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Testing the AMD HD 6990 with five screens - The more you see the more you like

Posted by Jon Peddie on April 12th 2011 | Discuss
Categories: Hardware Review
Tags: amd displays

The first Eyefinity AIB we tested was the HD 5870 in October 2009 with six monitors in a 3x2 planar configuration.

It was thrilling to see that much landscape but it quickly became apparent it wasn't the ideal setup for game play. The problems were the screen height was a bit too tall for learn forward FPSs, the planar setup made you lean back a bit and turn your head, and worst of all the gun sights landed right in the middle of the two rows of monitors—as one person said, the bezel becomes your gun sight; cute, but not very good for aiming.

The ideal situation would be to have one 30-inch monitor in the center in landscape mode, and two 22-inch monitors on either side in portrait mode, but that's not possible with the current designs and the number of PLLs on the AIB.

The next best thing would be to use five monitors, in portrait mode, in a semi-circle—and that's what you can do with the new HD 6990 AIB from AMD.

We used five Dell 1920x1080 wide-screen displays in portrait mode as shown in the photo.

This setup comes close to a virtual reality experience. There is just enough stimulation of one's peripheral vision so too much, or too quick movement can cause disorientation and even a little vertigo—that's a good thing—that's realistic.

Playing with five

We ran some games and benchmarks with the 5x1 5400x1920 screen resolution. That is, we tried to. The thing to keep in mind when running these types of tests is that the games that are out today are from three months to eight years old since their release, and were being developed one to three years before that. The games developers may not have thought about (probably didn't think about) the possibility of screen resolutions as big as 5400 x 2000 and 10.3 megapixels. Game designers have tried to put in as many screen resolutions as they could, and some games can even read the frame buffer and generate special resolution. Some games, in particular the ones that have been ported from consoles, have very limited frame buffer sizes. The net result? To get the maximum enjoyment of a 10.3 megapixel display, you have do trial and error testing to see if it will work. AMD is working on this and generating a list of programs that do and don't work, and ones that will fill some if not all of the screen.

And, although we couldn't get the rig to run "Metro2033" it does run "Stalker," "Battlefield BC," "Medal of Honor," and several other programs quite well. The experience is at a minimum "Wow" to breathtaking. This is truly an evolved method of game play.

Benchmarks

We ran the HD 6990 in three configurations to get a feel for the impact on performance with a frame buffer that large. We ran it with a single 1920x1080 monitor in landscape, then in portrait, and then as five in the 5x1 configuration with 5400x1920. The results are shown in the accompanying chart.

As the chart indicates, pixels count. And although the scores at 5400x1920 may not look too good, one can turn off functions like AA and reduce dynamic lighting to get a higher frame rate in a given game.

The "Stalker COP" settings were Medium, Enhanced Dynamic lighting, 4xAA, and that setting yielded 23.6 fps average. By reducing the AA to 2x the average fps in "Stalker COP" gets up to 44.

Echo

A side effect of a wraparound semi-circle of monitors is the unexpected effect of sound bouncing off the screens. Speakers need to be put behind the screens and if you engage in multi player games and yell, or yell at the AI in a single person game, you'll get a little surprising feedback, a mini echo. It's startling the first couple of times you hear it.

Bezels, the bane of multi-monitors

As you get comfortable with the setup, and it's kind of an S-curve, you find things. The first reaction is holy cow! Then after you use it a bit you start to find the warts. And then if you stay with it you really enjoy it and start building your wish list. At the top of almost everyone's is a thinner or no bezel monitor. We've had an on-going conversation here at MTTL and with our colleagues in the industry, and the general consensus is the monitor companies just don't get it. NEC offers the NEC X461UN, a 720p 46-inch really thin, 7.3 mm bezel monitor for signage for a mere $5,300 each. And Samsung has a nice 23-inch MD230, 7.6 mm bezel with 1920x1080 resolution for $650, which is better, but $3,200 if you bought five.

Make it go away. One of the solutions is to reduce the visible resolution so the bezel becomes a window frame. This will correct the offsets in the image from one monitor to the other, but also gives a blind spot. Depending where you are in the game, you can usually pan back and forth (if you have time) to see better. AMD (and Nvidia) call this bezel correction, and it can help in a lot of situations. Here again is a case of getting used to the system, and learning how to live with it. Believe it or not, you can train yourself pretty quickly to get the benefit of the greater resolution and cope with the bezel—but the monitor companies are still letting us down and not recognizing the opportunity or demand. We have been thinking about ripping the casing off the monitors to get them closer together.

What do we think?

This is the most enjoyable system a gaming enthusiast could have – five monitors iN wrap around mode, and a high-performance dual GPU AIB with 4 MB of DDR5—could it get any better? Actually it could, by adding a second AIB, but that's a story for another time.

This is not a cheap system. The lowest price for a 24-inch 1920x1080 monitor we could find was $170. Five of them would cost $850. The HD 6990 is $710 making the setup $1,560 plus computer and stuff, and a desk big enough to hold it. But, if you've got the space and money, this is a dream machine for sure. – J.P.