Eyefinity? Anybody try it?

[icecoled007]

I just scored two 23" monitors for $130... I already own one 24"


Whats the logical thing to do? Sell one? No~! Setup 3 monitors! Anybody ever run an eyefinity setup? Any recommendations on graphics cards? I currently have an older dual core desktop.... not much of a gamer but I want to try it.... I think with a decent graphics card it should work well for games every once in awhile and movie/photo editing.

My current dual setup.... other monitor is still in the box.

Eyefinity setup:

 

[zyxwvu44]

i havn't heard of eyefinity...but the more monitors the better! you will need some serious GPU to run over multiple 1080P monitors

 

[theiba]

AMD, yuck. I'm totally against AMD, so I'd never consider wasting my money on an ex-ATI video card. AMD recently hasn't released a product less then 3 generations behind any of their competitors. They're getting the kicked out of them in the CPU area as their bulldozer series turned out to be an inefficient joke, and their GPUs are just plain obnoxious on all counts.

To be honest... I was at Quakecon2010, and AMD had their 5 vert setup running, and it was just gay. Until someone makes a LCD with a 1mm thick bezel, it'll always be obnoxious to play with. It's got potential for certain applications, but trying to play a FPS game will just enrage you until you don't want to play when you're constantly looking at the gap in the screens as you're looking back and forth in your field of view.

The best thing you can go for is a single graphics card at the moment. Until they come out with a real solution for microstuttering over SLI and crossfire, it's just not worth it. I'm running a pair of GTX 285s and it's just hardly noticeable, but when I decide to upgrade to a DX11 card, it'll probably be a gtx 570 or 580 depending on what deal I can find.

 

[MADMAT]

AMD, yuck. I'm totally against AMD, so I'd never consider wasting my money on an ex-ATI video card. AMD recently hasn't released a product less then 3 generations behind any of their competitors. They're getting the kicked out of them in the CPU area as their bulldozer series turned out to be an inefficient joke, and their GPUs are just plain obnoxious on all counts.

To be honest... I was at Quakecon2010, and AMD had their 5 vert setup running, and it was just gay. Until someone makes a LCD with a 1mm thick bezel, it'll always be obnoxious to play with. It's got potential for certain applications, but trying to play a FPS game will just enrage you until you don't want to play when you're constantly looking at the gap in the screens as you're looking back and forth in your field of view.

The best thing you can go for is a single graphics card at the moment. Until they come out with a real solution for microstuttering over SLI and crossfire, it's just not worth it. I'm running a pair of GTX 285s and it's just hardly noticeable, but when I decide to upgrade to a DX11 card, it'll probably be a gtx 570 or 580 depending on what deal I can find.

said perfectly! 27" single monitor for me.....single card too!

 

[icecoled007]

said perfectly! 27" single monitor for me.....single card too!

There is something to be said about more monitors.... the real estate is really nice. I love the dual, for typing a paper I will put the word document on one monitor and my sources on another

Ive been on the hunt for a card for awhile now.... probably just going to get a lower end 6770 or 6790 that supports the three monitors.

 

[jetpilot08]

I have the same case! I love the antec 900 case. What type of hardware are you running?

 

[MADMAT]

Yea don't get me wrong a dual monitor workstation is niiice!

 

[icecoled007]

I have the same case! I love the antec 900 case. What type of hardware are you running?

Meh all old stuff. You will go broke trying to keep up. Built the PC back in early 08 cost me $1,000+ :-(

intel e6750 dual core 2.66 OC'd to 3ghz, 4GB DDR3, 64 bit Win 7, Gigabyte motherboard, 8600 gt (lol) (moving to the 6850 1GB DDR5 card), 3 different 7200 rpm drives 1TB, 500, 320, 600 psu. I think that's about it. I am tempted to drop a quad core in there when the funds allow and that should wake it up a bit more.


I just picked up a laptop with an intel i5 gen 2 sandy bridge, dropped in 8gb of DDR3 and put in a WD Scorpio Black 7200 HD (that HD is FAST). My laptop will run laps around my desktop all day. We will see how my desktop will hold with the new GPU



The Antec case rocks keeps it sooo cool when OCing. What do you have?

 

[icecoled007]

We are running:

 

[theiba]

Toss that HDD and put a SSD in your laptop.

You'll regret having spent money on that HDD. I put one in my two year old Core2 Duo 2.6ghz OCZ laptop a few months ago, and I was blown away. Now I've had this laptop for a while now with a 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda in it, and I always thought it was snappy and did well on battery. Blown the **** away I tell you. Average boot time was about 45 seconds since I have it set up for dual booting into Ubuntu and it takes a few seconds due to the menu that pops up, but it's down to under 10 seconds now if I can hammer through the menu fast enough. Added at least a half hour to my battery life too if I'm playing a game. Last example was Portal2 on a flight that I managed to get through most of the game which is a pretty drive-data-loading intensive game.

edit: It's definitely a single monitor for me too, I have my big rig hooked up to the TV (65" Mitsu DLP), so duals or more is kind of out of the question lol... but I've got dreams.

