If we're lucky, CrossFire doesn't look at the TMDS transmitters, just the GPUs themselves to see if they'll pair. As with CrossFire only one cards ports work anyway.

Dave Baumann might be able to reveal more. Then again, he might not be able to for whatever reasons.

Until then, we can cross our fingers.

Personally, I'd like one-card-per-monitor-EyeFinity working too. driving a screen off each card should negate the need for DisplayPort adaptors (I'd hope!) and give some truly impressive framerates. Of course, syncing the frames would be a challenge...

But what I don't understand is that it has already been shown that a single link DVI output works fine via a passive DP to DVI connection (dazboots had it working).
The diagrams shows that there are 6 tmds units. A dual link dvi output would need two but single link dvi output, hdmi and DP only need one. If the DP output on the current 5870 card has shown to be fully capable of driving a SL DVI output via a passive connection then why can't the remaining tmds units, i.e. all six outputs of the Eyefinity6 card do the same? If it is capable of driving 6 x 2560x1600 dp outputs via a single tmds each then why can't it drive 6 x 1920x1200 HDMI/DVI outputs that also only require a single tmds each and thus don't require active adaptors?

What if someone wanted to drive 6 DVI/HDMI panels from the card, 6 active adaptors? Each with their own power supply???

Yes, sad but true! Almost: 2 ports are legacy capable so the passive adaptors would work with 2, the other 4 need their own active adaptor...$100 each! As to the tech specs, I don't quite understand it myself but a fact is a fact. can't fight it. According to Dave B. DP is an enabler of the more than 2 screen tech, so we have to live with it..... unless an OEM changes something major to release a 'legacy EF card'. Can't see it myself

But that's what I don't understand, dazboots has run a DVI output from the DP on his card via a passive connection. I understand why dual link DVI resolutions require two tmds units but the diagrams show that for single link dvi and hdmi resolutions a single tmds is all that is required together with a passive connector as verified by dazboots.

If you can run one single link dvi (or HDMI) from one DP output, can you do the same with the others. If not, why not?

No more so than SoftTH imho. The thing is it puts a tax on the hardware -- be it the main GPU or the PCIe bandwidth required to push to the other cards. I'd love for EyeFinity to bridge GPUs and cards, but we're just now only able to see it single GPU for a couple of days now. That sounds like more of a EyeFinity II feature for the future. I'd mostly just want to see them nail down the features the current EyeFinity has and make it CrossFire compatible. Gotta crawl before we walk.

I had it confirmed earlier in the thread that it would require 2 passive adapters and 4 active.

While there are Six TMDS/DP transmitters, there are only 2 clock sources on the ASIC. The issue with legacy display is that they all need their own clock generator - as soon as you plug in two DVI/VGA/HDMI you run out of clock sources. DP can time multiple outputs from a single clock generator.

What we do with these boards is add an additional clock source externally from the ASIC that is good for driving DP timing, but unfotunatly not others (the clock source is actually shared for another use, so we can't just arbitarily have any timing).

If you plug in a passive adapter to the DVI+DVI+HDMI+DP design then you it will use an internal clock source, up until you start plugging in other panels.


As already posted, 2 can be passive in this scenario.

So the real question is "why didn't ati just make all port DP+?" I would pay the bit of extra it would cost to add the extra support. It just doesn't make since in this day in age to not make things backwards compatible.

Thanks for the reply Dave, much appreciated. Sorts the issue out in my head.

I'm looking at three DP panels to go along with my existing three DVI panels - two passive and one active converter then to run three DVI outputs in addition to three DP outputs.

Will await to see what active converter 'deals' Scan can do...

Will 3/4way DVI EyeFinity be possible with forthcoming x2 cards? Assuming the clock gens are on the GPU chips themselves you'll have a total of 4 available instead of just two.

The images we have of the x2 card show only 2xDVI and 1x mini-DP connectors. So no AFAIK..see Hardware Canucks for images.

Keep up the good work ATI/AMD. Take your time on the bezel management, rendering at higher resolutions and chopping extra pixels off is definitely the way to go, zooming it in or stretching would be quite a hack .

The only way an X2 card would appeal to me is if EyeFinity could span ports across multiple cards. I don't foresee that occurring anytime soon as you could theoretically saturate your PCIe bus with too many screens doing that. Many mobos today have the capability to run up to 7 video card now, that's a theoretical 21 ports out with a standard 5870 or 5850. My Phenom II build has 4 video cards in it as is. That would bring PCIe 2.0 to it's knees doing the footwork required to pull EyeFinity multi-card spanning off. Definitely would be an interesting feat though to scale GPUs and ports like that though. It would bring us closer to realization of the 24 display X-Plane demo. I still have my reservations as to why that was demoed, because while it was very cool, it's not representative of EyeFinity standard use. I would liken it to a specialized configuration that only would work with 4 instances of X-Plane running on Linux.

I have been reading all the applicable threads concerning Eyefinity and I have even purchased the Dell adapter but I am at a crossroads.. I haven't bought the 5870 for 1 reason, I currently own a Dell 3007WFP-HC 30 inch and 2X 2007FP..

I have been reading and understand that currently 20inch port/30inch land/20inch port is not supported by Eyefinity.. It seems this would be a software/driver related issue because all the monitors have the same 1600 vertical resoultion.. (edit)

My question is this:

Will Eyefinity iron this out in future driver releases? Can we expect to run Portrait + Landscape + Portrait / 20" + 30" + 20" display configurations in the future? Mainly a question for Dave but any feedback or input would be appreciated....

I think you meant the three would have a vertical height of 1600 res ?

I am in the same boat as you, I have the Apple 30" Display, and would love to keep it, and just add two 20 flipped up in Portrait next to either side of my 30". It seems like an easy thing for Eyefinity to do, mainly because all three would have the exact same vertical height of 1600 resolution, so why not allow that to work ?