Widescreen Gaming Forum

I gotta agree with this, it was mentioned just about everywhere that a displayport monitor was required.

I think most people (myself included) just assumed that an adaptor would work, and the fault in that assumtion is squarely on our shoulders alone.

Exactly, however, its not your fault or anyone elses that ati failed to be clear about this.

and sry Dave B, that dont cut it.
I been reading up, I been watching and if any other sense, this whole forum was on fire due to a failed communication from ati.
If your release a new technology a feature, and just tell people about DisplayPort, now what would people think?
Cant use a DVI port, cool, I use an adapter, dang, what one, oh I get that one, wtf it dosnt work?
HARDOCP Kyle, did run eyefinity, he even didnt know, he runs a hardware friggin site for gods sake.

Dave Bauman, if you dont get that your company failed to communicate clearly, relasing a new feature and technology, I fear that ati is gone soon.
You havent got it yet.
Still waiting for an excuse in how badly this was set forth, Dave.

Its easy,
just state, we failed to communicate clearly when we presetned this eyefinity feature on the 5800 series and we are sorry.

All you had to do was this,
1. our cards support 3 displays, 2 can be DVI (etc), the third has either to be a DisplayPort one (preferable), or you can use a DVI with an adapter but then you Must use a "active adapter" currently AMD/ATI is investigating to certify just such one for all the wanting gamers out there.

If that would have been set, in writing, communicated clearly at the launch of the Eyefinity, your head wouldnt be up in your ass.
Get it?
If you dont understand that, which is what people been raving about including me, including Kyle at hardocp, strike one Dave.

:lol:

P.S. SunSp*t was my original name for EF. Out of sentimental reasons I have adopted it for my own username.

The only thing I really take issue with from an engineering perspective is maybe the next generation standard port out card will design that third port out DP port to be a DP+. This would lower the bar significantly for entry level triple-head. If I read your goal correctly, it's to begin to grow market share with the capability to triple-head right out of the box for everyone in the 5000-series. That is a noble goal and I think a lot of us appreciate that.

You need to understand that frustrations of the surround-screen gaming community over the last several years though. This community has had to deal with a quite odd and large amount of specific issues to do this type of thing over the last few years with either SoftTH or Matrox GXM products. Don't misunderstand the frustrations here as EyeFinity only frustrations. Understand it from the perspective that most people here are aggravated from years of compromise and hacks needed to do these things with expensive hardware solutions. EyeFinity showed up and it looked like it could mainstream everything by addressing a huge list of limitations surround-screen gamers have.

1) Historically, the cost of entry into this enthusiast market has been too high. For anyone wanting to do triple-head they've had to buy a Matrox GXM box for $350 then 3x $350 displays. With the crash of LCD display prices in the last 18 months, you can take out the LCD issue as it's essentially 1/3rd the price they used to be for 22" and 24" LCDs. The first part of that equation -- the GXM box --- currently is the big deal breaker for going triple-head. People saw EyeFinity and began to believe they could do away with any cost now associated between the displays and the video card. It's why a few people here snapped when there turned out to be a specific need for a $100 box in-between in this case too for pre-existing triple-head gamers. Most of us use the cheapest small bezel LCDs we can find -- and those were never equipped with DP.

2) Don't think this frustration is only focused on ATI/AMD...it's not. It's focus on the hardware market in general. From game development houses, to hardware manufacturers all. Support has very real limitations and it's a real mixed bag of support too. No 2 games behave the same. It's the major reason why WSGF exists -- to troubleshoot and often seek solutions to the limitations.

3) I really think ATI/AMD needs to take a good look at Matrox GXM products and SoftTH and see what they have that EyeFinity doesn't and seek to at the very least feature match and hopefully do so in more functional ways. There are some very handly options on both GXM boxes and SoftTH that will make great features in EyeFinity if done in the future.