 

[icecoled007]

Toss that HDD and put a SSD in your laptop.

You'll regret having spent money on that HDD. I put one in my two year old Core2 Duo 2.6ghz OCZ laptop a few months ago, and I was blown away. Now I've had this laptop for a while now with a 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda in it, and I always thought it was snappy and did well on battery. Blown the **** away I tell you. Average boot time was about 45 seconds since I have it set up for dual booting into Ubuntu and it takes a few seconds due to the menu that pops up, but it's down to under 10 seconds now if I can hammer through the menu fast enough. Added at least a half hour to my battery life too if I'm playing a game. Last example was Portal2 on a flight that I managed to get through most of the game which is a pretty drive-data-loading intensive game.

edit: It's definitely a single monitor for me too, I have my big rig hooked up to the TV (65" Mitsu DLP), so duals or more is kind of out of the question lol... but I've got dreams.

65" wow!

Ya SSD is sweet but last time I was looking it was like $200+ for a 120GBish one. My WD Black was only like $40 bucks after rebate. I have yet to use a laptop with a SSD. \


I OC'd my desktop to 3.2ghz I can play BF3 on medium to high settings. Not too bad for 5 year old desktop, need an upgrade soon tho.

 

[MADMAT]

I have set up a dozen systems with $99.00 60GB SSD's and no going back! If the machine/user can use it I go SSD every time now....later record player bottle neck antiques...

 

[Big Kahuna]

I run dual monitors at work, cannot work without them.

 

[B3IS]

I think it is time for a drywall painting party for the back office area. The tripple screen situation is pretty cool.

 

[icecoled007]

I have set up a dozen systems with $99.00 60GB SSD's and no going back! If the machine/user can use it I go SSD every time now....later record player bottle neck antiques...

Ill try to keep my eyes peeled for a black friday deal....

I think it is time for a drywall painting party for the back office area.

Haha, ya its setup in the unfinished part of my basement. Where there is no windows, life, light, human interaction..... thats winter for you I guess.

 

[theiba]

65" wow!
Ya SSD is sweet but last time I was looking it was like $200+ for a 120GBish one. My WD Black was only like $40 bucks after rebate. I have yet to use a laptop with a SSD.
I OC'd my desktop to 3.2ghz I can play BF3 on medium to high settings. Not too bad for 5 year old desktop, need an upgrade soon tho.

Yeah, bought it almost two years ago, scored a sweet open box deal from tigerdirect for $999. I didn't have a tv at all and just moved into my house so it was a no brainer when the 50" LCDs were going for almost 3 grand at the time.

Watch slickdeals and logicbuy for deals on SSDs, you'll find a lot of them are getting right on the $1/GB mark for consumer grade ones. Between that and Toms Hardware you can review what the guys have to say about them. Even 200 bucks for one, you'll seriously regret not having done it sooner. It will seriously blow you away the second or third time you boot it up and it's almost an immediate load into windows after the bios does it's thing.

Yeah, I built my desktop two years ago with a 1st gen Core i7 920 which you can get for pretty cheap now, and if you're looking into new desktops, the sandy bridge i7's blow mine away. Throw a new GTX 570 in there with a 2500k, RAM is dirt cheap now days, a SSD, 150 dollar mobo of your choice, and you can have a <1000 dollar desktop that will play anything on high settings.

 

[MADMAT]

This months maximum PC built as budget machine specifically to play BF3 with all settings on ultra@1900x1200....it came to 1550ish in hardware alone......

BF# looks great on high....but unreal on ultra!!!!

 

[LeftysRule22]

NVIDIA all the way for multiple monitors. I have never had a microstuttering issue with dual GTX 560 TI's.

I also purchased an SSD, and was quite dissapointed. I like my raid 0 setup much better.

Sent from my 3VO

 

[theiba]

Yeah, with a pair of 560s you're probably likely to stay above your sync threshold and you won't see the stuttering. I've gotten it bad a few times, but sli is still effected a lot less then Crossfire is.

You were disappointed with a SSD? What did you have and what revision was your firmware? I'm surprised to hear that. I mean, there are just so few scenarios where they don't perform as well as a top end 15k HDD. It's not uncommon to get them though and have them perform like crap even though they shouldn't. Just takes some tinkering and switching firmware to get it right and it should be blazing fast.

I'm working on untangling a mess the previous IT douchewad created at my company and working on switching everything over to enterprise level SSDs (and of course, have to switch everything to W2k8 Server... seriously, who the **** still uses w2k server?), but with w2k8 and native TRIM support, I'm looking at a 25x performance increase in the local accounting network just by going to SSDs.

 

[MADMAT]

X2 on the SSD disappointment??

And tons tons tons of companies!! I know a major nationwide bank that is still on a token ring network.....I have to.....wait for it.........take floppies to work on their garbage!!