Widescreen Gaming Forum

My issue is that just who is the contact that needs to be informed to get this fixed? My direct contact at AMD just changed jobs, so I'm out of the loop over at AMD HQ. Also, if they do fix it I hope they also keep the undocumented 5x1L still functional too. It has implications for 360 degree projection setups. If AMD is truly serious about showing off a "holodeck" in the immediate future (IE, anytime this year) they need to get 5x1P and 5x1L detection fixed in current drivers.

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

Couldn't agree more. More than 6 months since the 5x1 hotfix driver came out and nothing since. 5x1P is really awesome and AMD can really deliver on the hardware front it's just a pity they often let themselves down on the driver side.

The ASUS 6970 and 6950 6-port cards are the cards to get at the moment. I really want to pick up for my personal rig two of the 6950's to replace my 5870 E6's.

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

Yeah they're great cards and they run very cool. At 6950 stock of 1.1v it doesn't get hotter than 59-60C under full load for hours on end. At 1.175v (flashed w/ 6970 bios) it doesn't go over 65 at full load. Very impressed with the card. The only blemish is that smartdoctor is the only way to increase the voltage (afterburner voltage control doesn't work on non-reference cards). The app doesn't remember voltage settings on reboot and also can set random volts all the way up to 1.5v! I had to uninstall it. Just be very weary of smartdoctor if you get the DCII.

I don't recall off hand but are the DP ports 1.2 ports on the ASUS card? If so, that going to be an insane amount of extended display capability once some manufacturer gets of their rear to make the DP 1.2 MST hubs. I really have some interesting ideas for it in a flight simulator build in the future. What is so frustrating about all of this is we can see the potential for things but can't currently achieve it because of either hardware not being produced or driver development issues.

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

I'm not sure off hand. The Asus page I went to doesn't tell me but some sites are reporting that they are 1.2, such as:

http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/asus_hd6950_2gb_directcu_ii_review,2.html

Yeah if the MST hubs ever materialise that will allow for some insane configurations.

I'm happy to report that I'm sitting in front of a 5x1P eyefinity setup using a driver other than the 10.12a hotfix!

I had read in a couple of places in the last month or so that 5x1 was enabled in the 11.4 preview driver. So I grabbed the 11.4 preview off AMD's site and had no luck - it didn't allow 5x1. So back to the 10.12a driver I went.

Then yesterday I came across a new review of the 6990 driving 5x1 over here: http://www.hitechlegion.com/reviews/video-cards/10499

Actually I hit the review's 5x1P video on youtube first which revealed the driver version - 8.84.3. A quick bit of googling revealed that this was an early preview driver which AMD released on 7 March and pulled shortly afterward. The 11.4 preview driver AMD have on their site at the moment is dated 23 March and like I say above it doesn't support 5x1.

I found a site which hosts this now pulled 7 March 11.4 preview driver (here: http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalyst-11-4-8-84-3-download ). I just 15 minutes ago installed this driver along with CCC from the 11.5b hotfix driver (couldn't be bothered downloading 11.6 just for CCC). The uninstall from 10.12a and install of this setup was very pleasant indeed. Booting up after installing and it went straight into my 5x1P eyefinity mode with the bezel correction remembered! After much frustration with AMD drivers in the past that was a pleasant surprise.

Also if there are any bitcoin miners out there my hash rate has jumped from 300 to 350 mhash/s. I can only attribute that to the driver as everything thing else installed is the same (I used 11.5b's CCC and stream skd previously with 10.12a).

It still boggles my mind that we have to resort to such measures to use 5x1.

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

Yeah it boggles my mind as well.

Also I have a 6990 in my rig now (trying it out, still deciding whether to keep it or not) and if I hadn't found this now officially unavailable driver I would be stuffed. The 10.12a hotfix driver won't install for a 6990 because the driver pre-dates the card!

And the crossfire support is just disgusting. Old titles like NFS Shift run at 20fps and both GPU's are fully utilised! Thankfully there is that awesome app Radeon Pro (I should donate) which can fix up NFS Shift for example by allowing you to specify a different CFX profile to it. Applying GRID's profile to it sees the game run at 70+ fps at 6504x1920 with smooth performance (barring that vertical tearing which I guess is 'normal' (im getting used to it) for these 5x1P setups.

Great news AMD has released the 11.8 preview driver which supports 5x1.

I found out about it here: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33980089

Have installed and it works well. Also it removes the checkerboard bug for dx10 games when vsync is enabled. Just tried some BFBC2 with vsync on in dx11 and it runs really well at 5x1 (on an empty server anyway).