Many of us do understand the compromises that had to occur here for EyeFinity to be marketed on all standard cards. The trouble now is that ATI/AMD should step up and also offer to engineer and market a really cheap active single-link DP(or Mini-DP)-to-DVI/HDMI adapter and do away with 100% of the adapter controversy. Most of the people needing this adapter are never going to use 30", so a cheap active single-link adapter should be a target goal. Those that are doing 30" EyeFinity can obviously afford the current active adapters, but those that are doing 3x 19", 22" or 24" can't. The adapter needs to be around $30-35 street price if possible.

_________________
Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

3) I really think ATI/AMD needs to take a good look at Matrox GXM products and SoftTH and see what they have that EyeFinity doesn't and seek to at the very least feature match and hopefully do so in more functional ways. There are some very handly options on both GXM boxes and SoftTH that will make great features in EyeFinity if done in the future.

We are looking at these and we now have dedicated resources to plan out the roadmap for Eyefinity features.

Bear in mind that all of this takes time, even though its largely a software path from here, it does still take time to implement software. In real terms Eyefinity is actually less than 6 months old from a hardware perspective and so the software guys have had to rearchitect the display driver software to cope with the new display capabilities and then add on the features for Display Groups and the bezel management work that is in the pipeline at the moment; a lot of this could only begin when the chip became real and they started going out of the hardware bringup team into software feature team.

There's a still a lot to add to this :)

All you had to do was this,
1. our cards support 3 displays, 2 can be DVI (etc), the third has either to be a DisplayPort one (preferable), or you can use a DVI with an adapter but then you Must use a "active adapter" currently AMD/ATI is investigating to certify just such one for all the wanting gamers out there

Thats what we did state - the Eyefinity pages state that the 3rd output requires a DisplayPort panel, not that a DisplayPort output should be used.

[quote]All you had to do was this,
1. our cards support 3 displays, 2 can be DVI (etc), the third has either to be a DisplayPort one (preferable), or you can use a DVI with an adapter but then you Must use a "active adapter" currently AMD/ATI is investigating to certify just such one for all the wanting gamers out there

Thats what we did state - the Eyefinity pages state that the 3rd output requires a DisplayPort panel, not that a DisplayPort output should be used.Yep never assume, it makes an ASS out of U and ME :p

_________________
Dipping bags at Mach1.9

Thats what we did state - the Eyefinity pages state that the 3rd output requires a DisplayPort panel, not that a DisplayPort output should be used.

And , do you think this is accurate enough ?

A 100% clear sentence in this matter would be for me :
"the 3rd output requires a DisplayPort panel or, if the panel isn't display port, an active display port adapter"


That's my humble point of view though, as a computer tech who deals with unknowledgeable people.

[quote]Thats what we did state - the Eyefinity pages state that the 3rd output requires a DisplayPort panel, not that a DisplayPort output should be used.

And , do you think this is accurate enough ?

A 100% clear sentence in this matter would be for me :
"the 3rd output requires a DisplayPort panel or, if the panel isn't display port, an active display port adapter"


That's my humble point of view though, as a computer tech who deals with unknowledgeable people.

It needs to be stated quite plainly "Passive DP-to-DVI/HDMI adapters will not work", because if you bring active adapters into the statement, people are going to instantly look for the cheapest adapters on the market, which are all passive. Heck, half the sites selling passive adapters are selling them as active adapters on their websites.

_________________
Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

In case anyone was actually looking for DP monitors, displayport.org has a list. http://www.displayport.org/consumer/?q=content/devices#pcmonitors

In case anyone was actually looking for DP monitors, displayport.org has a list. http://www.displayport.org/consumer/?q=content/devices#pcmonitors

I know there has to be more than that out there. That's not exactly an exhaustive list of DP displays. :wink:

_________________
Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com

[quote]In case anyone was actually looking for DP monitors, displayport.org has a list. http://www.displayport.org/consumer/?q=content/devices#pcmonitors

I know there has to be more than that out there. That's not exactly an exhaustive list of DP displays. :wink:
Yup, good place to start though. Another list from cnet: http://reviews.cnet.com/computer-monitors-projectors/?filter=503360_16848955_