ATI’s Eyefinity Technology Put to Proper Test

In our news section a few weeks ago, we talked about ATI’s new Eyefinity technology, one that would allow you to play most of your games across multiple monitors with relative ease. This kind of thing has been done before, but the difference here is that it seems to work well with more games than other technologies, and the best part? The price tag is far lower. All you need is an ATI Radeon HD 5000-series card.

I admit that at first, I wasn’t that impressed. I even saw a demo in person last week, and even then, it didn’t seem like something I could picture myself using. For me personally, the monitor bezels are a huge reason for that… I just can’t stand having my gameplay split up to multi-monitors. After checking out a fully-detailed video review of the product at HardOCP though, I have to say… I think I changed my mind.

It’s one thing to see one game being run on Eyefinity, but it’s another to see many different games being put through the ringer, such as Counter-Strike: Source, Need for Speed: Shift, Crysis Warhead, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Call of Duty: World at War, and more. There’s a lot of gameplay shown during the video, and it’s become clear to me that after a while, your mind is just going to play tricks on you, and the bezels will disappear. It really does look like it could make gaming a lot more fun.

There are some caveats, primarily with the display adapters you must use. A DisplayPort or DVI to Mini DisplayPort adapter isn’t exactly inexpensive, although ATI is apparently testing out different adapters in their labs to see if they can’t certify some more affordable ones. After all, if you have 3x 24″ or better monitors, who wants to spend another $100 or so on a cable or cables? Still, despite the cost-of-entry, this is very cool technology.

We have been holding off to hopefully give a more robust look at what Eyefinity might do for you in a gaming scenario. There are still some unanswered questions as to Eyefinity compatibility, but certainly AMD is aware of your questions and is working hard to get those answered. I felt as though I wanted to cover Eyefinity in a video format, and we have published that video below. We hope you enjoy it and it gets you a bit more acquainted with what Eyefinity might actually do for your gaming experience.