssa). I moved from a pants 8600GS, but ive also got a x360 and there suprisingly good gfx and well optimised.. for me even though ive come a long,long way from a 8600gs i havent really felt that a 5850 is a revolution (having also played on a gtx nvidia setup a while ago) i mean given the specs and 2BN transistors i think it should run dirt2 at silly speeds on full settings.

I possibly have a cpu bottle neck as there is some stuttering at my huge 7077888 pixel res this res and i need to work out how to overclock my 1055T thuban cpu as it runs 2.8ghz(3.3TB on 3 cores) but ive seen people overclock to 3.8-4.0ghz easy. further more my gpu is locked so i cant overclock withouth a bios flash :cry: i think tweaking of both will add about 8-10FPS which is all im lacking at the moment.

I will also upgrade to any gpu revision perhaps a 5890 2GB?

Well on the GPU side, most of us tend to agree that the standard for eyefinity is a 5850 Crossfire setup, or at minimum a single 5870. Most tests showed that a single 5850 did have some problems with newer games, and anything below that was almost laughable for eyefinity. I myself use a single 1G 5870 and it scales pretty well to most new games, however I do have to tone things down on some beasts. AA on Dirt 2 kills my FPS, but I can still play the rest of the settings on high. Crysis Warhead sits quite well on gamer with no AA on. Arkham Asylum was also quite painful, but once I got my quad core it actually sat quite well even with AA turned on. The real trick to all of it is that your specific setup may scale differently, especially based on your resolution. After my bezel compesation I'm sitting at 5808x1080 which hits me pretty hard. Even I'm considering selling my 1G 5870 and trying to pick up two 2G 5870's by the end of the year, even though most of my games are still perfection. I would recommend at minimum a 5850 CFX, or single 5870. Most people are aiming for more, myself included at this point.

On the CPU side, it's harder for me to tell. I've always been a big believer in sticking with what works, rather than a brand name, and as such I've used all sorts of different companies with varying results. However, Intel has never steered me wrong with their CPU's and as such I've never owned an AMD cpu (except once in a laptop, but I hardly count that since I wasn't really testing it). I know that most games right now can only take advantage of Dual-Core CPU's, and even having a Quad-Core CPU right now is only useful in certain games (Only ones I own that I can think of off the top of my head are TF2, L4D2 and Crysis) so I can't really say whether or not have the hex-core CPU is helping or hurting you in framerates. The 2.8GHZ is a bit low these days, since 3.0 is basically the minimum standard these days with most gamers pushing their's into the 4-5 range. If you can manage an overclock to get it to 3.8-4.0 GHZ that would help you, however be careful on air and run tons of tests. Every single chip, even if it's the same model, will overclock differently. For example, my 975-Extreme was won at a lan party for being beastly at TF2, and most people can air-OC this to the 4.5 GHZ range no problem, and several people have taken this to the 5.0GHZ range and beyond on water (I even heard of one beast at 5.3 GHZ on air). I on the other hand struggled to get my chip to , and am considering setting up watercooling just to try to take better advantage of the chip. I find it hard to complain since I had a 3.2 GHZ Dual Core, and won a $1000 chip for free, however it was still disappointing and a testament to how different chips react differently.

BRPunk thanks for your words m8 :)

I agree that a 5850 is a awesome card...... for those stuck in the dark ages of 1 monitor (see i cant go back now haha my love for it is evolving every hour) but i darent put bezel management on it takes my res to frankly silly levels lol, no instead ive angled and overlapped slightly my monitors and it looks fine.

are there any teething or serious issues with crossfire and eyefinity?

i cant wait to get another faster card already :doh money £££, I differ from other people who sit on the fence, they all want a 6xxx series to come out.. well considering i want to protect my 5850 investment i want the 5xxx series to go hybrid and be revised in a more powerfull format before i crossfire 8)


also ive posted in another thread about the woes of extended desktop and eyefinity profiles.. ive given up on that and mirrored my other pc`s setup and i run RocketDock with the windows task bar hidden, i can customise it heavily and run the launcher in the center screen (by default) with all the icons i need. in truth i dont need start menu much, just steam, mozila,music,vpn etc.. launchers

Some people have experienced minor issues with crossfire and eyefinity. It seems to change based upon the game. I know several people on here use two 5850 and two 5870 quite successfully, but others report that they've had stuttering with their CFX enabled, which was actually why I bought a 5870 instead of a 5970, I didn't feel like taking the risk. So, it's give and take. You might see if any friends have a 5850 you could test next to yours.

As for the extended desktop and eyefinity profiles, tbh I just minimize windows and continue running eyefinity all the time. When I surf multiple websites I do so in eyefinity. I never have any reason to switch to extended these days, but when I did try, I remember it being finnicky.

in your experience does tri-fire work? :?

also i thought the 5970 was dual gpu but seen as single gpu.


regards 5850 vs 5870 i couldn't justify £100 more, my sapphire at 775,1125 clocks oc`d from factory is only 10%-15% behind a 5870, if i could unlock the card and OC people have been able to run 995/1225 clocks on the sapphire toxic with its custom cooler (and a bios flash) which takes it past a 5870. Of course you could oc a 5870 but most dont want to and the reference cooler can get loud.

I await the next gen cards with baited breath.


Also i downloaded a eyefinity wallpaper from this site and none are big enough i have a fair amount of extra resolution over the typical 5040 res that people run :shock: in fact its incredible that i was playing dirt2 with some optimized settings at 45-50fps which is 353Million pixels a second :shock:

i have now got most games running with decent gfx on mostly high settings and no AA (don't really need it at my pixel pitch) apart from metro and crysis which to be fair are both hideously hard to run even on 1 monitor

eyefinity really is good, you just need to get used to it and get it setup right its quite a big change from anything ive used or seen before

:cheers

I haven't messed with any CFX while I've had my eyefinity, however word on the forums is that CFX in general had some problems dealing with eyefinity at the same time. Tri-fire and Quad-fire I know, in particular, was sketchy as hell because there was a gigantic thread about it for a while. I just run basic windows wallpapers... I can't figure out why, but the one I use is vert- so it just shrinks my FOV, and it actually still looks awesome across my 3 desktops. Glad to hear you're enjoying you're setup. :D